It has been over twenty years since the unlikely combination of P.V. Narasimha Rao as Prime Minister and his Oxford-educated finance minister finally liberated (so they claim) the Indian economy from overwhelming government control. It was a rotting edifice based on institutionalized scarcity, wildly illogical price controls, hilariously shoddy products, protectionism and endemic underperformance was swiftly demolished in 100 days of inspired action. The Socialist Utopia powered by the fevered imaginations of Nehru and Mahalanobis which seemed forever doomed to rot at the so called ‘Hindu Rate of Growth’ was now dead and buried, just like them. In the iconic Union Budget of 1991, Singh tabled the New Economic Policy or NEP, which overturned decades upon decades of inefficient policies. Some features of this policy included abolition of industrial licensing, de-reservation of industries for the public sector, removal of the threshold limit on assets, and most interestingly, automatic approval for foreign investment up to 51% in specified, high priority industries. Stabilization was also a priority, with the new measures like abolishing the export subsidies and restructuring the fertilizer subsidies reducing the crippling fiscal deficit from 8.4% in 1991 to a slightly more manageable 5.7% in 1993. What were the effects of these reforms on daily life? Indeed, they were manifold. Average real incomes have quadrupled (Rajadhyaksha, Open Sesame, 2011), with the concomitant rise in standards of living. Consumer spending came into its own and it became easier for individuals to borrow from banks. Banks, in turn began to offer better interest rates and schemes for car, house and personal loans. As a result, ownership of consumer go... ... middle of paper ... ...over a given period of time through the extent to which the distribution of income or consumption expenditure among individuals or households within an economy deviates from a perfectly equal distribution, worsened between 1993 and 2005, the difference- from 0.30 to 0.32 overall, and from 0.28 to 0.29 in Rural India (from 0.34 to 0.37 in Urban India) –suggests that the impact is less severe than what critics made it out to be. (Source: World Bank data) So things aren’t so bad after all. BIBLIOGRAPHY http://data.worldbank.org/country/india Human Development Report 2010 – UNDP New Economic Policy: Indian State and Bureaucracy , C. P. Bhambhri, Social Scientist, Vol. 24, No. 1/3 (Jan. - Mar., 1996). World Bank Report on Malnutrition, 2005 March of The Elephant, Salil Tripathi, Mint: The 1990s, 2011 Open Sesame, Niranjan Rajadhyaksha, Mint: The 1990s, 2011
In Annawadi, the slum setting of the book “Behind the Beautiful Forevers,” nearly everything falls under the law of the free market. Things that most countries deem “basic rights,” the Indian people of Annawadi have to pay for. Clean water, education, and medical attention from hospitals are just a few things that are exploited by police officers, gangs and slumlords. The liberalization of India caused the country to begin a process of economic reform. People from the countryside flocked to the cities to find work in the new booming economy that no longer depended on its agriculture. With the increase in population around the bustling cities, came competiveness for opportunity. This competiveness made poverty rates skyrocket, making corruption (and corrupt activities) in Annawadi the only clear way of making it out of the slums. “In the West, and among some in the Indian elite, this word, corruption, had purely negative connotations; it was seen as blocking India’s modern, global ambitions. But for the poor of the country where corruption thieved a great deal of opportunity, corrupti...
Though the world economy as a whole has grown in recent years, a factor that is not taken into account is that the number “of the poor in the world has increased by 100 million” (Roy 3). In other words, the gap between rich and poor is widening. For India, this has startling implications. Though it is a nation that is developing in many ways, it also is a nation blessed with over one billion citizens, a population tally that continues to grow at a rapid rate. This population increase will greatly tax resources, which can create a setback in the development process. The tragedy, of course, is that the world is full of resources and wealth. In fact, Roy quotes a statistic showing that corporations, and not even just countries, represent 51 of the 100 largest economies in the world (Roy 3). For a country struggling to develop, such information is disheartening. However, there is also a more nefarious consequence of the growing disparity between rich and poor, and power and money being concentrated in the hands of multinational corporations: war is propagated in the name of resource acquisition, and corruption can reign as multinationals seek confederates in developing countries that will help companies drive through their plans, resulting in not only environmental destruction but also the subversion of democracy (Roy 3).
Recently, in India the more powerful people have been depriving the poor of their mere wealth. According to the author, " million living below the poverty line is that the public exchequer is being looted, and that the money earmarked for development is going into the pockets of the rich and the powerful."(2 Bunker). This portrays that the donated and tax money that has been put forth for the poor is going into the high authority pockets. This leads to a greater gap between the rich and poor. The ones that deserve more are being deprived and tormented of their rights. Only 17% of the development money is reaching the poor the rest is taken by the corrupt officials. This is also shown when the article states, "Thousands of schools, dispensaries, roads, small dams, community centres and residential quarters have been shown to be complete on paper, but in reality are incomplete, inhospitably unutilized and abandoned."(1 Bunker). It is evident that the government is showing these facilities have been provided to seem diligent on paper. However, the basic necessities which is a citizens right have been taken away from the poor. Many rights including the voting rights of the poor village people are snatched by the officials. The poor do not have the right to true information of where the money for the poor from the government is being spent. It is because false receipts and vouchers
· Oliver, M., 'The Conservative years: A Revolution in Economic Policy?', from Economic Review, 14(4), (1997)
India was pushed into the global market in the 90’s by IMF (International Monetary Fund) and in May of 1991, their government started a policy. The “New Economic Policy” this policy was a Structural Adjustment Programme. Due to this program, the value of their currency went down, social development programmes also decreased, and industries were now privately owned. When these social programs were cut back it made it harder for their citizens to receive an education, and healthcare. The effects of this policy were extremely bad for the women in India, especially since they are often discriminated against in terms of how much food, healthcare, and education they receive (Sarap, Das, and Nagala 2013:456). Education was considered nonessential and luxurious, and 62% of the females did not receive any form of education (Argiropoulos and Rajagopal 2003:613). The lack of education lead these women in being a part of the reserve army of labor, or the
[6] Kripalani, Majeet & Egnardio, Pete. The Rise Of India. Business Week Online. December 8, 2003. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_49/b3861001_mz001.htm
Subramanian, Arvind. India’s Economy is stumbling? The New York Times. August 31, 2013: A19. Print.
...an HDI of 0.36. These discrepancies in levels of development have led to an exodus of people, from less developed areas to the areas that have been benefitted by development. This situation seems to depict that predicted by the Dependency theory in which the developed countries progressed due to the exploitation of peripheral nations; the same seems to be happening in India. The states that are wealthier are exploiting the poorer states. It would be difficult to imagine India having the economic status that it now has, if it was not for the terrible working conditions and wages at which the Indians are willing to work and the massive work force available in the country. Now that India has seen economic growth the government should start taking care of its citizens by implementing policies that protect the labor rights of the workforce.
The decision to grant independence to India was not the logical culmination of errors in policy, neither was it as a consequence of a mass revolution forcing the British out of India, but rather, the decision was undertaken voluntarily. Patrick French argues that: “The British left India because they lost control over crucial areas of the administration, and lacked the will and the financial or military ability to recover that control”.
The majority of policy studies assume that, once a policy has been formulated, it will be implemented. This is not unreasonable, after all. The scholars who analyze policies and build models of the policy processes do base their work on the assumption that the policy will be implemented, exactly as it is. Furthermore, this assumption extends to another: that the desired results of the policy will be close, at least, to those expected by the policy makers. It should be noted that this assumption is shared by many common citizens. As Thomas R. Dye said in 1972, “We assume that when Congress adopts a policy and appropriates money for it, and when the executive branch organizes a program, hires people, spends money, and carries out activities designed to implement the policy, the effects of the policy will be felt by society and the effects will be those intended by the policy.”
Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, B.R. Ambedkar shared a common desire for a strong Indian modern state however despite their ambitions for Indian state development, the modern Indian state demonstrates its modernity through its relationship between state corruption and urban development. This short paper will demonstrate how the political ideas of Gandhi, Nehur, and Ambedkar compare to and differ from the modern Indian state’s development.
A widening income gap can impede the development of a country's consumer markets as purchasing power becomes concentrated among a small elite. Higher income inequality can also result in non-income disparities such as health and education, thus hindering a government's effort to invest in these areas
“India was a latecomer to economic reforms, embarking on the process in earnest only in 1991, in the wake of an exceptionally severe balance of payments crisis”(Ahluwalia 2002).The idea being simple ,there was a need to ...
As a result, research and public policies are designed to try and solve the problems. Dye (2008, p 7) observed that, in the American context the problems faced by communities include; ingnorance, crime, poverty, racial conflict, inequality, poor housing and ill health. It follows that in attempting to resovle these issues there are limitations that disturb the good process of public policy for the benefit of the society. Dye (2008, p 7) said, “there are many reasons for tempering our enthusiasim for policy analysis, some of which are illustrated in the battle over education policy”. The reasons or limitaions include; limits on government power, disagreement over the problem and complexity of human behavior. Argawal and Somanathan (2005, p 13) has discussed the shortcomings to public policy in resovling economic and political issues as excessive overlap between policy making and implementation in the context of India and some of those are; excessive fragmentation in thinking and action, excessive overlap between policy making and implementation, lack of non-governmental inputs and informed debate, lack of systematic analysis and integration prior to policy-making and reforming the policy-making