The Political Economy of India's Economic Reforms (original) (raw)

Economic Policy Reforms in Post-independence India

ResearchGate; ICNMR - 2023, Conference: Keynote Speaker, 2023

The Indian economy post-independence has seen many highs and lows since then and now in a span of 75 years. Currently, India stands as the world's fifth-biggest economy after overtaking the United Kingdom which ruled India for a period of 200 years. This paper discusses the key changes made to the existing laws and policies in India after 1947 to stabilize the economy and improve India's financial sector. These significant changes made to the economic policies are referred to as the 'economic reforms'. This paper also highlights the genesis of India's private enterprise and the measures taken to boost the private sector and to promote the 'ease of doing business' in India. It also focuses on the role of private enterprises in contributing to India's ranking in the global economy in the present times.

The Politics of Economic Reforms in India edited by Jos Mooij

Development and Change, 2009

Modernity, with its relentless reshaping and negotiation, has always been a highly provocative theme for social theorists. It is perhaps apt to state that the only constant of modernity has been its variety, induced by efforts to come to terms with emerging changes and challenges. Modernity as well as its analysts have faced a challenge from poverty and inequality, both of which have been persistent enough to rob modernity of its 'progressive' gloss. This book is a brave attempt to probe deeply into the centre of modernity from the vantage points of poverty and inequality under the rubric of social exclusion. Social exclusion is a highly complex issue and to take it head-on one has to focus on the interplay of inclusion and exclusion and avoid the tendency to rely on a 'systemic' approach. Ryan focuses on the discourse of morality, of power and the

Rolling the Dice: India’s hampered Economic Policies and Reforms

Since its independence from the British raj in 1947, India has followed (is still following) an extremely polarized economic policy and reforms. India’s economic history can be divided into four different phases: 1947-1965, 1966-1980, 1981-1991, and post 1991. Each phase represents an economic policy vastly different from others. The era begins with the leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru. Nehru was a strong believer of a stable socialist government that would control all major industries, borrowing many examples from the Soviet Union, most famously, the idea of 5 year plan, exclusively aimed to increase the production in industries followed by growth in agriculture sectors. Under the leadership of Nehru, India’s economy flourished phenomenally, mostly due to the presence of Congress party in the center and Nehru’s ideas and ability to lead people.

Paper Presented at the Indian Political Economy Association 19th Conference

Indian state after introducing economic reforms in 1992 has accelerated the economic growth. This has led to profound changes in the Indian economy, amidst other changes that have taken place simultaneously. The other changes include demographic change, the birth of a 300 million middle class, and rapid social change. Economic reforms have also resulted in widening of the gap between the economic groups, in addition to regional disparities in the country, and rural-urban disparities. It is controversial whether this growth, led primarily by market, should be called 'development' without, however, gainsaying that the middleclass and the upper classes have benefited from it. This scenario is compounded by multiple changes in Indian society. While village as a microcosm of Indian civilization has ceased to be so, the overall changes brought by the economic basis of the country have resulted in complex social and political scenarios. These changes are also compounded by the 2014 election of Hindu nationalist government, which leads the state, and has tough task to maintain social cohesion, and meet popular expectations, amidst the tumult of changes in India.

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY IN INDIA: 1951-1991.

The article defines the perimeter of political economy as an independent field of enquiry emerging out of the discipline of International Relations during the growth of behavioral approaches in the study of global politics. This understanding is applied to trace the development of political economy in India from 1951 to 1991 to assess how the post-colonial economy grew to adopt the neo-liberal measures in 1991. The study analyses the impulses that prompted the policy direction soon after independence in 1947, during the 1960s and 1970s and finally in the 1980s to prepare the economy with modest neo-liberal economic measures. Peter Evans? theory of embedded autonomy has been used to study the nature of state intervention in economic affairs and Michal Kalecki?s concept of intermediate classes in intermediate regimes have been applied to understand how certain classes have always stood to gain more from policy planning, irrespective of the orientation of policies.

A Study of Poorly Designed Economic Reforms in India

2020

The economic growth attempted with a closed environment until the 1990s failed to mitigate poverty and raise per capita income to dignified level resulted in a new model of development whereby the environment was expected to be liberalized. In a way, the economy was given a free hand to work in the right direction. The liberalization of trade and investment was the plank of economic growth in 1991. Since the scope to increase investment and trade which was not tried earlier was realized and indeed it resulted in appreciable growth in GDP which mitigated poverty and increases employment. But as the growth rate indeed was appreciable till 2008-09 but the economy could not withstand the wrath of fault in the globalization which remains attached with it and hence no emerging economy had to pull back from the globalization before reaping the full benefits as India has done in the middle of ascending path. The country is once back to the rule of protectionism because it had not cared abou...

Battles Half Won: Political Economy of India's Growth and Economic Policy Since Independence

The Oxford Handbook of the Indian Economy, 2012

This article aims to review India's long-term growth experience with a view to understanding the determinants of growth and the underlying political economy. The article looks specifically at the political economy of India's growth transformation from a low-growth environment (pre-1980s) to a rapid growth environment (post-1980s) and asks how sustainable the new transformation is. Following the introduction, the second section looks at the evolution of India's growth, and the third section reviews this growth experience in terms of its affect on employment and poverty. The fourth section briefly reviews the policy framework underlying this growth. The fifth section takes a political approach to understanding the process and politics of policy making in India. This framework is then applied in the next section to explain India's growth transformation. In the seventh section, the article looks at inclusiveness, which is arguably at the heart of the sustainability of ec...