Corporate Capitalism in Independent India: the Interventionist Model and its Contradictions

Abstract

In Chapter 3 I sketched the genesis and transformation of corporate capital in colonial India. In this chapter, I will attempt to develop a similar characterisation of capital in Independent India, spanning roughly the period 1950 to 1985. First, I will sketch the general context in which the interventionist model was adopted. Next, I shall discuss the principal structures of corporate governance associated with this model, looking at both the micro-level structures internal to the firm as well as the broader political-economic structures within which the firm was embedded. In the third section I will outline the nature of growth and corporate profitability that occurred as a result of the various governance structures specific to the period, and in the final section I will attempt to relate the discussion in the three sections to examine the relationship between the growth of the corporate sector and the overall growth and transformation of the Indian economy during this period.