Liberalisation officially began in 1991, but the seed for it was sown in the late 1950s by proponents of free markets. The debates over the opening up of the domestic market continued through the 1960s in India, resulting in fitful bursts of reforms. It was only from the mid-1980s that talk of liberalisation gathered steam, culminating in the decision to relax economic norms in 1991. These last twenty-five years since liberalisation have seen animated arguments being exchanged. The collection of essays in this volume captures different ideological positions on the subject and offers an informed, 360-degree analysis on economic liberalisation.

‘Rural’ and ‘urban’ are the foremost categories through which social life has been visualised and engaged with in modern and contemporary times. The idea of the ‘rural’ or the ‘village’ has been of particular significance in India. British colonisers represented India to the world as a land of ‘village republics’. This representation was so influential that even the nationalist leaders accepted it uncritically. Gandhi advocated ‘a return to the village’ as the only genuine way to gaining swaraj, or self-rule. Nehru and Ambedkar too saw the village as the site of India’s traditional life; however, to them it was also a signifier of India’s economic backwardness and social ills. These notions have shaped social science scholarship, popular politics and public policy. The idea of such a demographic transition continues to be a core element of state policy and an important indicator of positive social change and economic growth/ modernisation. However, the ‘rural’ in India persists; nearly two-thirds of India’s population still lives in rural settlements. A Handbook of Rural India, brings together 36 research papers written by some of the leading social scientists, from the early 1950s to the present. It provides a historical perspective on the subject of the ‘rural’ and covers a wide range of topics that have been critical to the imaginings and empirics of village life in contemporary India.

After a boom in the early twenty-first century, India witnessed a macroeconomic reversal marked by a slowdown in growth that has lasted a little longer than the boom. At the same time, a fresh criterion of governance, namely inclusion, has emerged and become a priority for the state. Written against the backdrop of these developments, the essays in this volume represent a range of perspectives and methods pertaining to the study of growth and its distribution in India. The essays in Section I take the long view of growth in the country. They represent issues of abiding interest and provide the canvas upon which the rest of the articles may be seen as placed. Section II takes a macro view of the recent history of the economy. The essays explore the reasons for the shift from a regime of high growth and low inflation to one of low growth and high inflation, deconstruct the ‘dream run’ of the economy over 2003–08, and evaluate the United Progressive Alliance government’s performance. Section III comprises essays that study the economy at the next level down, covering its agriculture, industry and services. Another essay reflects upon the desirable space for finance in India, a topic that has assumed some relevance after the global recession. Finally, the essays in Section IV address the emergence into the public sphere of the idea that growth must be inclusive. Accordingly, the essays here assess the extent to which recent growth has been inclusive, approaching the issue from various angles. Assembling authoritative voices on the economy of contemporary India, this volume will be indispensable for students of economics, management, development studies and public policy. It will also prove useful to policymakers and journalists.

Caste is one of the oldest concerns of the social sciences in India that continues to be relevant even today. This book tracks how scholars from different disciplines have responded to the caste question in independent India and highlights recent shifts in perspective. The general perception about caste is that it is an outdated concept that was slowly but inevitably dying out until it was revived by colonial policies and promoted by vested interests and electoral politics after independence. However, this hegemonic perception changed irrevocably in the 1990s after the controversial reservations for the Other Backward Classes recommended by the Mandal Commission. Mandal triggered a new awakening by revealing that only a privileged upper caste minority believed in the declining significance of caste—for the vast majority of Indians caste continued to be a crucial determinant of life opportunities. This volume collects significant writings spanning seven decades, three generations and several disciplines. The introduction contextualises established perspectives in relation to emergent concerns, and is followed by forty essays organised into six sections. The first section offers a sample of disciplinary responses ranging from sociology to law. The second explores the relationship between caste and class, while the third highlights the interplay between caste and politics. The fourth section covers old and new challenges in law and policy. Emergent research areas are represented in section five and section six showcases post-Mandal innovations in caste studies. This transdisciplinary volume brings together sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, historians, economists and others. It will be essential reading for students and scholars across these disciplines.

The idea of devolving power to local governments was part of the larger political debate during the Indian national movement. It had strong advocates like Mahatma Gandhi who felt that the panchayats had to be the basis of government in independent India. This volume maps the trajectory that decentralisation of government has taken in the decades following Independence and discusses the constitutional changes and policy decisions that make governance more accountable to and accessible for the common man. It presents a set of twenty-five readings that analyse the impact of the 73rd and 74th Constitutional Amendments, which gave autonomy to the institutions of both rural and urban governance.

This volume presents a set of readings which primarily focus on the social, political and cultural aspects of village life. A few readings discuss issues of agrarian change and the economy of rural India. A comprehensive introduction provides a detailed historical analysis of the study of rural India, the changes in rural social life, and the forces shaping life in villages today. The articles, drawn from writings over four decades (1972 to 2010), cover various features of village society: caste and community, land and labour, migration, discrimination and use of common property resources, among others. The volume will be a single reference point for some of the best published works in the field.

This volume investigates the nature of economic growth in India, its pace over time, its relationship to changes in the policy regime and the role of the external sector, and uses data to evaluate the policies that have implicitly underpinned the changes. Presenting a range of approaches, views and conclusions, this collection comprises papers from the Economic & Political Weekly that are marked by an empirical awareness necessary for an understanding of a growth history. The articles reflect a certain groundedness in their approach in that they privilege content/context over methodology. The introduction outlines the importance of putting together the writings of almost a decade on the subject, explains why the issue of development is conspicuous by its absence, and presents this book as a complement to studies addressing a wider set of issues around the economy since 1990. The book is thematically divided into five sections. The first two are macroscopic in nature, focusing on the overall economic growth. While section one provides an overview, of the subject, attributing causes and delineating the phases of economic growth, the papers in the second section are largely statistical and reflect the progress made by econometricians in devising estimation methodologies. The two sections identify growth regimes and structural breaks in the Indian economy. The third section focuses on sectoral performances, in particular agricultural and industrial growth, intersectoral linkages, the role of trade and capital flows, and the sources of growth of India’s exports before and after economic reforms. Section four presents data and analyses of inter-state variations in economic growth and regional inequality. The last section analyses the political economy of growth in India. It throws light on the systemic implications of socio-economic changes, their effect on the poor, and the relationship between economic growth and social development. This volume is an important addition to the literature on post-liberalisation economic growth in India. It will be useful to students and scholars of economics and management.

K. S. Krishnaswamy was a leading light in the Reserve Bank of India and the Planning Commission between the early 1950s and the late 1970s. He retired as a deputy governor of the Reserve Bank. Armed with a doctorate from the London School of Economics he began his career at a time when the road was rocky for newly independent India. The author vividly captures the optimism, commitment and desire to do well among policy makers in those days. His ringside view of the pulls and pressures within the administration and outside it, the hopes that sustained a majority in the bureaucracy and the lasting ties he formed with many he came in contact with are compelling on their own. Even more relevant is what he has to say about the political agendas eroding the Reserve Bank’s autonomy and degrading democratic institutions since the late 1960s. Windows of Opportunity however is not a political polemic; it is a ruminative memoir by one who saw much happen, and not happen, at a time when everything seemed possible and promising in India.