Author: Baldev Raj Nayar
Publisher: Sage Publications
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 285
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0761995366
Description
The best book that has ever been written on the political economy of India, this work takes a broader, more encompassing, view of reform than that of the economist, and pays particular attention to the external requirements of national security and economic autonomy.
Set against the larger canvas of the historic interaction between economic globalization and economic nationalism, this study is a systematic examination of the successive attempts from 1950 to 2000 to change the roles of the state and the market in the management of the Indian economy. Drawing on insights from the fields of international relations and comparative politics, the author provides a new interpretation of the motives for economic policy reform and the constraints on these efforts.
Baldev Raj Nayar takes a broader, more encompassing, view of reform than that of the economist. He maintains that while globalization has led to a wider role for markets and a greater openness of the economy and hence, a shrinking role for the state, the state has certainly not been rendered helpless in the process. It remains the principal actor in determining the nature, scope pace and sequencing of economic policy reform. The study thus treats globalization less an end-stage and more as a process in which the international economy becomes more closely integrated with domestic economic agents increasingly oriented to the global market, even as the state continues to remain central to national economic development
The book pays particular attention to the external requirements of national security and economic autonomy, and the internal need for legitimacy in the context of the social and political compulsions of a representative democracy. As such, state, society and the international system constitute the basic explanatory framework of this book. The author demonstrates how each of these variables was more or less important in the various efforts over time to introduce economic policy reforms. He concludes that the unfinished agenda for reform in India is vast. Given the critical role that the state plays in ushering in reform, that agenda, he maintains, should include an enhancement of the regulatory and transformatory capacity of the state to cope with the challenges arising out of globalization.
Advocating a more collaborative relationship between state and market and providing a new approach to the understanding of economic policy reform, this timely volume will be of interest to students and practitioners of economics, political economy, policy and planning, political science and development economics.
REVIEWS:
. . .the best book that has ever been written on the political economy of India.
—Manoj Pant, Centre for Studies in Diplomacy. International Law and Economics, JNU
Contents
List of Abbreviations
Preface
1. Globalization, Nationalism and Economic Reform: The Fundamental Issues
2. Planning for Autarky and State Hegemony: Nationalist Development Strategy
under Nehru
3. Between Mercantilist Socialism and Liberalism: The Changing Fortunes of the
Nehru-Mahalanobis Strategy, 1956-90
4. Changing the Balance, 1991-96: Political Structure and Economic Reforms
5. Business and Economic Reforms
6. The United Front and Economic Reforms, 1996-98: Policy and Performance
under Democratic Coalitions
7. The Limits of Economic Nationalism: Economic Reforms under the BJP-led
Government, 1998-99
8. Summary and Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
About the Author