It has been often said, even by dispassionate observers, that our economic policies built on ideological considerations and economic assumptions are far removed from the realities of our situation. For more than three decades, we have been striving to design an economic policy and a planning procedure that are distinctly Indian, but the effort has often resulted in only mixing and merging borro wed ideas and experiences. However, whatever may have been the ideological elements influencing the thinking on economic policies in the formative period of the pre-independence days, the situation has changed considerably in the actual formation of economic policies since Independence, and the effort has been not to be too closely identified with any ideology, but to work out a policy that will draw upon all these ideological positions. To what extent we have succeeded, required a detailed examination. Accordingly, I brought out, a few years ago, a treatise on 'India's Economic Policies' which continues to be extremely popular, with the inteIlec tual elite, the world over. In this, the learned contributors, dwelt at length on the different aspects of India's Economic Policies from 1947-77, and brought out the strength and weaknesses of the Indian economic scene. The present work on 'India's Economic Development Strategies' is born out of the conviction that what India needs now is a set of strategies, which are a consistent set of policies, and that there is an urgent need for the same in Indian Planning.

Nearly fifty years after independence, India remains a very poor country. It ranks near the bottom in terms of per capita income, and is similarly placed in the Human Development Index which measures social well-being. Economic growth in India has been less than half that of China or even other countries in Asia. And governments, at the Centre as well as in the states, are close to insolvency. The reason for our spectacular underachievement lies in the continuation of policies which had a certain validity as a response to the colonial experience, but which have long outlived their usefulness. The global economic scene has changed dramatically since they were formulated, and we must respond to the new realities. Bimal Jalan, the well known economist and present Governor of the RBI, in this lucid and well-argued book, makes a case for governments doing what they alone can best do, and less of what they cannot do effectively. 'One of the most lucid and lay-reader-accessible books to have been penned by an Indian economist.' --Outlook 'One cannot but agree with most of the suggestions made by Mr Jalan.' following the reforms process closely.' --Business India 'Jalan marshals a formidable array of facts to convey the general failure of the avowed mission of planning in India and the public sector's abysmal failure in particular.' --The Telegraph

'Attitudinal change' in the context of economic reforms has been referred to in Rodrik and Subramanian (2005), DeLong (2003), Kohli (1989), and Panagariya (2004, 2008). This dissertation provides empirical support for this literature, establishing an earlier start for India's economic policy liberalisation than presented in stylized accounts. It demonstrates the endogenous nature of the origins of these policy shifts. 'Attitudinal change' literature had directed attention to the need for further research into India's policy changes of the early 1980s and for studying broader comparability issues in other developing countries. This research makes a contribution towards filling these gaps. This dissertation shows that India started its economic liberalisation under the Indira Gandhi administration from 1980 to 1984. These findings depart from the conventional view that India's economic policy changes were initiated by the Narasimha Rao government in 1991, or by the Rajiv Gandhi administration in the mid to late 1980s. The dissertation establishes that policy shifts of the early 1980s had endogenous origins in the political leadership's attitudinal changes. The Indira Gandhi administration of the early 1980s revisited the statist policies of its previous tenure from 1966 to 1977. The new approach entailed more openness towards private enterprise, scaling back the role of the public sector, and starting India's integration into the global economy. The dissertation also discusses the comparable role of attitudinal changes at the start of China's policy liberalisation led by Deng Xiaoping from 1978 to 1982. It focuses on the significance and challenges faced by China's political leadership in bringing about societal attitudinal change. The dissertation concludes by drawing comparisons between India and China, developing a linkage between their endogenous attitudinal changes and economic policy liberalisation.

India's remarkable economic growth in recent years has made it one of the fastest growing economies in the world. This Oxford Handbook reflects India's growing economic importance on the world stage, and features research on core topics by leading scholars to understand the Indian economic miracle and the obstacles India faces in transforming itself into a modern 21st-century economy.

Product of a Post-doctoral research done at the University of Washington, (Seattle),USA, the present work is an attempt to conceptualise and analyse the postulates underlying India’s Foreign Policy from its formative years in the early fifties to its maturation in the early eighties of the last century. It subjects the management of foreign relations by India to a full scale theoretical examination from the political economy angle—an exercise few scholars then or now have undertaken .Notions of security, national interest, diplomatic leverage , decision making process and so on have, in this work, been revisited in the decisive context of a domestic-external continuum in which forces of economic origin were seen as defining the rationale of a foreign policy that was supposed to take a developing nation to the fulfilment of its legitimate aspirations. At the same time, the innovations that were made with practically no earlier precedent to go by and the kind of institution building required for the purpose have been dealt with critically so as to bring out the interplay of domestic development aspirations and the art of ensuring policy independence by appropriate diplomacy. In the turbulent context of the Cold War the Indian experiment in the management of foreign relations and the positive gains it reaped in collectivising the principle of non-alignment did constitute a subject that demanded a non-conventional approach to get to the bottom of it. That is precisely what distinguishes the book by one of the most qualified experts in International Relations, enjoying intellectual acclaim both at home and abroad. The book starts with a theoretical discourse on the applicability or otherwise of the political economy approach as it stood at the time of writing. In subsequent chapters it examines a dependent economy’s quest for an independent foreign policy, the central challenge before the external affairs ministry of the country. It needed, among other things handling of external aid, and foreign investment to recharge the developmental enterprises at home in a manner that would not interfere with the autonomy in judging and reacting to external events. Economic restructuring at home which brought a strong public sector as complementary to a fledgling private sector constituted an essential aspect. So also came up the new experiment of building a collective economic front with other developing nations. In its compact, yet well documented , analysis the book provides the most engaging scholarly presentation of the subject in all its relevant technicalities.

This book explains the continuity of economic openness using India as a case study. Arguing that open-economy policies in India were made, justified, and continued on the basis of the idea of openness much more than its tangible effect, it explains what sustained the idea of openness, what philosophy, interpretations of history, and types of rhetoric gave it support, justification, and persuasive force.

A thorough and incisive introduction to contemporary India The story of the forging of India, the world's largest democracy, is a rich and inspiring one. This volume, a sequel to the best-selling India's Struggle for Independence, analyses the challenges India has faced and the successes it has achieved, in the light of its colonial legacy and century-long struggle for freedom. The book describes how the Constitution was framed, as also how the Nehruvian political and economic agenda and basics of foreign policy were evolved and developed. It dwells on the consolidation of the nation, examining contentious issues like party politics in the Centre and the states, the Punjab problem, and anti-caste politics and untouchability. This revised edition offers a scathing analysis of the growth of communalism in India and the use of state power in furthering its cause. It also documents the fall of the National Democratic Alliance in the 2004 General Elections, the United Progressive Alliance's subsequent rise to power and the Indo-US Nuclear Deal that served to unravel the political consensus at the centre. Apart from detailed analyses of Indian economic reforms since 1991 and wide-ranging land reforms and the Green Revolution, this new edition includes an overview of the Indian economy in the new millennium. These, along with objective assessments of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Jayaprakash Narayan, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Rajiv Gandhi, Vishwanath Pratap Singh, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh, constitute a remarkable overview of a nation on the move.