India: macroeconomics and political economy (1964-1991)
- Delhi OUP 1994
- 397 p.
This book is an analytic macroeconomic history of India from 1964 to 1991, set in the context of India's political economy. It pays particular attention to the specific policies which have been pursued, assesses their successes and failures from the point of view of stabilization and growth, and considers the lessons that can be drawn. A brief introduction to the Indian economy is followed by a detailed analysis of the major macroeconomic crises of the period, and the government's response to them. Later chapters of the book are concerned with trends in the major areas of policy-fiscal policy, monetary policy, and trade and payments policy-and their long-run effects. It was once a fashionable view that India's interventionist economic policies were unsound micro economically but sound macro economically. In contrast, a principal conclusion of this study is that India's control system was not only micro economically inefficient but macro economically perverse.