Reforms: Looking beyond economics

How India can be one of the major fulcrums of the global economy and among those redrafting the emerging new world order

- SHYAMAL MAJUMDAR

ONE OF THE boldest statements in any of India's Budget speeches was inspired by a prime minister, who, a few months O before he took office, was in retirement mode, and spoken by a finance minister who was nowhere in anyone's mind space even a couple of months earlier.

So, when Manmohan Singh had his Victor Hugo moment on July 24, 1991, and said in his Budget speech, "No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come... Let the whole world hear it loud and clear India is now wide awake," it took time to sink in.

It was, however, a magic moment, no doubt, and India changed forever. Or has it? Gautam Chikermane's Reform Nation seeks to answer that question in a highly readable book. Much of the context of the "historic Budget" is well-known, but the story-telling style of the book, which is only to be expected from an acclaimed journalist, makes the pages come alive.

The details and the perspective would be particularly useful for those who have reached their adult life after the 1990s.

Reform Nation does live up to the author's promise in the preface about the book being a reference on India's economic history since independence.

Chikermanewrites in detail about the swathe of announcements in the 1991 Budget, from the virtual abolition of industrial licensing, opening up to foreign direct investment and slashing the peak customs duty rate to 150% to establishing a statutory independent regulator for capital markets, etc. In the face of a huge foreign exchange crisis, India, instead of conserving its reserves and shutting its doors bravely, did the opposite-it opened its doors to foreign companies and foreign capital and changed the grammar of its economy.