Outlook ⁽⁴⁾

Where does India stand in the global trading system after ten years of the existence of the WTO? The report card is at best mixed. Read full article When India signed the Geneva framework accord to move the Doha negotiations forward last summer, Union commerce minister Kamal Nath was not denounced by the domestic or foreign press for his negativism, as had been the case with his predecessor Murasoli Maran in 2001, immediately following the launch of the Doha Round. On the contrary, none other than his cabinet colleague Sharad Pawar accused Nath of a "sellout". This, no doubt, is progress: Indian leadership is slowly but surely shedding its defensive posture and emerging as a more confident participant to the WTO negotiations. Even as India was moving from near autarky in the mid-1980s to an open trading system, its trading partners and the Western press were branding it as "obstructionist" in the global trade talks. No doubt, in part this vilification was the result of the independent stand India took in the successive rounds of negotiations, in contrast to its…

The key question while assessing the first United Progressive Alliance (UPA) budget is whether it indicates that the progressive, pro-reform wing of the Congress—which the prime minister and the finance minister represent—remains truly in charge of policy. The answer to this question is a qualified and cautious yes. Read full article Abstract: For those keen on reforms, the strategic position the Left parties occupy in the United Progressive Alliance has been of great concern. The reformists' greatest fear is that it will embolden the anti-reform lobbies within the Congress and the bureaucracy that had been forced into oblivion by the wave of reforms in 1991. Many of the initiatives originating in various branches of the government in the last month, which came on the heels of an ill-conceived Common Minimum Programme (CMP), have served to give substance to that fear. Therefore, the key question while assessing the first UPA budget is whether it indicates that the progressive, pro-reform wing of the Congress—which the prime minister and the finance minister represent—remains truly in charge of policy. The answer to this question…

It is nonsense to pin the anti-NDA vote on to the reforms and not anti-incumbency. Read full article Abstract: In less than a week, India has been stunned twice: first by the election results that handed defeat to an extremely successful prime minister and then by Sonia Gandhi who, having toiled for six years to wrest the prime minister's position from A.B. Vajpayee, decided to step aside in favour of a citizen of Indian origin. While Sonia's critics were willing to divide the nation on the issue of her foreign origins, she herself was not. Many commentators have described the NDA government's defeat as the rejection of the economic reforms. This is nonsense. The Congress had not only pioneered the reforms, it has also promised to carry them forward in its poll manifesto. To quote just two key sentences from the manifesto: "The Congress will broaden and deepen economic reforms. The overriding objective will be to attain and sustain year after year a 8-10 per cent rate of economic growth...." Moreover, the results point to a strong anti-incumbency rather than…

Guest column for a special issue of Outlook, December 17, 2001. Is the Indian economy as immune to the current slowdown in the global economy as some press reports and commentaries suggest? And should we be thanking our policy makers for holding back reforms, rapidly approaching inaction, to bring about the presumed stability? Read full article Abstract: Is the Indian economy as immune to the current slowdown in the global economy as some press reports and commentaries suggest? And should we be thanking our policy-makers for holding back reforms, rapidly approaching inaction, for the presumed stability? To be sure, for a long time, the Indian economy was totally insulated to booms and busts in the external markets. These were the dark days of autarkic trade policies when virtually all imports were subject to strict licencing and virtually no link between external and internal prices existed. These were also the days when growth rates in real per capita income failed to cross the 2 per cent mark over any continuous five-year period save 1974-79. Thanks to the partial opening of the…