Further, in a book titled “The National Income of India in the Twentieth Century”, Professor Sivasubramonian observed that in the first five decades of the 20th century (1900-01 to 1946-47), before we got our independence in 1947, the per capita GDP in India was stagnant, as the trend growth in GDP during this period was 0.9 per cent with population growing by 0.8 per cent (Sivasubramonian, S., Oxford University Press, 2000).
As compared with near stagnant growth in the first 50 years of the 20th century, it could be seen from Table 1 (Attached), the annual growth averaging around 3.5 per cent during the period 1950 to 1980 was comparatively better, while per capita growth broke out of the long period of inertia and averaged 1.1 per cent until around 1980.