Ep 237: The Importance of the 1991 Reforms
The Seen and the Unseen - hosted by Amit Varma
The Growth in the Eighties, Right?
Aje: There were two crises that were happening simultaneously. The croniest socialist state is kind of at its peak, right? So everything you have, from your loan wavers to a complete mess with the banking system. And then finally we get to that epochl final moment, where we had the absolute genius of folks like narsimara as prime minister and chirambaram as commerce minister.
The liberalisation of 1991 lifted more than a quarter of a billion people in India out of poverty. And yet, we often don't recognise their importance, and have gone backwards in the last decade. Shruti Rajagopalan and Ajay Shah join Amit Varma in episode 237 of The Seen and the Unseen to discuss what life was like before 1991, where we had gone wrong, what we put right and what remains to be done. Also check out: 1. The 1991 Project. 2. The quest for economic freedom in India -- Shruti Rajagopalan. 3. Ideas and Origins of the Planning Commission in India -- Shruti Rajagopalan. 4. The Art and Science of Economic Policy -- Episode 154 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Vijay Kelkar and Ajay Shah). 5. The Economics and Politics of Vaccines -- Episode 223 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ajay Shah). 6. The Tragedy of Our Farm Bills -- Episode 211 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ajay Shah). 7. Other episodes of The Seen and the Unseen with Ajay Shah: 1, 2, 3. 8. In Service of the Republic — Vijay Kelkar & Ajay Shah 9. Episodes of The Seen and the Unseen w Shruti Rajagopalan, in reverse chronological order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16. 10. Population Is Not a Problem, but Our Greatest Strength -- Amit Varma. 11. Raghu Sanjaylal Jaitley’s Father’s Scooter -- Episode 214 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Raghu Sanjaylal Jaitley). 12. Anticipating the Unintended — Pranay Kotasthane and Raghu Sanjaylal Jaitley’s newsletter. 13. The Dark Side of the Moon -- Pink Floyd. 14. Wish You Were Here -- Pink Floyd. 15. Free to Choose -- Milton Friedman and Rose Friedman. 16. The Road to Serfdom -- Friedrich Hayek. 17. The Fatal Conceit -- Friedrich Hayek. 18. The Clash of Economic Ideas -- Lawrence H White. 19. Pandit's Mind -- The 1951 Time magazine cover story on Jawaharlal Nehru. 20. Lessons from an Ankhon Dekhi Prime Minister -- Amit Varma. 21. An Autobiography -- Jawaharlal Nehru. 22. The Discovery of India -- Jawaharlal Nehru. 23. The First Assault on Our Constitution -- Episode 194 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Tripurdaman Singh). 24. Profit = Philanthropy -- Amit Varma. 25. India Unbound -- Gurcharan Das. 26. India Transformed: 25 Years of Economic Reforms -- Edited by Rakesh Mohan. 27. Fixing Indian Education -- Episode 185 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Karthik Muralidharan). 28. Understanding Indian Healthcare -- Episode 225 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Karthik Muralidharan). 29. Modi's Lost Opportunity -- Episode 119 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Salman Soz). 30. Bootleggers and Baptists-The Education of a Regulatory Economist — Bruce Yandle. 31. Pigs Don’t Fly: The Economic Way of Thinking about Politics — Russell Roberts. 32. Raees: An Empty Shell of a Gangster Film — Amit Varma. 33. The White Man's Burden -- William Easterly. 34. The Tyranny of Experts -- William Easterly. 35. Planners vs. Searchers in Foreign Aid -- William Easterly. 36. We, the People -- Nani Palikhiwala. 37. India’s Agriculture Crisis — Episode 140 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Barun Mitra & Kumar Anand). 38. DeMon, Morality and the Predatory Indian State -- Episode 85 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Shruti Rajagopalan). 39. Most of Amit Varma’s writing on DeMon, collected in one Twitter thread. 40. Narendra Modi Takes a Great Leap Backwards — Amit Varma 41. Beware of the Useful Idiots -- Amit Varma. 42. Restaurant Regulations in India -- Episode 18 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Madhu Menon). 43. India’s Problem is Poverty, Not Inequality -- Amit Varma. 44. On Inequality -- Harry Frankfurt. 45. Breaking the Caste Barrier: Intergenerational Mobility in India -- Viktoria Hnatkovska, Amartya Lahiri and Sourabh B Paul. 46. Intergenerational Mobility in India: New Methods and Estimates Across Time, Space, and Communities -- Sam Asher, Paul Novosad and Charlie Rafkin. 47. Defying the Odds: The Rise of Dalit Entrepreneurs -- Devesh Kapur, D Shyam Babu and Chandra Bhan Prasad. 48. Taking Stock of Our Economy -- Episode 227 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Ila Patnaik). 49. India's Lost Decade -- Episode 116 of The Seen and the Unseen (w Puja Mehra). 50. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's books on Amazon. This episode is sponsored by CTQ Compounds. Check out The Daily Reader, FutureStack and The Social Capital Compound. Use the code UNSEEN for Rs 2500 off. Please subscribe to The India Uncut Newsletter. It’s free! And check out Amit’s online course, The Art of Clear Writing.
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