Abstract
The first non-Congress, Janata Government came to power at the Centre for about two and a half years of duration in late 1970s (1977–79)
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Notes
- 1.
Prime Minister Morarji Desai ruled from March 1977 to 15 July 1979. Later on, due to factional dispute within the Janata coalition, Charan Singh became prime minister on 18 July 1979 with the support of his former political enemy, Indira Gandhi, who had imprisoned him during the state of emergency of 1975–77. Within less than a month, Mrs. Gandhi withdrew her support to Singh’s government, and he thenceforth headed a caretaker government until Mrs. Gandhi was returned to power in the elections of January 1980.
- 2.
Dutta (1989, Footnote 4, p. 130).
- 3.
The Sixth Five-Year Plan (1980–85, p. 417).
- 4.
Quoted from the Industrial Policy Statement made in the Parliament by the Minister of State for Industry on 23 July 1980.
- 5.
Economic Survey: 1988–89, pp. 46–48.
- 6.
After the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices (MRTP) Act was effective in June 1970, the firms with assets of Rs. 25 Crore or more were put under the obligation of taking permission from the government of India, and they were called MRTP companies. This upper limit of Rs. 25 Crore was known as MRTP limit. It was later relaxed to Rs. 50 crore in 1980, Rs. 100 Crore in 1985 and in 1991 this limit was removed. Now only companies having more than 25% market share are called Monopolies.
- 7.
The facility of broad banding is presumed to enable manufacturing enterprises to adjust their product mix in line with changing market conditions and also to facilitate better capacity utilisation.
- 8.
The major examples of such developments include institutions including the Stock Holding Corporation of India, Credit Rating Information Services of India Ltd., Securities and Exchange Board of India, new mutual funds subsidiaries of nationalised banks, new venture capital companies, venture capital funds.
- 9.
Of the two non-Congress governments, the first one was the National Front government (December 1989–November 1990) led by the Prime Minister V.P. Singh, and the second one was the Janata Dal (Samajwadi) government (November 1990–June 1991) of the Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar.
- 10.
Firstly, Atal Behari Vajpayee’s Hindu Nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was voted to power as a caretaker government in May 1996 for only two weeks (16 May–1 June 1996). H.D. Deve Gowda’s United Front coalition government of 13 parties came in power in June 1996, which lasted until April 1997. Then I.J. Gujral’s United Front coalition of 16 parties formed the government in April 1997. After its collapse in less than a year, Atal Behari Vajpayee’s BJP government ruled from March 1998 to April 1999. After its collapse, it stayed as a caretaker government until Vajpayee’s National Democratic Alliance (NDA) of a 23-party coalition founded in 1998 was voted to power on 13 October 1999.
- 11.
As a result of the disinvestment decision of 51% of Government held equity in BALCO on 2 March 2001 in favour of Sterlite Industries (India) Limited for Rs. 551.50 crore, three writ petitions were filed against this decision in the Delhi and Chattisgarh High Courts. These petitions were subsequently transferred to the Supreme Court, which in its order dated 10 December 2001, validated BALCO disinvestment and dismissed the petitions.
- 12.
Anon (2002).
- 13.
A summary of the disinvestment policy is available in Economic Survey 2002–2003, p. 150.
- 14.
The Vajpayee government remained in power from 13 October 1999 to 22 May 2004 for less than a full 5-year term. In fact, the NDA called a general election in early 2004, 6 months ahead of schedule, based around the slogan ‘India Shining’ which presumed that the NDA government had made a rapid economic transformation of the country. The election result, however, turned out to be disaster for the NDA winning only 186 Parliamentary seats compared to 222 seats won by the UPA. According to some commentators, the NDA had failed to reach out to rural Indians, while others had pointed to its ‘divisive’ policy agenda as the reason.
- 15.
In fact, after the UPA government came back to power with Manmohan Singh as its Prime Minister in May 2004, it continued for the next two terms: UPA-I & UPA-II (May 2004–May 2014).
- 16.
Special Economic Zones (SEZs) India was one of the first in Asia to recognize the effectiveness of the Export Processing Zone (EPZ) model in promoting exports, with Asia’s first EPZ set-up in Kandla in 1965. However, the EPZs were not able to emerge as effective instruments for export promotion on account of multiplicity of controls and clearances, absence of world-class infrastructure and an unstable fiscal regime (Economic Survey 2006–07, Box 6.6, p. 123).
- 17.
Economic Survey 2006–07, pp. 122–23.
- 18.
Economic Survey 2014–15, p. 96.
- 19.
Charges over the mismanagement of the 2010 Commonwealth Games include serious corruption by its organizing committee members that led to infrastructural compromise, delays in the construction of main Games’ venues, and failure to sufficient ticket sales before the events.
- 20.
The mismanagement of the 2G-spectrum allocation known as 2G-spectram scam was leveled against the UPA government for undercharging ‘mobile telephone companies for frequency allocation licenses, which they then used to create 2G spectrum subscriptions for cell phones.’ On 2 February 2012, the Supreme Court of India ruled on a public interest litigation (PIL) related to this scam and declared the allotment of spectrum ‘unconstitutional and arbitrary’. It cancelled the 122 licenses issued in 2008 by accusing the primary official—A. Raja, then Minister of Communications and IT—that he wanted ‘to favour some companies at the cost of the public exchequer’ and ‘virtually gifted away important national asset[s]’.
- 21.
The mismanagement of the allocation of coal blocks known as ‘coalgate’ was a major political scandal concerning the Indian government’s allocation of the nation’s coal deposits to public sector entities (PSEs) and private companies. In a draft report issued in March 2014, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) office accused the Government of India for allocating coal blocks in an inefficient manner during the period 2004–2009. ‘The essence of the CAG’s argument is that the Government had the authority to allocate coal blocks by a process of competitive bidding, but chose not to.’ In response to the lodgement of a complaint made by the opposition BJP, the Supreme Court of India ‘decided in July 2014 to set up a special CBI court to try cases arising from coal block allocation scam.’ On 24 September 2014, the Court ‘decided to cancel 214 out of 218 coal blocks allocated since 1993.’ Apart from the cancellation, operational mines were directed to pay ‘a penalty of Rs. 295 for every tonne of coal extracted since they started’.
- 22.
The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) emerged as a historic winner with 282 of 543 parliamentary seats, which allowed the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to form a government without any need for having to broker a post-election coalition. While submitting the total number of supports to the President Pranab Mukherjee, the Modi government claimed for a total of 335 seats won by the NDA coalition.
- 23.
Currently, India has roughly 60% of its population in the age group of 15–59, with the mean age close to 27 years (Das and Kar 2016). This lower share of population in higher- and lower-age brackets together makes the dependency ratio significantly lower than that of many countries of the developed world with high percentage of ageing population. The core of the idea of ‘demographic dividend’ is that such a large share of working age population has the potential to usher high economic growth.
- 24.
A detailed analysis related to the exit issues is available in Economic Survey: 2015–2016, vol. 1, Chap. 2.
- 25.
The average annual population growth rate of 1.91 during 1951–2011 is calculated as simple average of the five average annual growth rates in 1951, 1961, 1971, 1981, 1991, 2001 and 2011 obtained from Table 3.2.
- 26.
Two phases of globalisation are often compared in the literature: the first one is during the last quarter of the nineteenth century that culminates until the beginning of the First World War, and the second one is during the last quarter of the twentieth century. For details, one can see Hoogvelt (1997) and Nayyar (1997).
- 27.
India’s Planning Commission has eventually been dissolved in 2015 by the Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government and replaced it with Niti Aayog focused on cooperative federalism.
- 28.
Release of preliminary National Sample Survey (NSS) data for 1993–94 had produced a spate of articles that forcefully argued that the poor had been hurt at least in the initial reform period (Papanek 1996, p. 1). Although it was debatable (see Gupta, 1995), both the official source (Economic Survey: 1995–96, p. 13) and the World Bank Country Study on India (1996, p. 28) suggested that economic reforms had begun to help the poor.
- 29.
Although economic liberalisation had accelerated industrial development, but some argued that benefits had not been evenly distributed across states. Ghuman (1997, p.13) noted that Gujarat, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu had initially gained the most from liberalised policy initiatives; other beneficiaries were West Bengal, Karnataka and Orissa; the remaining states had either gained moderately or had suffered losses.
- 30.
Deaton and Dréze (2002, p. 3742) note, for example, of localised impoverishment in the poorer districts of Orissa, deep recession in power loom sector, serious crisis in edible oil industry as a result of slashing import tariffs, periodic waves of bankruptcy among cotton growers, displacement of traditional fishing sector by commercial shrimps farms and a number of sectoral crises associated with the abrupt lifting of quantitative restrictions on imports in mid-2001.
- 31.
Ninth Five Year Plan (Sect. 2.1.3).
- 32.
The real spirit of Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI) is devolution of power from Central and State governments to a third tier of self-government at village, intermediate and district levels.
- 33.
Dutta (2011).
- 34.
Poverty at the national level is estimated as the weighted average of state-wise poverty levels. The latest poverty ratio, on a 30 day recall basis, has been estimated from the state-specific poverty lines, and the distribution of persons by expenditure groups obtained from the latest large sample 55th Round Survey (July 1999–June 2000) conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO).
- 35.
Economic Survey: 2016–17, Government of India, pp. 173–74.
- 36.
Economic Survey: 2000–2001, Government of India, Sect. 10.11.
- 37.
An earlier analysis of India’s registered manufacturing sector by Chaudhuri (2002, p. 160) suggested that labour productivity increased steadily between 1990–91 and 1995–96, but had stagnated afterwards; capital productivity increased marginally until 1995–96 followed by a decline. He also noted that both labour and capital productivities increased in only 70 product groups, accounting for about 37% of the value added.
- 38.
After a number of short-lived coalition governments, the newly formed National Democratic Alliance (NDA) led by the Bharatiya Janata Party formed a stable government with Atal Behari Vajpayee as its Prime Minister in October 1999, who remained in power until May 2004.
- 39.
After the fiscal deficit was reduced from 8.3% of GDP in 1990–91 to 6% in 1991–92, the Central Government had relaxed its fiscal deficit targets. For example, this figure not only had been well above the target of 3%, but had also been increasing during the 1990s.
- 40.
Anon. (2015).
- 41.
NCEUS (2008, Footnote 1, p. 3).
- 42.
Ibid. (p. 6).
- 43.
Recently, Nagaraj (2016) questions the methodology applied in the new National Accounts Statistics (NAS) for 2011–12 that shows household (informal or unorganised) segment output has shrunk by 22% in absolute size, or by 11% points of GDP, compared to the old series with 2004–05 as the base year.
- 44.
Employment elasticity is a measure of how employment varies with economic growth. If it is, say, 0.05%, it means that for every 1% growth in GDP, employment increases by 0.05%.
- 45.
NCEUS (2008, p. 9).
- 46.
Before comprehensive liberalisation, between 1983 and 1987–88, the employment elasticity of manufacturing was 0.59. The Planning Commission explained this by saying there had been a substitution of labour by capital-intensive technology.
- 47.
Chakravarty (2012).
- 48.
The terms ‘cash’ and ‘currency’ will be used interchangeably.
- 49.
It is noteworthy that although income from corruption is by definition black money, most black money is earned through perfectly legal activities. However, in most cases, income becomes ‘black’ solely because of tax evasion, i.e., by not declaring this income to the tax authorities.
- 50.
Economic Survey 2016–17, p. 2.
- 51.
Ibid., p. 1.
- 52.
Many experts, as quoted in Sikarwar (2017), have questioned the four-rate structure arguing that it undermines the basic tenet of the GST—a simple structure with at most two rates.
- 53.
Anon. (2016).
- 54.
The four GST Bills are: Central GST (CGST), Integrated GST (IGST), Union Territory GST (UTGST) and the Bill for Compensation to States. The State GST (SGST) laws are supposed to be passed through individual state assemblies. IGST is essentially the sum total of CGST and SGST/UTGST.
- 55.
http://www.ey.com/in/en/services/ey-goods-and-services-tax-gst (accessed on 13 April, 2017).
- 56.
Anon. (2017).
- 57.
Zaidi (2017).
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Dutta, D. (2018). Economic Liberalisation and Structural Dualism (1980–2017). In: Development under Dualism and Digital Divide in Twenty-First Century India. Dynamics of Asian Development. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6344-2_3
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