Political Economy of India

Abstract

Independent India is seventy years old (1947–2017) and may be the fastest-growing economy in the world. Yet, poverty, inequalities, and digital divides continue to bedevil the Indian economy. This combined paradox of economic success and deprivation for many makes the study of Indian political economy complex, interesting, and consequential. Academic assessment of India affects the lives and livelihood of millions of people. India and South Asia are engaged in a consequential “human drama,” an evocative phrase used by Gunnar Myrdal (see Myrdal 1968, cited under Political Economy of the Nehruvian State). What could be more important to study? Every economic and social analysis of India needs to be based in an understanding of the background of politics and economics, especially their intersections. If we talk of economic growth, we need to simultaneously bring in our understanding of the basis of that growth or the issues of distributional impact. Almost all economic challenges faced by a developing and poor yet growing economy bring political and economic questions and facts to the fore. Political economy is at the heart of India and its ongoing developmental trajectory. Political economy analysis of India, therefore, spans a fascinating set of debates and scholarly issues. More recently, as the Indian economy has become more complex, new approaches, questions, and literature have emerged, making the study of India’s political economy a large, productive, and sprawling field. This collection of relevant citations starts with general books, which are large topic-based compendiums and edited volumes covering a large range of material and themes. They are good starting points for any researcher, as they bring together a number of authors and approaches under one book cover. India’s developmental trajectory can be broken into two broad phases. The first of these is the Nehruvian period, which, it could be argued, lasted until 1991. Then, in 1991, sustainable economic reforms set India onto a new growth path. The logic of the origins of reforms must be distinguished from the logic of the sustainability of reforms. Thus, the reform period 1985–current can be broken into two separate phases. This article is organized according to the following structure. The first section focuses on General Overviews of India’s politics and political economy. The next section focuses on the Political Economy of the Nehruvian State, which underlies the Nehruvian model of development. Some thematic subsections are also interspersed: Agrarian Political Economy and Regional Political Economy and Federalism apart from class and societal analysis of the liberalization period. Then, the rest of the bibliographic paper is organized by the different phases of the Political Economy of Economic Reforms in India, including Recent Monographs on Political Economy, the Reforms of the 1980s, and the Reforms of the 1990s, followed by more thematic subsections. A separate subsection is devoted to policy and institutional studies and Class Analysis, Labor, and Politics of Reforms.