Liberalization In India Research Articles

Economic Liberalization in India: Economic Contributes and Social Consequences

The experience of economic liberalisation began to be felt by every co­mmon person in India during the mid 90s.The effects, however, were not uniform. It had a number of resultant outcomes depending upon the variables in the respective situations. The effects, for example, on rural and urban lives, were different. The receiver-benefits by the 'haves' and 'have-nots' were not the same. The economic liberalisation had two broad economic contributes to the people in India: emergence of monetary economy over and above other forms of economies, and increase in the options and opportunities for livelihood. The social con­sequences of economic liberalisation could be seen in the three main constituents of the social system: the individual, the family and the community. And the consequences are not all very encouraging.The paper argues that identifying change is the first step towards managing change and acknowledging change is a precondition for effective change management. Identifying and acknowledging the social consequences of economic liberalisation is most likely to help in the continuation of interventions that are needed for the constructive strengthening of the social order of society

Indian Journalism in the Colonial Crucible

India’s imperfect democracy may be underpinned by an equally imperfect journalism, but the symbiotic relationship between the two is rarely acknowledged or highlighted. The fact remains that India’s democracy is enabled and enhanced by its roots in the ancient tradition of dialogue, debate and argument, which was transformed by the growth of print journalism since the late eighteenth century. In the modern sense, this tradition matured in the acid bath of India’s freedom struggle, when journalism and journalist-leaders such as Gandhi and Nehru played a central role before independence in 1947. This paper focuses on a forgotten chapter in India’s modern political history, when the idea of a free press became the locus of the earliest example of constitutional agitation. In the colonial cauldron of the early nineteenth century, protest by Indian and British liberals against press licensing and other restrictions imposed by the East India Company took the form of “memorials” (petitions) addressed to the Supreme Court in Calcutta1 and to the King-in-Council in London. The agitation begun in Calcutta in 1823 was carried forward in London, which later curbed the Company-state’s restrictive acts towards the press in India, until the Mutiny of 1857. The agitation also included the daring act of Rammohun Roy to close his Persian journal, Mirat-ul-Akhbar, to protest against restrictions imposed by acting Governor-General John Adam. Recalling this chapter of political protest enhances our understanding of the dominant theme of politics in Indian journalism, which continues today, despite rampant commercialisation and corruption.

The New Miss India: Popular Fiction in Contemporary India

:Miss New India is the title of a 2011 novel by Indian-born (now American-based) Bharati Mukherjee, which tells the story of a young woman who leaves her small-town home and family to find work in a call centre in the information technology city of Bangalore. The call centre is emblematic of a ‘new India’, in which educated young people seize the possibilities of a global labour market. This is a generation for whom colonialism is ancient history, a generation who have grown up in the aftermath of economic liberalization in India. Chetan Bhagat refers to this generation as ‘Young India’ and has written a series of best-selling novels that feature ambitious young men in the ‘new India’. There is, however, an emerging genre of similar narratives written by women and addressed to a female readership. This article discusses a range of contemporary Indian women’s popular novels and argues that, while Bhagat and his male heroes may embrace globalization and the market, the narratives written by women are more nuanced in their celebration of economic liberalization. The novels dramatize the tensions between tradition and modernity, family and independence, and suggest that these are particularly fraught for young Indian women. These texts pick up on the discourses of contemporary journalism about ‘Young India’, within the generic form of the romance, but their resolutions are repeatedly uneasy and suggest that the ‘new India’ is not an entirely comfortable space for the new Miss India.

Effects of Financial Market Imperfections on Indian Firms’ Exporting Behavior

Using data from more than 6,000 manufacturing firms in India for 1996-2008, we investigate the impact of financial constraints on the exporting behavior of Indian manufacturing firms while also focusing on the link between exchange rate movement and exports. We find that there is a strong degree of persistency in the exporting behavior of Indian manufacturing firms, reflecting the high fixed costs of entering foreign markets for Indian firms. A firm with a higher amount of net cash flows and smaller debt-to-asset ratios is more likely to become an exporter, indicating that a firm tends to self-finance its exporting without relying too much on external finances. Internal funds are especially important for firms that are not incumbent exporters to become exporters, and also for firms that do not enjoy technical advancement and high levels of productivity. When we divide the sample period into several subperiods, Indian firms have become less reliant on internal cash in recent years, but new exporters still rely on cash holdings to enter foreign markets. Over all, recent financial liberalization in India still does not allow the financial system to meet the stronger demand for funds by firms, especially small ones, though part of the stronger demand for funds are increasingly met by funds provided by foreign institutions. Based on our findings, improving the functionality of financial markets is an urgent issue to remove financial constraints that hinder Indian firms from entering export markets.

Identity Caste Politics and Democracy

Historically it has been very hard to change the structure of caste politics in India. More recently however, there has been a flux in caste politics, mainly caused by economic liberalization in India. This upsurge in lower-caste empowerment was accompanied in some regions by a spike in the level of corruption. This was partly due to lower caste perceiving development programs and rule of law as tools used by the upper caste to subjugate lower castes. More contemporary India, however, has seen the influence of caste start to decline. This is partly due to the spread of education to all castes which has had a democratizing effect on the political system. However, this equalizing of the playing field has not been without controversy. The Mandal commission and its quotas system has been a particularly sensitive issue. Caste in Indian society refers to a social group where membership decided by birth.

Ethical issues in telecom licensing: liberalization of Indian telecom

The big business houses of the country and many multinational corporations had foreseen huge opportunity in deregulation and consequential opening up of telecommunication service sector in India. The telecom operating licenses in India were granted to private sector by the government starting from midnineties of the last century. The political executives as well as civil servants had lot of discretionary powers in granting of these licenses and making subsequent change in them. A nexus has always been alluded to in popular press between politicians, businessmen and civil servants to the detriment of public good. There has been scope in granting of favors to the operators in matter of telecom policy and licensing. This paper describes the stages of telecom liberalization in India, the industry administrative structure and various policy and licensing changes affected by the government and consequential allegation of corruption and undue favors given to private operators. The paper goes on to describe the various institutions which probe and punish ethical misconducts and certain corrective steps undertaken by the government to bring in transparency and fair play in matter of allocation of spectrum and granting of telecom licenses.

Beyond Bombay art district: Reorganization of art production into a polycentric territory at metropolitan scale

Considering the context of the economic liberalization in India since the 1980’s and the growing insertion of contemporary Indian art scene in the global art system, this article aims to analyze the reorganization of artistic production at the scale of Bombay metropolitan territory. Three main aspects will be analyzed: the historical development of an art district in the south of the city, the recent changes in the mapping of contemporary art industry and the new territories of contemporary art production. The aim is to deconstruct the territorial hierarchy imposed by the idea of the “art district”, highlight polycentric configurations and the diversity of spaces and interactions that contribute to the dynamism of the art scene.

Liberalism and Empire

C. A. Bayly, Recovering Liberties: Indian Thought in Age of Liberalism and Empire.Gregory Claeys, Imperial Sceptics: British Critics of Empire, 1850-1920.These two volumes, among only a scattered handful of others in Ideas in Context series, examine responses of varied thinkers to moral and political issues posed by existence of empire and growth of modern imperialism. Bayly's, indeed, is very first among one hundred published volumes in series to move beyond European reflections on empire and give pride of place instead to intellectuals from colonized world. Together liberal ideals and imperial practice incontestably exist at heart of modern world. Why, then, have writings of Indian and other non-Western intellectuals, not to mention European theorists and critics of empire, received such cursory treatment in such an influential set of volumes? It is not possible to answer that question here, but fortunately rapid rise of scholarly interest in imperialism over last few years has spurred much new and exciting work on ideology of empire. This outpouring of studies has even generated a subfield called the new imperial devoted to exploring links joining colony and metropole.The works under consideration here are at once complementary-the one focused on Indian political thought, other on British-and comprehensive. Both volumes range very widely across time, and engage with an array of thinkers. Both authors also fulfill mandate of larger series by placing ideas firmly in context in which they took shape, and ask how they participated in intellectual discourse of their times. Bayly, in his first sentence, describes his task as examining the ideas, projects and sensibilities of those Indian intellectuals who broadly subscribed to international liberal consensus of nineteenth and twentieth centuries.1 Claeys, for his part, proposes to assess . explanations of origin of British empire; justifications for its continuation; and criticisms of its consequences.2Sir Christopher Bayly-the first historian of British Empire, it might be noted, to be knighted since Sir John Seeley over one hundred years ago-has had a distinguished career as Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History at Cambridge. Though he was never affiliated with any of major historiographical schools of last decades-the socalled Cambridge school of 1970s, Subaltern Studies Collective of 1980s, or postcolonial cultural turn of 1990s-Bayly's wideranging publications across Indian and Imperial history have stimulated scholarship throughout discipline and beyond, most notably among those many postgraduate students he has trained. So it is appropriate that Bayly should now add his own definitive account to on-going scholarly discussion of political theory of empire.Indian liberals have been maligned ever since they came into existence as a visible group of English-educated young in 1840s and '50s. During high colonial era of late nineteenth century they were disparaged by British as mere talkers, as self-interested job seekers, and as a minuscule coterie who sought to speak for a non-existent Indian nation, but in fact represented no one but themselves. Nationalist writers and political leaders, from 1890s onward, dismissed their liberal predecessors (and contemporaries) as ineffectual mendicants and bourgeois hangers-on of Raj. By Gandhian era, with two or three notable exceptions, among them Dadabhai Naoroji and G. K. Gokhale, India's Victorian liberals had disappeared altogether from canon of nation's heroes. Finally, in postcolonial era, scholars such as Homi Bhabha derided them as inauthentic mimic men who tried to be, but could never truly be, English.3 Indian liberalism, unlike its British counterpart, was thus, as Bayly correctly argues, embattled from beginning by powerful ideologies that largely rejected it. …

Trade and Investment Liberalization in India: Implications for Productivity Gains

Since 1991, India has witnessed wide-ranging economic reforms in its policies governing international trade and foreign direct investment (FDI) flows which has consequently led to a dramatic rise in both trade and FDI flows since then. Using firm-level panel data, this paper investigates whether these trends have contributed to significant productivity improvements since 2000, as measured by total factor productivity (TFP). In addition, the paper also examines the determinants of TFP across a range of different industry categories. The results suggest the existence of significant productivity improvements since 2000 and also identify variables such as imports of raw materials and capital goods, size of operation, quality of employment captured by wage rates, and technology imports as crucial determinants of productivity.

“We Are Not Free”: The Meaning of in American Indian Resistance to President Johnson's War on Poverty

This essay examines how the ideograph <freedom> was crafted through dialectical struggles between Euro-Americans and American Indians over federal Indian policy between 1964 and 1968. For policymakers, <freedom> was historically sutured to the belief that assimilation was the only pathway to American Indian liberation. I explore the American Indian youth movement's response to President Johnson's War on Poverty to demonstrate how activists rhetorically realigned <freedom> in Indian policy with the Great Society's rhetoric of “community empowerment.” I illustrate how American Indians orchestrated counterhegemonic resistance by reframing the “Great Society” as an argument for a “Greater Indian American.” This analysis evinces the rhetorical significance of ideographic transformation in affecting policy change.

Growth, Instability and Determinants in India’s Agricultural Commodity Export: A Policy Period Analysis

The economic liberalization in India resulted in a shift from a fixed exchange rate regime to flexible exchange rate regime. Further, as a consequence of liberalisation and globalization, there was a removal of tariffs and non-tariff barriers, which led to a growth in exports. As agriculture forms the backbone of the Indian economy, we analyse two aspects of agricultural commodity exports, namely, growth and instability, over the period 1990-91 to 2010-11. In order to see the impact of policy periods, the study is categorised into four different policy periods, corresponding to liberalisation, WTO, world recovery and global crisis. This is followed by an attempt to see the impact of macro-economic variables such as exchange rate, GDP and money supply on the performance of agricultural commodity exports. The study concludes that growth of agricultural commodities exports largely depends upon GDP. Instability, on the other hand, depends upon money supply. In fact, the behaviour of foreign exchange rate is anomalous, since depreciation reduces export growth and it creates instability.

A General Trend Analysis of India’s Current Account Balance

With economic liberalization in India, a major shift on the foreign exchange front was in the form of switching from a fixed exchange rate regime to flexible exchange rate regime. This shift led to some heavy and sudden fluctuations in the prices and volumes of exports and imports. The present study is an attempt to analyse the overall trends in India’s current account balance during the period 1970-71 to 2010-11. The analysis shows that merchandise trade did not play any role towards the improvements of current account balance. In fact, it deteriorated the current account balance during the time span of the study. On the other hand, invisibles as a whole showed a very small negative growth rate which in effect is negligible. Income head has led buoyancy to current account balance. The overall positive growth of current account balance is basically an indication of good management of current account balance.

UNIVERSAL ISLAM: THE FAITH AND POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES OF MAULANA BARAKATULLAH ‘BHOPALI’

The Ghadar movement had a significant, if numerically small, Muslim component in its membership. Maulana Barakatullah ‘Bhopali’ stands out among them for his early association with the movement; for his long activist sojourns across the globe; and for attempting to synthesize diverse anti-imperialist trends in his primary quest of the liberation of India from colonial rule. This paper charts the ideological evolution of Barakatullah and how he, a trained orthodox Islamic scholar, was able to fuse different ideologies (Pan-Islamism, Pan-Asianism, Indian Nationalism, and Communism) in his anti-imperialist struggle. Through an examination of his life and writings, an attempt will be made to determine the internal logic behind his eclectic thought. A comparison will also be made with his contemporaries – especially with Maulana ‘Ubayd Allah Sindhi, a fellow Muslim revolutionary, who was not as prominent as Barakatullah (in the Ghadarite movement), but whose theoretical insights in revolutionary ecumenism are no less relevant.

&lt;em&gt;Recovering Liberties: Indian Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire&lt;/em&gt;, by C. A. Bayly

Reviewed by: Recovering Liberties: Indian Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire by C. A. Bayly Regenia Gagnier (bio) Recovering Liberties: Indian Thought in the Age of Liberalism and Empire, by C. A. Bayly; pp. x + 383. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012. £52.00, £19.99 paper, $88.00, $30.99 paper. Work that illuminates the circulation of actants (human and nonhuman agents, objects, and things) and memes (ideas that combine or transform in transit) is increasingly desirable in a globalised environment, and C. A. Bayly’s Recovering Liberties is a fine study of the circulation and transformation of liberal agents, ideas, and institutions in India from the 1820s. This review will focus on the Victorian period and its immediate aftermath, though the book concludes with the lasting effects of liberalism up to 2011, with Manmohan Singh’s government in the world’s largest democracy. Bayly’s title, Professor of Imperial and Naval History at Cambridge University, shows a common transformation in the intercultural transvaluation of values, as historian of empire becomes one of Indian culture and society. The book concentrates on maritime and trading centres—traditionally the most liberal communities due to continuous contact with other cultures—Bengal, Bombay, [End Page 286] and northwestern India, rather than Madras and the south, though chapters often conclude with comparative reference to developments in Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and the Sino-Malay region. Bayly’s thesis is that Indian literati—from Rammohan Roy in the 1820s, Romesh Chunder Dutt in the 1870s, Dadabhai Naoroji in the 1880s, Gopal Krishna Gokhale in the 1900s, to Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar from the 1920s—participated in transregional or global spheres of liberal discourse. After Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Iberia, these global liberals sympathized with American and Irish struggles against Britain, Chartists, and Giuseppe Mazzini’s republican radicalism; and with others who had experienced slavery and racial prejudice. Transnationally, this amounted to a small, emergent global elite of liberals reading, citing, and engaging with each other in the early days of nation-states. Even when they failed to elicit responses from their putative interlocutors in Europe, the Indian liberals took the occasion to employ their discourses for their own audiences at home. The difference between the European and Indian liberals was that the Indians were colonized, that is, their liberalisms developed under conditions of exploitation and humiliation, and that they had their own traditions of Vedantic continuity, that is, revelation stressing self-realisation, as a nation as well as individuals. The Indian liberals deployed arguments from Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), Lord Byron, Charles Dickens, Auguste Comte, and John Ruskin, and developed a sophisticated mathematical rhetoric of statistics to undermine the statistics of the colonizers. J. S. Mill was much admired aside from his views on race, deism, and scepticism, and they used him against James Fitzjames Stephen’s colonial theory of benign coercion. Mill’s liberalism, Bayly contends, functioned more as a structure of feeling than an air-tight logical system, and he demonstrates repeatedly that the philosophical eclecticism of these Indian liberal admirers of Mill was not a theoretical weakness but an engagement with a totality of human thought. Theosophy was attractive as a social evolutionism, liberal communitarianism, and Vedantic Hinduism. Theories of amalgamation of Hindu and Muslim were compared to the dynamism of Anglo-Saxons. Darwinism was invoked as Spirit’s evolution in history. Indigenous systems of thought in both Hindu and Islam, more worldly religions, avoided the deep conflicts between science and religion that divided Europe. Bayly does not confine his study to discourse. Under the constraints of colonization and then under indigenous strands of communitarianism, Indian liberals developed practices and institutions to deal with religious, caste, and racial diversity undreamed of in Mill’s philosophy. Multicultural India revealed relations of individual rights to group beliefs that problematized liberalism to its core. Indigenous law courts, juries, legal systems, and a free press developed against both domination by the British and internal factions. Bayly discusses at length the juries based in ancient systems of the panchayat (literally “five men,” or local representative bodies), the statistical liberalism that developed as a scientific rhetoric to undermine the science of the Raj, Young...

Local firms productivity spillover from foreign direct investment: a study of Indian manufacturing industries

This paper examines the local firms productivity spillover from foreign direct investment (FDI) based on a cross-industry analysis of Indian manufacturing. The results are based on dynamic panel models and indicate that foreign presence itself raises the local firm’s labour productivity within an industry. Nevertheless, the technology spillover is conditioned by the nature of the trade policy regime. We find that after trade policy liberalisation in India, industries which experienced a decline in the tariff cost exhibited stronger growth in domestic firms’ labour productivity. A key policy implication is that liberalising the tariff protection could maximise the gains from FDI-technology spillover.

A Review of Concept and Reporting of Non-financial Initiatives of Business Organisations

India is witnessing transformation in non-financial reporting. The paper reviews changes in conception of CSR, trends in non- financial reporting and reporting of such initiatives in annual reports of companies. Conceptions of CSR since ancient times till recent developments were reviewed. Various frameworks for non-financial reporting in post liberalisation in India are reviewed.It was observed that companies undertake both mandatory and voluntary non-financial reporting.Contribution to Body of KnowledgeThe paper traces changes in conception and non-financial reporting of business organisations. Paper finds sufficient level of reporting and states that there is a need of compatibility amongst various reports which fall under non-financial reporting framework.

The intimacy of insurgency: beyond coercion, greed or grievance in Maoist India

The Maoist movement has been presented as one of the most powerful forces of resistance against policies of economic liberalization in India. This paper explores how and why the movement has spread in recent years. Analysing beyond theories explaining insurgent action in terms of coercion, greed or grievance, the article draws on long-term ethnographic research in a Maoist guerrilla zone to explore an important aspect of mobilization that has been underplayed to date in the literature: the relations of intimacy which develop between the mobilizing forces and the people in the area of struggle. The paper shows how bonds of family and kinship, exchange and its expectations, caste and its manifestations are crucial for understanding the social dynamics of revolutionary mobilization. Moreover, it suggests that the relationship between ideology and political organization is significant in shaping the kinds of relations of intimacy developed, and that in turn this can explain the reach of the organization. In the Indian case, the paper thus compares the spread of the Maoists with competing political organizations in their guerrilla zones – the Indian State and the Hindu right. Just as relations of intimacy may help explain why people support and join radical movements, the paper suggests that their conflictual relationship with revolutionary subjectivity may also become the Achilles’ heel of such movements, explaining why people distance themselves from, leave and betray them, leading in part to their decline.

Media Pluralism Redux: Towards New Frameworks of Comparative Media Studies “Beyond the West”

A new form of “entertaining news,” accessed by most through television, has become a privileged domain of politics for the first time in countries “beyond the West” in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. What are the political consequences of this development: What is the relationship between media and politics in these regions? We answer these questions through a case study of India, the world's largest democracy, where two decades of media expansion and liberalization have yielded the largest number of commercial television news outlets in the world. We show why prevailing theories of media privatization and commercialization cannot account for the distinctive architecture of media systems in places like India. In this article, we first provide an overview of the historical and contemporary dynamics of media liberalization in India and the challenges that this poses to existing models and typologies of the media-politics relationship. We then present a new typology of media systems and a theoretical framework for studying the relationship between television news and democratic politics in India, and by extension in the global South. In the concluding section, we reflect on the broader comparative insights of the essay and discuss directions for future research. We believe that our alternative comparative framework captures more meaningfully the diversity and complexity of emerging media systems and their relationships to democratic practice in these regions.

Mary Carpenter and the Brahmo Samaj of India: a transnational perspective on social reform in the age of empire

This article, offering a transnational perspective on Mary Carpenter's promotion of female education in colonial India, seeks to foster the writing of new histories of social reform in the nineteenth-century world and fresh analyses of global women's history in the age of empire. It roots Carpenter's engagement with India in her involvement in a transoceanic web of British, Indian and American religious liberals and social reformers and explores the ways in which her promotion of Indian women's education was shaped in interaction with members of an influential Bengali socio-religious reform movement, the Brahmo Samaj. Presenting the resultant push to found training schools for women teachers as a project of cross-cultural collaboration, it argues that this cannot be adequately subsumed under the rubric of colonial reform, and did not simply relegate Indian women to the position of silent victims who needed to be saved.

Dove or Hawk? Characterizing monetary policy regime switches in India

The past two decades have witnessed a worldwide move by emerging markets to adopt explicit or implicit inflation targeting regimes. A notable and often discussed exception to this trend, of course, is China which follows a pegged exchange rate regime supported by capital controls. Another major exception is India. It is not clear how to characterize the monetary regime or identify the nominal monetary anchor in India. Is central bank policy in India following a predictable rule that is heavily influenced by a quasi inflation target? And how has the monetary regime been affected by the gradual process of financial liberalization in India? To address these points, we investigate monetary policy regime change in India using a Markov switching model to estimate a time-varying Taylor-type rule for the Reserve Bank of India. We find that the conduct of monetary policy over the last two decades can be characterized by two regimes, which we term ‘Hawk’ and ‘Dove.’ In the first of these two regimes, the central bank reveals a greater relative (though not absolute) weight on controlling inflation vis-à-vis narrowing the output gap. The central bank however was found to be in the “Dove” regime about half of our sample period, focusing more on the output gap and exchange rate targets to stimulate exports, rather than moderating inflation. India thus seems to be following its own direction in the conduct of monetary policy, seemingly not overly influenced by the emphasis on quasi-inflation targeting seen in many emerging markets.