Understanding Reforms

This book details the remarkable transformation of India from a slow growing economy till late eighties to one of the fastest growing economies of the world. It examines and evaluates the economic reform process initiated fifteen years before in 1991 by the government at the centre. The book delves into the economic milieu of the late eighties such as low income, low growth rate, large population, and socialist thinking. It examines the circumstances under which the reform process was undertaken by the political parties that were known to uphold socialist values. The book further discusses the impact of external forces such as opening of closed economies and the mounting external debt resulting in pragmatic economic thinking of the political leadership. It cites examples of procedural and institutional initiatives undertaken in the reform process. The book concludes by giving specific reform initiatives undertaken by the government and some of the challenges it faces in successfully achieving the reform process.