INDIA’S DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY

AND GROWTH PERFORMANCE

Dilip Saikia *

India was under the British control for about 200 years, which ended with India’s independence in 1947.
For most part of the initial years after independence disruptions associated with partition, drafting a
constitution and establishment of a new government, etc. occupied the major attention of the Indian
leaders. The first major task of the first democratic government under Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru
was to formulate a development strategy to transform India’s economy from a dismal state after the
exploitative colonial rule to a self-contained economy, and thereby, initiate a process of rapid and
balanced economic development. To purport its development strategy the Government of India set up
the Planning Commission in 1950 under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister, which is the central
agency to design, execute and monitor the Five Year Plans (FYP). The First FYP under Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru provided considerable attention to formulate economic policy and set the direction for
the future. In line with the Preamble of the Constitution, the strategy was set for a “socialist pattern of
society”, that the government would play the leading role in the economy, and that economic growth to
be the foremost objective of the state. However, it was the Second FYP under Prime Minister Jawaharlal
Nehru and statistician P. C. Mahalanobis that broadly outlined India’s development strategy that would
dominate until the 1980s.

Post-Independence Development Strategy

The broad objectives that guided India’s development strategy were: (a) achievement of a high rate of
economic growth, which would lead to a sustained improvement in the standard of living of the
population, (b) reduction in inequalities and more especially an accelerated effort to remove poverty at a
pace faster than would be achieved solely through the normal growth process, (c) development of a
mixed economy with a strong public sector, especially in key areas of the economy, (d) achievement of a
high order of self-reliance, (e) promotion of balanced regional development, with a narrowing of
economic difference across regions, and finally, (f) these social and economic objectives were to be
pursued in the framework of a constitutional democracy (Ahluwalia, 1998).
The showpiece of India’s development strategy was modernisation through industrialisation.
Emphasis was given on state-led industrialisation, with all industries and sectors like steal, mining,
machine tools, chemicals, telecommunications, power plants, etc. as well as trade and finance were
reserved for the public sector. The second FYP adopted the strategy of “machine-for-producing machine”
and strongly emphasised on technology and capital intensive heavy industries to achieve rapid
industrial growth, which in turn is the pre-condition for overall economic development. Along with the
state-led industrialisation strategy, the bureaucratic control, which was the result of the industrial
licensing policy, formed another aspect of India’s development strategy during this period.
Another important area of India’s development strategy was the policy towards international
trade and finance. The policymakers favoured a restrictive policy regime, with strong restrictions on
international trade and finance. This is mainly due to the negative perceptions towards international
openness, which were after India’s experience during the colonial rule, along with two economic
justifications infant industry argument and export pessimism.

*Dilip Saikia is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Darrang College, Tezpur, Assam-784001, India. E-mail:
dilip.gu@gmail.com.

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 The agriculture sector was neglected during the early years of planning. The policy makers
gradually realised the importance of agriculture as the sector provided the major share of employment.
Consequently the strategy of Green Revolution was initiated in 1965. Emphasis was given in building
institutional and physical infrastructure, such as irrigation and dams, rural roads and markets,
cooperative credits, price support and extension programs for education and training of farmers, etc. to
improve agricultural productivity. Similarly, land reform was also initiated for improving productivity
as well as achieving distributional equity.
Thus, beginning in the 1950s and with its extension in subsequent decades, India has followed an
inward-looking, controlled development strategy after independence, where the state has played the
dominant role. It has emphasised on state-led industrialisation, importsubstitution, a large public
sector and control on private sector. The entire system involved a set of restrictive policies like industrial
licensing, exchange control, import licensing, capital control, and price controls, etc. At the hindsight of
these policies was the country’s experience during the colonial rule and the influence from the progress
achieved by the socialist economy of the Soviet Union. To quote Singh (2009) 
“[...] India’s development strategy at independence can be viewed as the reversal of one facet of
colonial rule, but the continuation of another trend. With full-fledged democracy, in contrast to
the colonial period [...] government became avowedly an instrument of the governed, and public
spending took on the objective of economic development as well as political stability. On the other
hand, engagement with the international economy continued to be viewed with suspicion and this
colored policymaking quite heavily [...]”

Contradictory to the perception of the policy makers, the real outcome of the controlled regime
was gloomy. The annual growth of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) averaged at 3.63 percent and that of
per capita income averaged at 1.40 percent during the first three decades of planned development (1951-
51 to 1980-81). Despite giving the highest priority, the industry sector (including construction)
experienced slow growth at 5.29 percent per annum during 1951-51 to 1980-81, while the performance of
agriculture was poor, 2.57 percent per annum during the same.
Noticeably the policy makers had not entrusted particular attention to the social sector
development and as a result the performance was not bright (though the economy achieved some
improvements in health and education sector). The life expectancy at birth increased from 32.1 years in
19950-51 to 50.4 years in 1980-81 and literacy rate raised from 18.3 percent to 43.6 percent during the
same, with no significant improvement in male-female gap. Though the death rate was substantially
declined from 27.4 to 12.5, birth rate declined moderately from 39.9 to 33.9 during 1950-51 to 1980-81,
which resulted in increase in growth rate of population from 1.25 percent in 1951 to 2.22 percent in 1981.
The state-led development strategy had been under the scanner of many academics from the
beginning and many argued for some change of the strategy. One of early criticisms came from Milton
Friedman, who criticised the Nehru-Mahalanobis model for more emphasis on capital-intensive heavy
industries and subsidizing labour-intensive, low-skill cottage industries and maintained that it would
waste capital and labour and retard the development of small scale industries (Roy, 1998). The success
of the East-Asian economies such as South Korea and Taiwan from opening their economies by the time
also called for reorientation of India’s development strategy.
However, hardly any change had been initiated in development strategy. The Indian National
Congress (INC) was the only party that formed government in the Centre until 1977 and the conviction
of the party on Fabian Socialism was the major impediment for changes in policy during this period.
The first non-congress government in the Centre by Janata Party led by Prime Minister Morarji Desai in
1977 initiated some changes in development strategy by easing restrictions on capacity expansion,
removing price controls, reducing corporate taxes and promoting small scale industries in large
numbers. Nonetheless, the Morarji Desai government didn’t continue for more than two years and was
replaced by Charan Singh government (Janata Party- Secular, with INC) in July 1979 and finally the INC
government led by Indira Gandhi in January 1980. The political instability at the Centre didn’t allow
realising benefit of the economy and further reformulation of strategies.

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Reforms of the 1980s
Though the general wisdom suggest that the economic reforms in India actually commenced in 1991
and a series of deregulation measures were initiated since 1985 during the Rajiv Gandhi government, a
closer look for a cut-off date as to when economic reforms took root reveals that it was in 1980  when
Indira Gandhi was regained power after three years break. Following the external sector crisis triggered
after the second oil shock in 1979, the economic situation was rapidly deteriorating by the time Ms.
Gandhi returned to power in January 1980, which compelled the government to approach the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) for assistance, and eventually, in November 1981the IMF sanctioned
an amount of around US$6 billion, that to be disbursed over a three-year period and in three tranches. In
conformity with the specified conditions by the IMF, the government unraveled the sixth FYP (1980-85)
and promised to undertake a series of measures such as fiscal reforms, reductions in import duties, de-
licensing of industries, revamp of public sector enterprises, etc. to improve the competitiveness of the
economy. But, by 1984 the economy was recovered and the government decided to exit the loan
programme and avoided implementation of reforms programme.
However, the Ms. Gandhi’s effort was not in vain, as reforms initiatives came immediately after
Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi took his office in October 1984 and it picked up significantly since 1985.
The emergence of these early reforms was mainly facilitated by two factors  (a) by the mid 1970s,
industrialists were beginning to find the strict regime counterproductive and started pressing the
government for the relaxation of controls, and (b) the improved export performance and remittances
from overseas workers in the Middle East had led to the accumulation of a comfortable level of foreign
exchange reserves, which lent confidence to policymakers and bureaucrats who had lived in the
perpetual fear of a balance of payments (BoP) crisis (Panagariya, 2005).
Though many authors point out that the reforms process under Rajiv Gandhi was half-hearted
and introduced quietly, this need not necessarily mean that the reforms were marginal or
inconsequential to the growth performance. The major policy reforms announced during this period
were  (a) reintroduction of the Open General Licensing list in 1976, (b) decline in the share of canalised
imports, (c) introduction of several export incentives between 1985-86 and 1989-90, (d) significant
relaxation of industrial controls and introduction of related reforms such as increase in de-licensing,
introduction of broad banding, relaxations in capacity control, increased the asset limit for MRTP
companies from Rs. 200 million to Rs. 1,000 million, complete abolition of price and distribution controls
on cement and aluminum, and tax reforms, etc; and (e) introduction of a realistic exchange rate.
The impact of the first wave of reforms process was felt immediately. The growth rate
accelerated to 5.88 percent between 1986-87 and 1990-91 and further to 7.20 percent between 1988-89 and
1990-91, compared to 4.92 percent between 1981-82 and 1985-86. The outcomes of these reform measures
can be understand in terms of trade flows and industrial growth. There has been a steady growth in
exports and imports during the first half of 1970s, which continued in the second half too. Panagariya
(2005) observed that in the first half of 1980s the non oil imports expanded only 7.1 percent per annum,
though it increased to 12.3 percent per annum in the second half of 1980s. The share of non-oil imports
to GDP has increased from 4.1 percent in 1976-77 to 5.1 percent and then declined to 4.8 percent in 1984-
85. However, in the second half of 1980s the share has steadily increased and reached its pick at 6
percent in 1989-90. On the industrial side, there has significant increase in the total factor productivity
growth of manufacturing sector during the second half of 1980s compared to the first half of 1980s and
second half of 1970s (Chand and Sen, 2002).

The Crisis of 1991 and Economic Reforms

After the Rajiv Gandhi government (1984-89), there was political instability in the country with the
government changed two times between 1989 and 1991. Though the political instability came to an end
after P. V. Narasimha Rao formed the NIC government in June 1991, the economy encountered a severe
BoP crisis by then, which compelled the government to change its development strategy.
The 1991crisis, however, was not an outcome of some immediate events; rather it was the
outcome of the gradual development during the 1980s. The 19980s was characterised by macroeconomic

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mismanagement, with government’s borrowing abroad and huge government expenditure. Joshi and
Little (1994) pointed out that the investmenttoGDP ratio has increased steadily in the public sector in
1980s. The government current expenditure has increased from 18.6 percent of GDP during 1980-81 to
1984-85 to 23 percent of GDP between 1985-86 and 1990-91, the bulk of which was coming from defence
spending, interest payments, and subsidies, etc. (Panagariya, 2005). With the revenue receipts
marginally improves during the second half of 1980s, fiscal deficit went up from average 8 percent of
GDP during 1980-81 to 11984-85 to 10.1 percent of GDP during 1985-86 to 1990-91. This mounting fiscal
deficit was mainly financed by public borrowings and borrowings from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI,
2006). As per the RBI Report on Currency and Finance, the internal-debt-to-GDP ratio steadily increased
from 35.6 percent in 1980-81 to 53.5 percent in 1990-91, whereas the debt servicing in terms of interest
payment increased from 2 percent to 4.0 percent of GDP between 1980-81 and 1990-91.
The mammoth fiscal deficit and the pumping of money supply through government expenditure
fuelled the inflationary pressure in the economy, especially in later part of the 1980s. The inflation rate,
which was moderately at 4.4 percent per annum in 1985-86, went up to a double digit level 10.73 percent
in 1990-91 (RBI, 2011).
The hike in the inflation rate had direct impact on the exchange rate. The exchange rate, which
was officially pegged to a basket of currencies with small fluctuation margins prior to 1992 steadily
depreciated in the second half of the 1980s and reached its minimum level by the second quarter of 1991
(Cerra and Saxena, 2002).
The exchange rate depreciation, further, has direct impact on India’s trade and current account
as export growth come down to 4 percent in 1990-91. Though export grew at a faster rate than import in
the second half of the 1980, the absolute difference between export and import remained large, and total-
imports-to GDP ratio exceeded the total-imports-to GDP ratio by 2.5 to 3 percentage points throughout
the 1980s. The gap between imports and exports was mainly financed by external borrowings. As a
result, the foreign debt continued to accumulate and rose from UD$35 billion at the end of 1984-85 to
US$69 billion at the end of 1990-91. The external debt-to-GDP ratio increased from 17.7 percent in 1984-
85 to 24.5 percent in 1989-90 and the debt servicing ratio increased from 18 percent to 27 percent over the
same time. Along with the growth of external debt, there was rapid deterioration in the quality of these
debts. The share of non-concessional debt increased from 42 percent to 54 percent, while the average
maturity of debt declined from 27 years to 20 years.
Thus, the fiscal deficit started with unproductive government expenditure and the mounted
external borrowings led to huge public debts, with debt servicing in terms of interest payment
accounting for a large proportion of government revenue. The result was a steady increase in the current
account deficit (CAD) throughout the 1980s, which was balanced for the second half of 1970s. The CAD-
to-GDP ratio kept steadily increased from 1.5 in 1980-81 to 2.78 in 1988-89 and then 3.0 in 1990-91 (RBI,
2011). This rising current account deficit and more dependence on the commercial external financing
made India increasingly vulnerable to external shocks by 1990-91.
The political instability between 1989-90 and 1990-91 was also one of the factors for deteriorating
India’s economic condition in the early 1990s. The political instability, along with widening current
account deficit caused loss of investors’ confidence. This was further worsened by the downgrade of
India’s credit rating by credit rating agencies. Amidst of these situations India’s foreign exchange
reserve (FER) fell sharply from US$1.2 billion in January 1991 to less than half by June 1991. The FER-to-
GDP ratio fell very sharply and reached close to 0.25 by the mid 1991, which was hardly enough to
finance India’s three weeks of imports, and the Indian government was just a week ahead of default.
To tackle the crisis the newly formed Narasimha Rao government approached the IMF for a
US$1.8 billion bailout loan. The IMF agreed to provide financial assistance with the condition for
liberalizing the economy. With no other way left out, Prime Minister Narasimha Rao along with Finance
Minister Manmohan Singh initiated the “stabilisationcumstructural” reforms process in July 1991. The
stabilisation process mainly involves shortterm demand management through monetary and fiscal
policies. The specific objectives of stabilisation were  (a) to bring inflation under control through
restrictive monetary policies, (b) to correct deficit in the BoP usually through devaluation of exchange
rates accompanied by import liberalisation and (c) to check fiscal deficits by curbing government

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spending, particularly the non-developmental expenditures. On the other hand, the structural
adjustment is combined with the supply side of the economy or raising the long-term growth through
improving efficiency, productivity and competitiveness.
The major economic reforms initiated in the 1991 broadly covered the areas of industrial
licensing, foreign trade, foreign investment, exchange rate management, tax reforms and the financial
sector. These reform measures are summarised in Box 1. The gist of these economic reform measures
was to transform the economy from a state-regulated closed economy to a market oriented open
economy. The economic rationale behind these policies has been to achieve a high and sustainable
economic growth and make India’s economy more competitive and market oriented.

Box 1: Major Economic Reforms of 1991

INDUSTRY
 Abolition of industrial licensing.
 Sharp reduction of industries reserved for the public sector.
 Abolition of separate permission needed by MRTP companies.
 Freer access to foreign technology.
 Items reserved for the small scale industries gradually reduced.
EXTERNAL SECTOR
 Devaluation and transition to a Market-determined Exchange Rate.
 Phased reduction of import licensing (quantitative restrictions).
 Phased reduction of peak custom duties.
 Policies to encourage direct and portfolio foreign investment.
 Monitoring and controls over external borrowing especially short term.
 Build-up of foreign exchange reserves.
 Amendment of FERA to reduce restrictions on firms.
FINANCIAL SECTOR
 Phasing in of Basle prudential norms.
 Reduction of reserve requirements for banks (CRR and SLR).
 Gradual freeing up of interest rates.
 Legislative empowerment of SEBI.
 Establishment of the National Stock Exchange.
 Abolition of government control over capital issues.
 Eliminating prior approval of the Reserve Bank of India for large loans.
 More liberal licensing of private banks.
 Freer expansion by foreign banks.
PUBLIC SECTOR
 Disinvestment programme begun.
 Greater autonomy/accountability for public enterprises.
FISCAL
 Reduction of the fiscal deficit.
 Launching of reforms of major tax reforms.
AGRICULTURE
 More remunerative procurement prices for cereals.
 Reduction in protection to the manufacturing sector.

Post-Reforms Performance of the Economy

The economy has been performing extensively well in the post-reforms period. With nominal GDP of
US$1377.26 billion in 2009 India is the tenth largest economy in the World and ranked fourth in terms of
purchasing power parity (US$3808.44 billion in 2009). The economy’s GDP per capita stood at US$2993

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(PPP at constant 2005 international dollar) in 2009, which is more than double compared to US$1232.19
in 1991 (World Bank online database). The growth of the economy has been fantabulous and it is among
the fastest growing economies in the World. The annual growth rate of the economy averaged at 6.86
percent in the post-reforms period (1992-93 to 2009-10), compared to 5.40 percent during 1980s and 4.07
percent during the four decades before economic reforms (1950-51 to 1991-92). The growth momentum
picked up in 2003-04 and since then the economy has not looked back, recording 8.46 percent growth
rate during 2003-04 to 2009-10. The industry and services sectors continued to fuel the economic growth,
while growth of agriculture remained gloomy. Industry’s contribution (including construction sector) to
GDP has steadily increased from 25.92 percent in 1990-91 to 28.47 percent in 2009-10, whereas services
sector continued to contribute about 57 percent to GDP during the same period. The performance of the
corporate sector has been spectacular in the reforms period. The growth rate of sales has increased from
14 percent during 1990-91 to 1999-00 to 14.6 percent during 2000-01 to 2006-07, while growth of gross
profits and profit after tax has increased from 12.5 percent to 20 percent and 11.8 percent to 35.6 percent
respectively during the same period (RBI Monthly Bulletin, various issues).
Apart from the spurting economic growth, there have been many positive features of India’s
performance in the post-reforms period. The economy has achieved remarkable success in savings and
capital formation, which is regarded as one of the driver of India’s recent growth story. The gross
domestic savings and gross domestic capital formation recorded at 36.5 percent and 33.7 percent of GDP
in 2009-10, compared to 26 percent and 22.8 percent respectively in 1990-91 (GOI, 2011a). With
comprehensive efforts at fiscal consolidation the government has reduced the combined fiscal deficit of
the central and state governments to 4.09 percent and revenue deficit to 0.19 percent in 2007-08, as
against 9.41 percent and 4.19 percent respectively in 1990-91 (RBI, 2011).
The social sector performance has also been impressive during the post-reforms period. The
period witnessed significant decline in poverty, birth and death rates, increase in life expectancy,
literacy, and human development. The percentage of population bellow poverty line declined from 44.5
percent in 1983 to 36.0 percent in 1993 and then 27.5 percent in 2004-05 (GOI, 2011b).
The economy has been doing well in the external sector during this period. India’s external trade
has been successfully increased both in terms of volume and its share in GDP and total World trade. The
volume of exports increased from US$22.9 billion in 1991 to US$319.29 billion in 2010 and the volume of
imports increased from US$22.9 billion to US$429.75 billion during the same period.
At the same time the economy has not only become a major destination of foreign investment,
but also emerged as one of the emerging source of outward foreign direct investment in the post-
reforms. The stock of FDI to and from India recorded at US$167 billion and US$ 79 billion in 2009,
compared to US$173 million and US$113 million in 1991. The economy also accumulated sizeable
foreign exchange reserve (FER), which increased from US$5.8 billion in 1990-91 to US$309.7 billion in
2007-08 and then declined to US$279 billion in 2009-10.
The spectacular performance of the economy in the last two decades and the initiation of
business friendly policies helps in improving the investors’ confidence, and thereby, business
environment in India. There has been a large increase in investment intentions: the number of
investment intentions, in the licensed and the delicensed sectors, registered in Industrial Entrepreneurs
Memoranda during August 1991 to September 2011 accounted for 91,853 with proposed investment of
Rs.8,963,742 crore (GOI, 2011c).
There is no doubt that India’s economy has achieved fabulous growth in the post-reforms era,
especially in the first decade of the 21st century, emerged as one of the fastest growing economies in the
World and substantially managed her external as well as internal balances. Nevertheless, the economy
has also confronted with many challenges during this period, such as sluggish growth of agricultural
sector, urban centric growth, gainful employment creation, development of human capital, achieving
social and gender equity, income and regional inequality, macroeconomic management on the fiscal and
monetary sides, developing physical infrastructure, coping with international uncertainty, etc.
Thus, though the new economic policy has achieved remarkable success in the areas of high
growth, poverty reduction, restoring industrial growth, comfortable external sector, maintaining high
savings and investment and financial stability, there are many areas where reforms are not adequate

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and thereby performances, and hence, need for further reforms. Thus, challenges remains to frame the
development strategy in context of inclusive growth. As Mohan (2006) remarks, “[…] we still have miles
to go. The poverty ratio of 2326 percent is still too high; about a quarter billion people living in poverty
are too many. Employment growth is inadequate and we have an expanding young labour force, which
will demand quality jobs. Public service delivery continues to be poor, with little sign of improvement.”
He further goes on “[…] We need to move to the next level of sustained growth so that per capita
income growth can exceed seven percent per annum (or over 8.5 percent per GDP growth per annum on
a sustained basis) and thereby see at least a doubling every decade.” Further reforms are needed in the
areas of agriculture, infrastructure, power sector, fiscal management, labour market, urban land use,
financial sector and the bureaucracy. To quote Ahluwalia (2002), “The industrial and trade policy
reforms […] need to be supplemented by labor market reforms, which are a critical missing link. The
logic of liberalisation also needs to be extended to agriculture, where numerous restrictions remain in
place. Reforms aimed at encouraging private investment in infrastructure have worked in some areas,
but not in others.”

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