Jairam Ramesh - To the Brink and Back: Indias 1991 Story

TO THE BRINK
AND BACK

Other Books by Jairam Ramesh

Mobilizing Technology for World Development (co-editor)

Kautilya Today: Jairam Ramesh on a Globalizing India

Making Sense of Chindia (also in Chinese)

Green Signals: Ecology, Growth and Democracy in India

Legislating for Justice: The Making of the 2013 Land Acquisition Law (co-author)

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Copyright Jairam Ramesh 2015

The copyright for the cartoons by R.K. Laxman vests
with RK IPR Management Limited. Reproduced with permission.

Photograph inserts courtesy Hindustan Times,
India Today and the Press Information Bureau.

The views and opinions expressed in this book are the authors own and the facts
are as reported by him which have been verified to the extent possible,
and the publishers are not in any way liable for the same.

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eISBN: 9788129136497

First impression 2015

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Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please;
they do not make it under self-selected circumstances,
but under circumstances existing already,
given and transmitted from the past

KARL MARX

Contents

Key Dates and Events between June and August 1991 Covered in This Book

or around ninety days, beginning 3 June 1991, I was catapulted into a ringside seat, as Indian economic policy was being transformed. As an aide to P.V. Narasimha Raofirst as he took over

To be sure, there had been earlier attempts at reforms. The first two years of Rajiv Gandhis tenure (1985-87) as prime minister saw a flurry of initiatives to give greater incentives to the private sector to expand. Some economists have written that the growth turnaround of the 1990s and thereafter is anchored in these initiatives. Earlier, Indira Gandhi herself had cautiously begun the process of giving a new direction to regulations when she set up the Economic Administration Reforms Commission under the chairmanship of L.K. Jha; a committee to examine the principles of a possible shift away from physical to financial control under the chairmanship of M. Narasimham; and a committee for restructuring the public sector with Dr Arjun Sengupta as its head. Indias first major reform that partially decontrolled the cement industry took place in 1982. Earlier, in May 1979, the Committee on Controls and Subsidies set up by the Morarji Desai government under the chairmanship of Vadilal Dagli submitted its report. Going back even further in time, following the hugely controversial devaluation of June 1966, new measures to attract foreign capital had been announced.