Slip, Stitch and Stumble

Manmohan Singh’s 1991 Union Budget speech made history by altering the course of the Indian economy, especially its financial sector. His measures took a broom to multiple cobwebs in this sector. What Manmohan Singh started over three decades ago is still a work in progress today, but it does raise some questions: Why did he focus on financial sector reforms? What has motivated continuing these reforms? This book tries to answer questions like these while focusing on the evolution of financial sector reforms which, oddly, remain incomplete even after thirty years. The fabric of this sector has been fraying and initiatives over the past three decades have resembled hasty, temporary needlework; the patchwork, incomplete reforms make the sector further vulnerable to failure. Hence: Slip, Stitch and Stumble. This book does not claim to present an exhaustive history of financial sector reforms. Instead, it examines the provocations behind some of India’s big-ticket reforms while trying to understand the motivation of players who have been putting roadblocks on the path to progress. All this even as a closed economy was transforming into one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.