Simple past or present perfect with 'over the decade' (2025)

Source: Tackling poverty in India: The low income, low growth trap

In the following paragraph, simple past has been used, rather than present perfect. I fail to understand why present perfect was not used. When we say 'over the past decade', it means the time extends upto present, but still present perfect was not used and I have seen many examples of present perfect being used on the internet with 'over the last' decade. So please help me understand it.

Over the past decade, India witnessed widespread economic growth as well as faster and more widespread poverty reduction.1 However, some states did not benefit as much as others. The seven ‘low-income states’ (LIS) in particular — Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh — continue to lag behind the rest of the country.

Why has simple past been used instead of present perfect? Over the past decade extends to present, so present perfect should be there. Please tell me what difference would use of present perfect be from simple past.

Thanks

Velisarius, can you tell me in a bit more detail how and why would the usage of simple past makes sense here or in other examples involving 'over the past decade/month or years'? Because I thought using simple past with these was wrong, but after looking at your post, I am curious to know about their usage and what they connote and how different they are from the usage of present perfect.

And thanks to sound shift and Veli for answering me.

Past tense makes sense if "the past decade" means "that past decade", referring to a particular time interval of opportunity in the past.

But even if "the past decade" means "this past decade", past tense could work in a news report. Present perfect is common at the beginning of a news report but tends to be avoided later in the report because simple tenses are more succinct and less remote sounding (as is active voice).

But if this excerpt comes first in a news report, I find past tense rather jarring. There, if "the past decade" is meant as "this past decade", I would have to say "has witnessed" and maybe also "has not benefitted".

velisarius said:

I think either tense may be used here, depending on how the writer is viewing the past decade. Here, he is looking back on it as something finished and complete in itself. "

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Forero sir, could you elaborate on the above aspect raised by Velisarius?

nagariya said:

velisarius said:

I think either tense may be used here, depending on how the writer is viewing the past decade. Here, he is looking back on it as something finished and complete in itself. I think I would probably have used the present perfect tense here, also "some states have not benefited..."

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Forero sir, could you elaborate on the above aspect raised by Velisarius?

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Well, we both agree that either tense

be used here and that we probably would have used present perfect. I struggle to understand what "something finished and complete in itself" has to do with distinguishing past tense from present perfect, but Velisarius speaks British English, and British English speakers sometimes insist on present perfect in some places where we American English speakers are quite comfortable with past tense. Perhaps the "complete in itself" concept, whatever it is, removes the particularly British objection that leads to that insistence.

My explanation of present perfect is strictly temporal, but context alone does not always dictate a time interval of a particular length. When it does not, the speaker is free to choose.

Looking at the whole context now, I do think "over the past decade" here must refer to a time interval that extends up to the present, so present perfect is appropriate.

But "over the past decade" does not have to mean "during the entire decade just past". It can conceivably also mean "at one point during the decade just past" or "at various discrete points in the decade just past". This means the sentence is not ungrammatical or illogical, though I don't claim the author really has this in mind.

More likely, what we see is the result of an editing error. Some important sentence may have been written and then deleted that would have made simple past fit in more smoothly.

The other hypothesis I have come up with is that sentence after sentence with present perfect makes for an abstract, even boring, "news" article. The previous paragraph has four present perfects along with lots of abstract nouns of Latin origin. Still, just after "over the past decade" would not be my choice for where to switch to past tense.