In the post-liberalization era, Indian politics is moving from ascriptive politics to developmental politics. (UPSC CSE Mains 2017 - Political Science and International Relations, Paper 1)
- The state in India after liberalisation has in fact expanded not shrunk. This ‘expanded state’ now includes consultants, young fellows, and professionals who are supposed to ‘professionalise’ the development delivery and realise the agenda of ‘good governance’ in policy making. Development and welfare continue to be central to state legitimacy in India and the expanded state with its new actors aims at better welfare provision.
- Scholars have posited that contrary to expectations, economic liberalisation in India has not led to state withdrawal from the economy and society. Instead, the post-liberalisation state in India has restructured its role and functions. This restructuring has led to the involvement of new actors and institutions who work closely with the state and within the state’s bureaucratic hierarchies. Central and state governments in India regularly partner today with NGOs, and even set up government-organised NGOs known as GONGOs.
- India had a mixed economy before economic liberalization and it continued to have one afterward, but the balance between the public sector and the private sector in the mixed economy has decisively changed. With economic liberalization, the public sector has seen a relative decline in the pace of its expansion and therefore in its presence in economic planning, which was precisely the intent of the shift. But the halt to the relentless expansion of the public sector was profoundly consequential for the Planning Commission since the later had derived its drive and energy earlier from planning for the public sector.
- Liberalization''s impact is double-edged, and not one dimensional. Economic liberalization has two aspects - an internal and an external one. The former revolves around the relaxation or removal of controls by the state over the market. The latter, involving the integration of the national economy with the international economy, carriers benefits, but it also confronts the nation-state with the new challenges by increasing the exposure to the external shocks; individual regions of the nation-state do not remain immune from their destabilizing effects. External shocks necessitate national measures by the centre, both remedial and preventive, to cope with them.
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