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.

India is the world's largest democracy, and second-largest developing country. For forty years it has also been one of the most dirigiste and autarkic. The 1980s saw most developing and erstwhile communist countries opt for market economic systems. India belatedly initiated similar reforms in 1991. This book evaluates the progress of those reforms, covering all of the major areas of policy; stabilization, taxation and trade, domestic and external finance, agriculture, industry, the social sectors, and poverty alleviation. Will India realize its great potential by freeing itself from the self-imposed constraints that have hindered its development? This is the important and fascinating question considered by this book.

>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!

The objective of this book is to provide an understanding of the economy with its nature and structure, dominance of unorganized sector, natural resources, economic and social infrastructure, demographic features, poverty, unemployment, inequality, national income, saving and investment, role of noneconomic factors, and sources of data. India evokes many images because the country is extremely heterogeneous in its resource endowments, climate, languages, and infrastructure. India provides a rich tapestry of economic and social milieu: the 22 officially recognized languages spoken by the population, with their many dialects; the caste system; and its hoary history with its rich culture and traditions. India possesses a wide and varied resource base, although domestic sources supply only a third of the country’s oil requirements at present. India’s economic performance has attracted considerable commentary and controversy. Since 1950, India’s approach to economic development has been within the framework of a mixed economy, which has resulted from both pragmatic and political considerations. The objective of this book is to provide an understanding of the economy with its nature and structure, dominance of unorganized sector, natural resources, economic and social infrastructure, demographic features, poverty, unemployment, inequality, national income, saving and investment, role of noneconomic factors, and sources of data. Despite being a part of the eight-volume series on the Indian economy, this second volume in the series is in the nature of an introductory essay designed to provide a succinct nontechnical exposition of India’s economic structure, performance, and policies.

The agricultural sector is impacted by and impacts the society, economy, and environment. No study of the Indian economy can afford to neglect the agricultural sector. Although its share in the national product has declined, it harbors not merely half of the labor force; it has also vital supply and demand links with the manufacturing sector. This is the third volume in the series of eight such volumes. Each volume seeks to present an analysis of a specific area or sector of the Indian economy. This volume examines various aspects of India’s agricultural sector. Three of the basic foundations needed for building a sound agricultural economy are a productive technology package, efficient delivery services, and remunerative and stable market prices for produce. The federal structure of government and policies belong primarily to the realm of political economy. Policy interventions need to focus on ensuring remunerative prices for farmers, credit, supply chain, and marketing and make the farmer market ready. Though policymaking is difficult, the toolkit of good governance of agriculture becomes more important and regulations need improvement. For better policy planning, there is a need to improve upon the database on agriculture, considering that the existing data is unreliable.

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.