The Conventional Account of Liberalization

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to outline elements of the emerging dominant account used to explain India's liberalization of communications policies. Rapid changes in India's economic policy in 1991, followed by movements toward currency convertibility in subsequent years, are the main concerns of many studies of policy liberalization. A large number of liberal economic policies with significant implications for communciations were implemented from 1987 to 1992. The new economic policy of the summer of 1991, the budgets of 1992 and 1993 and various other announcements of the Congress party government of Prime Minister VP. Narasimha Rao accelerated the shift away from an import-substitution, planned, and stateled approach to economic development.1