Reforms under Rao were ‘by stealth' not gradualism: Montek Ahluwalia

FORMER planning commission deputy chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia has said that the 1991 economic reforms under former prime minister PV Narasimha Rao were characterised more "by stealth" than by a clearly signalled gradualist approach, noting that neither Rao nor then finance minister Manmohan Singh were proponents of "big-bang” changes.

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Speaking here on Tuesday at the launch of author David C Engerman's 'Apostles of Development: Six Economists and the World They Made,’ Ahluwalia placed both Rao and Manmohan in the category of "gradualists" - as he did himself.

However, he distinguished between two types of gradual change -- what he called "gradualism" and “reform by stealth.”

"I don't know if I coined the phrase, ‘reform by stealth’, but I certainly used it -- and probably earlier than most. I used it to describe Rao's approach to bringing about reforms. Manmohan Singh was the architect, he actually knew what to do.

"But, as he himself often said, he couldn't have done it without the prime minister's support. Neither Rao nor Manmohan Singh was a great believer in big-bang reforms. They were both, in that sense, gradualists," said Ahluwalia.