As the world approaches the 20th anniversary of the fall of communism, it is worth investigating the costs borne by countries like India that did not become communist but drew heavily on the Soviet model. For three decades after its independence in 1947, India strove for self-sufficiency instead of the gains of international trade, and gave the state an ever-increasing role in controlling the means of production. These policies yielded economic growth of 3.5 percent per year, which was half that of export-oriented Asian countries, and yielded slow progress in social indicators, too. Growth per capita in India was even slower, at 1.49 percent per year. It accelerated after reforms started tentatively in 1981, and shot up to 6.78 percent per year after reforms deepened in the current decade.

What would the impact on social indicators have been had India commenced economic reform one decade earlier, and enjoyed correspondingly faster economic growth and improvements in human development indicators? This paper seeks to estimate the number of "missing children," "missing literates," and "missing non-poor" resulting from delayed reform, slower economic growth, and hence, slower improvement of social indicators. It finds that with earlier reform, 14.5 million more children would have survived, 261 million more Indians would have become literate, and 109 million more people would have risen above the poverty line. The delay in economic reform represents an enormous social tragedy. It drives home the point that India's socialist era, which claimed it would deliver growth with social justice, delivered neither.

S. Aiyar argues that millions of children would have survived, hundreds of millions would have become literate and another hundred million would have climbed over the poverty line. All that would have been possible, he says, if the economic reform had come to India ten years earlier.

But what he fails to consider is whether earlier reform would have been sustainable. Whether India was in a position to open up to the world then as much as it has opened now is an important question.

We don't need to go too far back in history. Just over a decade ago, the Asian Tigers collapsed dramatically due to what can be described an inability to fully adjust to a liberalized economy. I would argue that a collapse of that nature, rushing reform and failing to adjust can have a much greater human cost than a measured approach to economic reform.

Now whether that measured approach should take ten years of five, is up for debate.

The Islamic Development Bank (IDB) has approved new grants totaling $552 million for a number of new development projects, some of which are in Albania, Jordan, Indonesia, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Burkina Faso and Benin.

IDB has always played an important role in development projects around the Muslim world. It seems to have expanded that mandate now to promote Islamic finance and educational initiatives in countries where Muslims are in minority. This story on Zawya.com highlights seed-capital provided for Sri Lanka's first Islamic bank and scholarship programs in the U.K.

KUWAIT - The World Bank's International Finance Corporation (IFC) plans to raise about $100 million in Islamic bonds, three bankers familiar with the deal said on Wednesday.

HSBC, Dubai Islamic Bank, Kuwait Finance House Bahrain and Liquidity Management House have been mandated to arrange a roadshow for the sukuk, the bankers said.

"It's not to raise cash, they would like to show their commitment to the region ... they're doing some financing on an Islamic basis here," one of the bankers said.

"They have only a few ijara contracts, that's really the limiting factor," he said.

The roadshow will start on Oct 18 and will visit Riyadh, Abu Dhabi, Dubai and Bahrain, they said.

Islamic bonds do not pay interest, with returns being derived from underlying assets instead.

Moody's on Tuesday assigned an "Aaa" rating to IFC's vehicle to issue the sukuk.

IFC said in June it plans to issue $3 billion in short-term debt to increase funding for development activities in poor countries.

The global sukuk market this year has been upheld almost entirely by issues from sovereigns and supra-national institutions such as the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), after it got caught up in the global liquidity freeze last year.

Abu Dhabi's Tourism Development & Investment Co was the latest government-linked entity to sell sukuk after it said on Tuesday it had raised $1 billion.

The five year sukuk, priced at 230 basis points over mid swaps, was almost seven times oversubscribed, lead manager HSBC Amanah said in a statement on Wednesday.

Private sector issuance is expected to pick up significantly during the remainder of the year and early 2010.

Despite the economic downturn, the Sukuk market has been doing relatively well. It saw some declines from previous years, but those were more corrections than anything else. And now almost everyone around the world is wondering whether there is an opportunity here for them to raise some funds in the Middle East.