India’s Economy: The Satellite Photo Tour

India’s Economy: The Satellite Photo Tour

India’s Economy: The Satellite Photo Tour

Last week, I mentioned the Economic Survey 2021-22 published by India’s Ministry of Finance.

As usual, most of this annual report is an overview of fiscal, monetary, and trade developments, along with discussions of sectors like agriculture, industry/infrastructure and services, as well as employment, social infrastructure, and sustainable development. The last chapter of this year’s report focuses on “Tracking Development through Satellite Images & Cartography.”

One prominent example is called “night lights,” which is just a satellite picture of light emissions at night. The left-hand photo shows India in 2012; the right-hand photo is India nine years later in 2021. The spread of electric lighting in India is clear.

India_Night.jpeg


The use of night lights data as a way of estimating economic development has been a research topic for a few years now. For economists, one advantage of night lights data is that it isn’t produced by the national government–unlike, say statistics on gross domestic product. For a discussion of using night lights data to estimate GDP, see Noam Angrist, Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg, and Dean Jolliffe, “Why Is Growth in Developing Countries So Hard to Measure?” in the Summer 2021 issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives. (Full disclosure: I’m the Managing Editor of the JEP, which is freely available online to all courtesy of the American Economic Association.)

These authors also point out that satellite imagery is not limited to luminosity: for example, it’s also possible to look at plant cover and even to identify different kinds of plants. For example, here’s a photo of agricultural activity near a certain reservoir after the water infrastructure was improved. Again, if the choice is between trusting a government report on the benefits of the improved infrastructure or trusting a satellite image that can be readily double-checked, the satellite image has some obvious benefits.

Figure_17.png


It’s also possible to use satellite images to look at industrial development or urban patterns. Here’s a photo of a “wasteland” area before and after it is converted to industrial uses.

Satelitte_Images.png


In urban areas of some developing countries, attempting to count buildings and land-use through a ground-level army of census-takers (say, for purposes of calculating property taxes) may be a difficult and costly task. Satellite photos offer an overview.

One can also use satellite photos for environmental purposes: for example, to get a clear view of the size of the Amazon rain forest or the extent of cultivated land. Here’s an example from India, looking at the annual cycle of water storage at a certain reservoir.

India_Economy_Satellite.png


Finally, there can be cases where good old maps, unassisted by satellite images, can tell a story. Here’s a comparison of the extent of India’s national highway system, as the network doubled its road-miles from 10 years ago up to the present.

National_Highway.jpeg


It’s easy enough to find lengthy and legitimate lists of concerns about India’s economic growth. But these kinds of images make clear that India’s growth is indeed very real. Those who want to to read more about India’s economy from a broader perspective than this year’s Annual Survey might start with the three-paper “Symposium on the Economics of India” in the Winter 2020 issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives:

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Timothy Taylor

Global Economy Expert

Timothy Taylor is an American economist. He is managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, a quarterly academic journal produced at Macalester College and published by the American Economic Association. Taylor received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Haverford College and a master's degree in economics from Stanford University. At Stanford, he was winner of the award for excellent teaching in a large class (more than 30 students) given by the Associated Students of Stanford University. At Minnesota, he was named a Distinguished Lecturer by the Department of Economics and voted Teacher of the Year by the master's degree students at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. Taylor has been a guest speaker for groups of teachers of high school economics, visiting diplomats from eastern Europe, talk-radio shows, and community groups. From 1989 to 1997, Professor Taylor wrote an economics opinion column for the San Jose Mercury-News. He has published multiple lectures on economics through The Teaching Company. With Rudolph Penner and Isabel Sawhill, he is co-author of Updating America's Social Contract (2000), whose first chapter provided an early radical centrist perspective, "An Agenda for the Radical Middle". Taylor is also the author of The Instant Economist: Everything You Need to Know About How the Economy Works, published by the Penguin Group in 2012. The fourth edition of Taylor's Principles of Economics textbook was published by Textbook Media in 2017.

   
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