In this commemorative volume, India's top business leaders and economic luminaries come together to provide a balanced picture of the consequences of the country’s economic reforms, which were initiated in 1991. What were the reforms? What were they intended for? How have they affected the overall functioning of the economy? With contributions from Mukesh Ambani, Narayana Murthy, Sunil Mittal, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Shivshankar Menon, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, T.N. Ninan, Sanjaya Baru, Naushad Forbes, Omkar Goswami and R. Gopalakrishnan, India Transformed delves deep into the life of an economically liberalized India through the eyes of the people who helped transform it.
>This series is intended to serve as an introduction to the Indian Economy from the Post Reform of 1991.The author makes an endeavor to present how India’s economic fortunes dwindled over the centuries. This first volume begins with an analysis of the history, evolution, and growth of the Indian economy through several periods along with their positive and negative aspects. The author attempts to bring fairly interesting snapshots to highlight how the Indian economy has evolved over the years. The book provides history; traces the evolution of the economy during the early Muslim period and the Mughal Empire as well as during the British regime (1761 to 1947); and analyzes the impact of the British regime and the growth of the economy between 1947 and 1990. Points of analysis include policy framework—state and market; NITI Aayog—a think tank; the Indian polity—fiscal federalism; democracy and development; the economic policy regime prior to 1991; and economic reforms. The penultimate chapter looks at the future direction and task ahead of the economy. Finally, Indian economic thought is analyzed. There is plenty to discuss!
Reforms and Economic Transformation in India is the second volume in the series Studies in Indian Economic Policies. The first volume, India's Reforms: How They Produced Inclusive Growth (OUP, 2012), systematically demonstrated that reforms-led growth in India led to reduced poverty among all social groups. They also led to shifts in attitudes whereby citizens overwhelmingly acknowledge the benefits that accelerated growth has brought them and as voters, they now reward the governments that deliver superior economic outcomes and punish those that fail to do so. This latest volume takes as its starting point the fact that while reforms have undoubtedly delivered in terms of poverty reduction and associated social objectives, the impact has not been as substantial as seen in other reform-oriented economies such as South Korea and Taiwan in the 1960s and 1970s, and more recently, in China. The overarching hypothesis of the volume is that the smaller reduction in poverty has been the result of slower transformation of the economy from a primarily agrarian to a modern, industrial one. Even as the GDP share of agriculture has seen rapid decline, its employment share has declined very gradually. More than half of the workforce in India still remains in agriculture. In addition, non-farm workers are overwhelmingly in the informal sector. Against this background, the nine original essays by eminent economists pursue three broad themes using firm level data in both industry and services. The papers in part I ask why the transformation in India has been slow in terms of the movement of workers out of agriculture, into industry and services, and from informal to formal employment. They address what India needs to do to speed up this transformation. They specifically show that severe labor-market distortions and policy bias against large firms has been a key factor behind the slow transformation. The papers in part II analyze the transformation that reforms have brought about within and across enterprises. For example, they investigate the impact of privatization on enterprise profitability. Part III addresses the manner in which the reforms have helped promote social transformation. Here the papers analyze the impact the reforms have had on the fortunes of the socially disadvantaged groups in terms of wage and education outcomes and as entrepreneurs.
The book traces the remarkable transformation of India from a slow growing economy to one of the fastest growing in the world. Discussing events that led to a crisis situation and the consequent initiation of reforms, it describes how growth was sustained in a low-income economy with large diversities.
The subject of India's rapid growth in the past two decades has become a prominent focus in the public eye. A book that documents this unique and unprecedented surge, and addresses the issues raised by it, is sorely needed. Arvind Panagariya fills that gap with this sweeping, ambitious survey. India: The Emerging Giant comprehensively describes and analyzes India's economic development since its independence, as well as its prospects for the future. The author argues that India's growth experience since its independence is unique among developing countries and can be divided into four periods, each of which is marked by distinctive characteristics: the post-independence period, marked by liberal policies with regard to foreign trade and investment, the socialist period during which Indira Ghandi and her son blocked liberalization and industrial development, a period of stealthy liberalization, and the most recent, openly liberal period. Against this historical background, Panagariya addresses today's poverty and inequality, macroeconomic policies, microeconomic policies, and issues that bear upon India's previous growth experience and future growth prospects. These provide important insights and suggestions for reform that should change much of the current thinking on the current state of the Indian economy. India: The Emerging Giant will attract a wide variety of readers, including academic economists, policy makers, and research staff in national governments and international institutions. It should also serve as a core text in undergraduate and graduate courses that deal with Indias economic development and policies.
This handbook presents a comprehensive study of the post-reform Indian economy, three decades after the economic liberalization started in the early 1990s. It studies the broad range of changes that were introduced in the reforms era, assessing their impact on sectors like manufacturing, agriculture, banking and finance, among others. It also assesses the performance of these sectors amid globalization and the socio-economic shifts in the country. The volume evaluates the contribution of the reforms to social transformation, social inclusion, sustainability and human development, and deliberates on the gains, blind spots and limitations. With contributions from scholars across the country, case studies and comparative analyses that draw on data analysis, econometric evidence and historical sensibility, this is an authoritative volume on the reforms of the 1990s and their impact on the Indian economy and people. Topical and the first of its kind, the book will be a useful resource for scholars and researchers of economics, development studies, political economy, management studies, public policy and political studies.
The Indian Economy Since 1991: Economic Reforms and Performance is an edited volume, based on the UGC’s model curriculum for ‘Indian Economic Policy’, meant for all universities in India. Each chapter is contributed by an expert in the specific area being addressed, and this book presents the policies formulated in each sector or sub-sector, and the resultant changes, during the post-reform period (1991-2008). This volume examines the impact of economic reforms on fronts as varied as the fiscal situation of government of India, state finances, money, capital market, external sector, agriculture, industry, power, health, education, employment, unemployment and poverty.
The book presents a comprehensive study of the impact of policy reforms on output, employment, and productivity growth across sectors of India since 1991. It showcases varied responses from different sectors as they faced different degrees of policy interventions, and challenges or opportunities as regards markets, technology, and availability of skills and other complementary resources. The book also discusses the contributions of the service sector on India’s GDP and employment. The book throws light on the phenomena of rising inequality and persistent poverty which continues to shadow and be a hallmark of post-reform India, despite high economic growth. It underlines the failure of these reforms to bring about major change in social and economic organizations and institutions. The book’s contents stress on the criticality of addressing these issues as they have a serious potential of jeopardizing the country’s ability to maintain high growth momentum. With these pertinent topics, the book would be of interest not only to the research community, but also to policy makers and practitioners of various sectors addressed here.
India's Economic Transition examines the reforms and their impact on the political economy of India. The introduction to the volume analyzes the politics that shaped economic policy during three broad phases--from independence to 1968, between 1969 and 1974, and the period after 1975--leading to the balance of payment crisis of 1991. The book addresses such questions as: What were the economic reforms undertaken after 1991? Why did they occur and how were they sustained? What was the impact of economic reforms on India's political economy? In addition, it includes significant features of the post-reform political economy like the growing importance of Indian federalism; a new politics of regulation governing markets in areas such as telecommunications, power, and stock exchanges; industrial lobbying; trade union activism; and the curious mix of benefits and costs associated with the rise of India's IT sector.
