The Intelligent Person's Guide to Liberalization

A lucid analysis of the 'revolutionary' changes in the Indian economy

Faced with a major economic crisis in 1990-91, the government responded by initiating far-reaching policy reforms aimed at opening up the country's economy. Since then there has been little discussion on key issues and much political posturing. In this important book two of India's leading economists rescue the current economic debate from jargon and dogma and present it in language accessible to ordinary Indians who, finally, must bear the brunt of the reforms. Cutting through the euphoria and hype that prevent any serious appraisal of liberalization, they highlight the advantages of a free market as also the grave dangers of unquestioning reliance on market forces in a developing country which is home to the largest number of the world's poor. They argue for a flexible system that will adapt to changes in society and polity, a system where both the market and the State must play a role.
Eschewing the extreme positions of both the left and the right, this book seeks to encourage a serious reappraisal of the country's bold experiment with privatization, for, as the authors put it, 'doubt is as important as knowledge in the design of economic policy'.

Amit Bhaduri was educated in Calcutta, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cambridge University, from where he received his Ph. D in 1967. Currently professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, he has held professorial and research positions in many countries, including Austria (Vienna and Linsz University, Institute for Advanced Study, and Academy of Science), Germany (Bremen University, Institute for Advanced Study, Berlin), Italy (Bolognia University), Norway and Sweden (Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in Social Sciences, Uppsala University, and Trondheim University), and USA (Stanford University). He has served as research advisor and expert on many UN bodies and has been a member of various international commissions, including the European Commission on Unemployment and the Commission on Rural Finance.
Amit Bhaduri has written nearly fifty articles in international journals and three books, The Economic Structure of Backward Agriculture, Macroeconomics: The Dynamics of Commodity Production, and Unconventional Economic Essays. He is on the editorial board of five technical journals in economics published from Cambridge, the Hague, Karachi, Paris and Rome.

Deepak Nayyar was educated at St. Stephen's College, Delhi University and went on to study at Balliol College, Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes scholar. He was, for some time, in the Indian Administrative Service and later served as Economic Advisor in the Ministry of Commerce. More recently, he served as Chief Economic Advisor to the Government of India and Secretary in the Ministry of Finance. Currently professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, he has taught economics at Oxford University, the University of Sussex and the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.
Deepak Nayyar's previous books are India's Exports and Export Policies, Economic Relations Between Socialist Countries and the Third World, Migration, Remittances and Capital Flows and Economic Liberalization in India. He has also published several articles in professional journals.