It’s been more than a quarter of a century since Manmohan Singh pressed the switch on financial sector reforms, which have changed and (in many ways) undone a wobbly architecture that had been designed and erected in another era. Singh’s adoption of a twin-track reforms process – targeting industry and finance – was logical. If Indian industry had to be made productive and competitive, it needed access to an equally productive financial services sector which could efficiently allocate capital as well as provide a cost-effective pool for capital accumulation.
Interestingly, the reforms process has endured through different political regimes, even if it’s been somewhat episodic and haphazard in sequencing. The subsequent chapters explore the grand design or overarching strategy behind the financial sector reforms in India. It is this book’s thesis that even if there was indeed a master plan, many of the changes and reforms processes were induced by one or other crisis; and in areas where there were close to no crises or where scams affected people only marginally, reforms have remained half-hearted.
This book does not purport to be a laundry list of all the reform measures implemented in the past three decades, but attempts to examine some of the main…
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