Eight Lectures on India's Economic Reforms

T.N. Srinivasan
Oxford University Press, 2000

This volume succinctly describes the reforms process in India since the early 1990s. It analyses the systemic economic reforms and liberalization introduced, following the serious macroeconomic and balance of payments crisis that led to near default on external debt. These reforms represented a major break from the inward oriented, state directed, public sector driven' approach pursued since independence. Srinivasan argues that the collapse of the Soviet Union and the spectacular growth of China after its opening up in 1978, played a major role in disenchantment with the earlier development strategy.

The accelerated growth rate in the early 1980s was based on massive fiscal deficits financed by expensive foreign and domestic borrowing. This led to the crisis and subsequent reforms of 1991. Srinivasan reviews the reforms undertaken in major sectors of the economy including agriculture, industry, foreign trade and investment, infrastructure, education and health, and financial markets. Their relevance for the overall objective of poverty eradication is also examined. Srinivasan concludes that with further expansion of reforms and India's integration with the world economy, rapid and sustained growth is achievable.

Srinivasan's views are both relevant and of interest to a wide audience. Economists, policy-makers and students as well as general readers will find this an excellent analysis of India's economic reforms.

T.N. Srinivasan is Samuel C. Park, Jr. Professor of Economics and Chair, Department of Economics at Yale University.