The national socio-economic infrastructure is a major player in shaping citizens’ lives. And India, like the rest of the world, has been witness to the vicissitudes of the many political parties in power and their ideologies that affected — in varying degrees — the fates and fortunes of those they govern. In this context, the annual budgets and other significant fiscal reforms and acts touch us directly or indirectly — in the day-to-day running of our homes, our consumer choices, the three-, four-, five-year or the many long-term plans that we make as we try to chart out a life that makes sense for us. And it can rightly be said that the liberalisation of the country’s policies in 1991 — under the aegis of the then Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao and his finance minister Dr Manmohan Singh — was the major financial development that set the economy on its upward trajectory. Although debates raged on for a while on whether it would be beneficial or sustainable, no one could deny, even then, that the consequent deregulation of markets and greater foreign investment helped create the route map for an economically independent India to follow and (hopefully) become a high-income country.
I’m keen to delve more into both the micro and macro level effects of the seachange of ’91 and examine its legacy, so I air dash to New Delhi to have a focussed conversation with 49-year-old Sonia Singh, award-winning editorial director of NDTV. And, in light of the recent watershed moment in India’s political history, I reconnect with her after my return to Mumbai to get her updated views.
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