India's Foreign Trade and Payments Since 1965: Managing the Nation as a Peasant Household

Abstract

I N THE PAST TEN to fifteen years India's foreign trade and balance of payments have experienced profound change. This change has taken the form of variations in the level and composition of exports and imports, in trading partners, and in the institutional organization of trade. In addition, the interaction between the foreign sector and the domestic sector has intensified and altered in character. It is not an exaggeration to say that India's external sector has experienced a revolution as significant as the green revolution in agriculture, although this foreign sector revolution has been much less remarked. It is noteworthy that both of these revolutions arrived unheralded. The green revolution caught the industry-firsters and those who believed in the taciturn immovability of Indian peasants almost completely unawares. The foreign sector revolution has similarly arrived without warning, judging by professional writings reaching back to the 1960s. Both the green revolution and the foreign sec-