The Untold Story of Indian Reforms: 1991-2016

“No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come.” India began the quest for a free and open economy in 1991 while remembering the powerful quote of Victor Hugo, a series of brave measures of liberalisation and promise of reforms with human face. It was the historic moment India ended forty-four years of closed, government-planned economic experimentation with a humbling recognition that none of the old socialist shibboleths mattered to truly modernise the economy to shed the inferiority complex.

India has changed in ways unimaginable in the last 25-years and the momentum favoured economic liberalisation. For those who have lived long enough under the oppressive licence-permit-quota-raj era, it would be grotesque to even compare the pre- post-economic liberalisation India.  Neither would have modernity washed the shores of India the way it has nor would the country have found self-confidence and social justice the way it has, if not for the post-1991 economic reforms.

The sequencing of the economic reform process after 1991, is described in this book vividly; and, with a personal touch.  In its brisk history telling, one shall encounter ringside view of important personalities who orchestrated the reforms that brought millions and millions of people of India to a better and rewarding life and some key lessons missing in the history telling elsewhere, without which the recount of the reforms would never be complete.

Contents

Dedication……………………………………………………………………………………………………vii

Preface
C. Rangarajan ………………………………………………………………………………………………. ix

Introduction ………………………………………………………………………………………………….1

1. From 1984 to 1989
The 21st Century Dream………………………………………………………………………………….. 27

2. The National Front Era (1989-91)
The Government’s Coffers are Empty…………………………………………………………………47

3. There are no Soft Options Left
The Big Bang Reforms of 1991………………………………………………………………………… 77

4. An Idea Whose Time has Come
Economic Reforms During 1991-96…………………………………………………………………. 121

5. Economy has Reached a New Stage
Reforms of United Front governments (1996-98)……………………………………………….. 155

6. The Second Generation Reforms
NDA Government Period (1998-2004)…………………………………………………………….. 181

7. End of the Easy Part
The UPA I & II Governments (2004-14)…………………………………………………………… 227

8. Third Generation Reforms: Maximum Governance, Minimum Government
The Narendra Modi Government (2014-)…………………………………………………………… 279