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India’s Economy in Retrospect: 10,000 runs and counting…
Samvit Tandom
Short Essay
ability to reflect on India’s history post - independence will never match that of my parents, or grandparents better still.
But I’ll go out on a limb anyway. Surely we have
But I’ll go out on a limb anyway. Surely we have
made progress, especially only in 60 years! And these years were peppered with wars against our neighbors, China and Pakistan, in the 60’s and and 70’s. Through the 80’s and early 90’s Rajiv Gandhi took up the baton and started an economic reform process in the country that hasn’t stopped since. Interestingly, our current prime minister.
Manmohan Singh, was the architect of those economic reforms back then. As the then finance minister, he was instrumental in steering India out of an economic crisis by dismantling barriers to foreign and private investment. And now we find him at the helm. Atal Behari Bajpayee, of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), also played his part, and India advertised to the world (not for the first time) her intentions to join the world’s superpowers by emphatically performing a nuclear weapon test.
Nowadays, the domestic market is booming. Maruti Udyog pulls out one new car model after another (back in my day, just a decade ago, we only chose between the Maruti “800” and the “1,000”). Move over Indian Airlines, there are more domestic airline companies than one can count on one’s fingers. I recall settling in every Friday night after dinner to watch Prannoy Roy re-cap the week’s top stories on “The World This Week.” No more. Twenty-four hour news channels abound amidst more than a hundred
Manmohan Singh, was the architect of those economic reforms back then. As the then finance minister, he was instrumental in steering India out of an economic crisis by dismantling barriers to foreign and private investment. And now we find him at the helm. Atal Behari Bajpayee, of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), also played his part, and India advertised to the world (not for the first time) her intentions to join the world’s superpowers by emphatically performing a nuclear weapon test.
Nowadays, the domestic market is booming. Maruti Udyog pulls out one new car model after another (back in my day, just a decade ago, we only chose between the Maruti “800” and the “1,000”). Move over Indian Airlines, there are more domestic airline companies than one can count on one’s fingers. I recall settling in every Friday night after dinner to watch Prannoy Roy re-cap the week’s top stories on “The World This Week.” No more. Twenty-four hour news channels abound amidst more than a hundred
available TV channels. Even the old war-horse Doordarshan has had a major makeover to keep abreast of the competition. Meanwhile, the Golden Quadrilateral is making way to replace the old Grand Trunk Road and connect the four big cities of the four corners of India as the most impressive highway system in our country’s history. In addition, the Metropolitan Transport Corporation of Madras (now Chennai) has taken a step further as evident by a massive half-page advertisement in the WSJ (Jan. 12, pg. a4) seeking bids from contractors to help the state build an expansive monorail system for mass-rapid transit in the southern city. But Madras is not the only southern city attracting attention, with SemIndia and Advanced Micro Device’s latest plans to invest $3 billion in Hyderabad’s Fab City project making headlines in many journals, notwithstanding the world-renowned Information Technology hub of Bangalore. Finally, today’s thriving Bollywood produces more movies per year than its American counterpart Hollywood, and as such, is the largest film industry in the world. While still works in progress, surely these, and more, are remarkable developments in only 60 years.
All this, of course, is not to say that England’s colonization of India was a good thing. Nor is India free of problems. A staggering population of over 1 billion people fills the country’s seams and blankets its ability to progress at a faster rate. Widespread poverty, lack of education, and as a result inequality, are natural by-products then. But every country has its set of maladies, no matter what shape or form they come in. If I were allowed the liberty to classify a ‘generation’ as 20 years, then in three generations since her independence, India has come a long way despite her maladies,
All this, of course, is not to say that England’s colonization of India was a good thing. Nor is India free of problems. A staggering population of over 1 billion people fills the country’s seams and blankets its ability to progress at a faster rate. Widespread poverty, lack of education, and as a result inequality, are natural by-products then. But every country has its set of maladies, no matter what shape or form they come in. If I were allowed the liberty to classify a ‘generation’ as 20 years, then in three generations since her independence, India has come a long way despite her maladies,
