How India's Economy Works India Before 1991 And How The Reforms Changed It with Shruti Rajagopalan
In this conversation, Puja Mehra talks to Dr. Shruti Rajagopalan about the historical context of the 1991 Economic Liberalisation of India. She illustrates how the economy in india worked through the manufacture of a bicycle and goes on to explain the impact of those economic reforms, the careful planning that went into it, the people who brought it to fruition, the political turmoil at the time and much more.
About Dr. Shruti Rajagopalan:
Dr. Shruti Rajagopalan is a Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, where she leads the Indian Political Economy Program and Emergent Ventures India. She is also a Fellow at the Classical Liberal Institute at NYU School of Law and an Innovation Fellow with Schmidt Futures. Dr. Rajagopalan’s research interests include law and economics, public choice theory, and constitutional economics, with her work published in various academic journals and media outlets such as The New York Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Project Syndicate, Bloomberg, Real Clear Politics, Mint, The Hindu: Business Line, and The Indian Express. She hosts the Ideas of India podcast and writes the Get Down and Shruti substack on Indian political economy and culture.
SHOW NOTES
(01:04) Interview starts
(03:57) The humble bicycle
(06:49) The license stack for starting a bike shop
(13:32) License convolution
(19:37) Wartime controls led to central planning
(22:44) How would License Raj unravel
(25:17) How the 1991 political crisis came to be
(27:57) Finance ministers of the time
(30:14) The Assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and it consequences
(34:15) The team that liberalised India
(36:09) The Devaluation of the Rupee
(39:22) Fixing Imports and Exports
(41:53) The Careful Planning of the Economic Reforms
(47:50) The Advantage of Small Firms
(50:46) FDIs and foreign expertise
(54:10) The far reaching impacts of the Economic Reforms
(58:02) The Case Study of India as a blueprint for Economic Reforms
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