We now know what GDP is, and why it is important to measure growth using GDP. We know what statistical adjustments are made over time so that growth is made truly comparable. We also know the difference between long term and short term growth.

Armed with the answers to all of these questions, we now ask the million dollar question:

What makes a nation grow over time?

That is, if we are to transform India into a developed nation by increasing her growth rate in a sustained, sustainable fashion, then what, specifically, needs to happen? Well, lots of things, is the easy answer. And a true answer, too.

Here’s a better question. What are the things without which this growth story absolutely can not happen?  What are the indispensable factors?

Answering this question takes us into the realm of growth, or development economics. Nomenclature aside, it is the area that lies at the heart of all economic policy-making. What we are looking for is the framework, the core, around which everything else can be built, added and embellished. Just as a truly great dish looks good and tastes better with more accompaniments, but can’t really work without the core ingredients – similarly, our growth story needs some core ingredients, around which we’ll add more stuff later.

And our core ingredients are labor, and capital. Turns out, India’s growth story cannot happen, without first possessing (and growing) capital and labor.

What is capital, and what is labor?

Capital is machinery. You’re almost certainly reading this post on an electronic device, and that device is your capital. The ladle with which a dosa-wala flips a dosa is capital. The pushcart that a chaiwala uses as his makeshift shop is capital. An assembly line in a Tesla factory is capital.

And the effort that I put in to type out this article is labor. The hands that use the ladle to flip the dosa is labor, as is the chaiwala himself and the worker on the factory floor of that Tesla factory. That is all labor.

And any production, anywhere in the world, of any good at all, can only be done with some combination of labor and capital. In order to produce something – anything – you need capital and labor.

The more you produce, the more you grow. The faster you produce, the faster you grow. And so in order to grow more, and grow fast, you need more capital, and you need more labor. So any story about the long term growth prospects of a nation need to start from capital, and labor.

Economists call these the factors of production, and without them, our story can’t start. But with them, we encounter another question: how do you get capital and labor to grow?