2 - The evolution of economic reform in India

Summary

When the Narasimha Rao government, shortly after taking office in mid-1991, announced its intention to overhaul the workings of the Indian economy, many observers considered the plans of Finance Minister Manmohan Singh far too radical for what ‘the compulsions of democratic politics’ would allow. At each stage of the reform process there was a vocal segment of opinion – for the most part ideologically opposed to liberalisation – ready to predict the imminent arrival of an ill-defined ‘political reality’ which would force the government to beat a hasty retreat to the well-trod path of Nehruvian socialism. The backlash never appeared. Curiously, as announcements of additional reforms became routine, and as economic and political life under the new (though always evolving) policy dispensation came to seem almost natural, the Cassandras' prophecies of political (as distinct from economic) doom grew even louder. But with a new twist: slowly their voices became almost indistinguishable from the laments of neo-liberal advocates who complained that each new reform measure was too little, not radical enough, a half-measure. The prophets of the political backlash explained its failure to materialise by arguing that the government had yet to take the really tough decisions, and that what it had achieved thus far was mere window dressing. The government, according to this logic, had avoided the adverse political consequences of reform by, in effect, not reforming. Oddly, these voices bought into the neo-liberal true-believer's notion that everything short of extreme fiscal retrenchment, complete rupee convertibility, and a policy of hire-and-fire at will, was not truly economic reform at all, but simply tinkering at the margins.