Decoding 25 years of Indian reforms

THE ECONOMIC TIMES Thu, Jul 21, 2016 | 01:21 PM IST ET Special Newsletter

25 years of Indian reforms India's best wealth creators, business leaders and political leaders on the 25th anniversary of the most momentous event in India's history. Read about an economic revolution that's still in progress.

How a PM with zero knowledge of economics scripted India's biggest turnaround story Manmohan Singh, the brain behind the reforms as Rao's finance minister, said: "I had no idea that Rao was in favour of liberalisation." 4 reforms that pulled India back after it ran out of money in 1991 By June 1991, India had less than $1 billion foreign reserves, just about enough to meet about 3 weeks of imports, even after borrowing from IMF. When Narayana Murthy took 3 years and 50 trips to Delhi to import one computer Those days I couldn't afford a flight, so I took a train. I had to stay in some seedy place near Old Delhi Railway Station, tells Murthy.

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Nehru built many strong institutions, almost all have eroded, says Swaminathan Aiyar "India used to be a leader of the G77 group of developing countries. But is now a member of G20, the biggest global powers." read more...

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Not all Indian corporates welcomed the new environment of competition and openness, says Cyrus Mistry "It took tremendous courage of conviction for Indian corporates like the Tatas to decide that protection would be inappropriate." These children of liberalisation are already stars and are inspiring the next-gen The Pentium Chip went on to become the most popular chip in the history of the semiconductors and popularised the use of PCs and laptops for decades to come. Changing the mindset is crucial to keep up with competition, says Kumar Mangalam Birla So the first change that liberalisation entailed was a change in mindset, forgetting old ways of running business. India must defy gravity, take-off time is now, says Uday Kotak Liberalisation brought about a significant change with the opening up of telecom and financial sectors for private players. Devendra Raj Mehta talks about being SEBI chief, and the 7 years when 44 reforms were launched Mehta, says he never faced any interference from the four finance ministers — Manmohan Singh, Pranab Mukherjee, P Chidambaram and Yashwant Sinha. How these honchos changed the consumer of liberalised India Ramdev and Patanjali cofounder Acharya Balkrishna have maintained that they are not out to make money but to help people. How HUL's Harish Manwani cleaned up competition post liberalisation Manwani feels the context for doing business became easier for him as a leader compared to his predecessor, who operated during a price-control regime. Sunil Mittal, the eye that foresaw a telecom empire in crystal ball The group was eager to enter a business that offered opportunity to scale up quickly and Mittal believed mobile telephony had great potential. Aditya Birla group's international footprints made a beeline for success The group chose M&As as a key strategy to purchase cement plants both in India and overseas. What 1991 reforms have taught B-schools While quality remains one of the pain points for the Indian education system, certain trends defined the growth of business schools in India.

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