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Saturday, March 14, 2026
TopicLiberalisation

Topic: liberalisation

When Indian economy was liberalised—Manmohan Singh’s 1991 Budget speech

On 24 July 1991, finance minister Manmohan Singh presented the Union Budget for 1991-92 that changed the course of Indian economy. In his Lok Sabha speech, he quoted Victor Hugo to say, 'no power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come.'

Stock market turmoil, crypto craze proof of human ‘fear, greed’ says chief economic advisor

Speaking at India Ideas Conclave, organised by think tank India Foundation in Bengaluru, V. Anantha Nageswaran, also said India was now in position to deliver domestically-driven growth'.

India is walking on one leg because 1991 reforms missed banking & finance

Restrictions on banking led to limited capacity for new entrepreneurs to have access to resources. It allowed the old elite to continue dominating. This order must be shaken up now.

Modi govt’s industrial policy shows it has run out of ideas & is taking India back to pre-1991

Exactly 30 years after India turned away from central planning and liberated the private sector, the Modi govt is again handing out subsidies & licenses while putting up tariff walls.

India needed a crisis to reform. It got one in 1991, thanks to Nehru & Indira’s Soviet model

India’s turn to a centrally planned economy began in the 1950s under PM Jawaharlal Nehru. But by 1991, the economy came to a grinding halt and faced a massive crisis.

Covid has undone years of gains India made after 1991 liberalisation

Modi had pledged to turn India into a $5 trillion economy by 2025, but the pandemic is set to push that back by years. Over 200 mn have gone back to earning less than minimum wage a day.

How to bring ‘Big Bang’ reforms in India? Wait for a crisis – even Modi had to

India has once again lived up to reputation of using a crisis to unleash difficult reforms. Nirmala Sitharaman has introduced bold reforms in holy cow sectors like agriculture and defence.

Why this MIT student’s paper on Indian liberalisation threatened trade economists

In Good Economics for Hard Times, Nobel laureates Esther Duflo and Abhijit Banerjee write about the link between liberalisation and inequality in India.

Why do Indians hate JNU-style subsidised education? Because we love the private sector

There have been constant attempts to destabilise campuses in India. Take the suicides of Rohith Vemula, Payal Thadvi, Fathima Latheef or BHU protest for instance.

Bollywood star on ads, Disneyland tickets, space-age branding & yet Thril cola fizzled out

Caught between two worlds, McDowell’s Thril cola made an impact in India, but briefly.

On Camera

Menstrual leave doesn’t work in ‘real world’. And that real world is designed by, for men

When a woman menstruates, when/if she decides to marry, when/if she decides to have kids, should not be factors when looking at a woman’s potential from a hiring standpoint.

US strike on Iran’s key oil export island Kharg raises fears of wider supply disruption

President Trump said the US had bombed military targets on Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf, but spared oil infrastructure.

Supreme Leader Mojtaba, the man Iran must keep alive & the secret force ‘tasked with it’—all about NOPO

The Nirouyeh Vijeh Pasdaran Velayat, or NOPO, was the only force Ali Khamenei trusted.It was founded in 1991 and is more feared than the Revolutionary Guards.

Peaceful power transfers followed uprisings in India’s neighbourhood. It’s a sign of mature democracies

Rating democracies is a tricky business. I am only using the simple metric of who in the Indian subcontinent has had the most peaceful, stable, normal political transitions and continuity.