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This chapter investigates how global business has influenced the operation of Indian businesses. It discusses the operation of national companies in British India and describes the receptive phase of foreign investment from 1948–67, the restrictive phase from 1968–79, and the liberalization phase from the 1990s onwards. This chapter highlights the trend for Indian companies to acquire foreign companies rather than merely entering into a technical collaboration, and suggests that increased overseas acquisitions can be considered as a response mechanism of Indian firms to forces unleashed by trade liberalization and lifting of most restrictions in the Indian economy. It also provides case studies of ITC Limited, ICI India Limited, HCL Group, Motherson Sumi Systems Limited, and Ranbaxy Laboratories Limited.

This chapter discusses the modern story of Indian business and economy. After two hundred years of colonial rule and relative economic stagnation, India has started to regain its lost glory in world trade. According to Goldman Sachs Economic Research, India's high growth rate since 2003 represents a structural increase rather than simply a cyclical upturn and it projects India's potential or sustainable growth rate at about eight per cent until 2020. This chapter looks at a few sectors that are or can become powerful growth drivers to sustain the economy while providing employment to tens of thousands as they migrate towards a better lifestyle. These include information technology (IT), IT-enabled services, wellness and fitness, sports, pharmaceutical industry, entertainment and media, and automobile and component sectors.

This chapter introduces the economic, social, and political aspects of Indian modernities. It considers the question of uneven modernisation and studies the sphere of politics. The Indian economy and reform is discussed in detail as well.

The central concept of the Naxalite metaphysic was the characterization of the Indian economy as ‘semi-feudal, semi-colonial’. The characterization is not so much the description of a state of affairs as an injunction to the action of a particular kind. The characterization also does not refer so much to facts of the economy in a ‘materialist’ sense, but to perceived experiences of personality which are reified into an economic terminology. Semi-feudalism accrues from a schema which sees the Indian economy as progressing from a state of feudalism to a state of capitalism, in which semi-feudalism is an intermediate state. This chapter also considers the agrarian conditions in India and the question of the mode of production.

This chapter examines the role of state-owned enterprises or public sector undertakings (PSUs) in Indian economy. PSUs are government-controlled companies or statutory corporations set up by an Act of Parliament, or departmental enterprises of the government like in the defence sector, railways, or telecommunications. This chapter identifies the management problems of PSUs and describes how pressure to stay relevant is forcing several large PSUs to shake up their style of management and emulate the dynamics of the private sector. It contends that PSUs have been instrumental in creating basic economic infrastructure in the country and developing a deep bank of technical skills; clearly, though, they can deliver better value only by sharpening their commercial orientation.

India's financial sector is not deeply integrated with the global financial system, which spared it the first round adverse effects of the global financial and economic crisis and left Indian banks mostly unaffected. However, as the financial crisis morphed in to a full-blown global economic downturn, India could not escape the second round effects. The chapter discusses how the global crisis has affected India through three distinct channels: financial markets, trade flows, and exchange rates and identifies policy measures to restore the Indian gross domestic product growth back to its potential rate of 8–9% per year.

This chapter outlines contours of caste disparity in modern contemporary India, evidence that seriously questions the belief that caste is irrelevant in globalizing India. It presents evidence spread over the last 20 years, using the largest two data sets after the national census, on various indicators of material well-being. Some of these indicators have been aggregated by the author into a Caste Development Index (CDI). This index, as well as other indicators, clearly shows substantial regional variation, but no reversal of traditional caste hierarchies. The relationship between the regional distribution of the CDI and the rate of growth of state domestic product is also examined, to address whether disparities are lower in richer or faster-growing states.

The national movement had thrown up two alternative scenarios for the reconstruction of Indian economy and society. One vision was associated with Mahatma Gandhi. Whatever the anomalies in his thought and practice, it is clear that in the path of economic development eventually charted by the Indian nation, the Mahatma’s ideals were made redundant with a quite alarming rapidity. As a nationalist leader who had spent many years in British prisons, Jawaharlal Nehru’s attitude toward the West was an ambivalent one. The four stages in the industrial orientation of Indian forestry are elaborated. The continuity between colonial and post-colonial forestry regimes is most clearly manifest in the system of ownership. There is a whole complex of processes that result to resource exhaustion in the case of Indian forestry. The forestry practices introduced by the British and continued thereafter are neither scientific nor conservation-oriented.

The focus of this interview is the Indian economy and its challenges and uncertainties. Amit Bhaduri states that although India has performed better and has maintained a steady growth rate, it has never tried growth from below. The interview looks at the agrarian sector of the economy, Bhaduri's three-step analyses of the changes in the political economy of India, and the reforms that were initiated by Manmohan Singh. It ends by discussing the initiation of the second generation reforms that would enable the Indian manufacturing industry to capitalize on global opportunities and drive the growth of the Indian economy to the next level.

This chapter addresses existing literature concerning the Indian Ocean, and places specific focus on the role of merchants in the maritime economy on India’s West Coast. The essay provides insight into the ways workers contributed to the articulation of the region of India into the modern world system and makes a comment on globalisation and industrialisation in India since the sixteenth century.

This chapter introduces transnational feminist and affect theory frameworks, two activist troupes, and key concepts of sentimental capitalism and hunger called theater to argue the significance of analyzing a global discursive regime of creative economy policy within the same analytical frame as activist performance. Highlighting recent articulations, affects, and contradictions of Indian creative economy policy, it presents shifting discursive and political histories. Rather than focusing on capital-rich cultural production, it makes a case for attending to unrecognized creativity within activist performance whilst analyzing the latter’s messy collaborations with hegemonic regimes of creativity. Outlines the book’s organization: Part 1 historically and spatially locates a global discursive regime in India, Ahmedabad, and Delhi; Parts 2 and 3 are ethnographies of the two troupes.

This chapter reports a brief overview of Indian economic policies and development over the period since independence. Indian export growth was dull when the world economy was expanding rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s. Overall economic growth was sharply decreased during the balance-of-payments crisis of 1966–67. There was a vital enhancement in access to schooling. The stabilization aspects of policy in 1991 bore short-term success. As of 2000, it was clear that the Indian economy had changed markedly over the post-crisis years. Quite clearly, the reforms to date have ameliorated the functioning of the economy and permitted a higher rate of economic growth than was regarded as attainable on a sustainable basis in earlier decades. All of the reforms presented will enhance Indian economic performance and growth.

India is currently the world’s second most populous nation and the third largest economy on a purchasing power parity basis. These are impressive statistics for a country that attained independence in 1947, and only began liberalizing and opening up its economy in 1991. However, Indian firms are not yet represented on a global stage, and are relatively few in number with respect to their US, European, Japanese and most recently Chinese counterparts. In this chapter we provide a historical overview of the Indian MNC from independence to present times. We draw on institutional, industry, and firm factors to explain their evolution and discuss the way forward for Indian MNCs including challenges and opportunities. We also provide some suggestions for governments and industry to further facilitate the growth of the Indian MNC.

This chapter examines the resilience to the global financial crisis based on experiences of the Indian economy. By assessing commonly used measures such as gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate; unemployment rate; fall in property values; value destruction of financial assets; current account deficits; and the failure of institutions, corporations, and banks, the discussion considers the relatively high resilience of the Indian economy as compared to those of the United States and Europe. Some lessons on economic resilience include high savings rate and lower credit exposure, a strong regulatory framework and an effective central bank responsible for monetary policy, policy emphasis on stability rather than growth, and lowering of economic dependence on exports.

The seven decades of the Palanpur study cover India’s life as an independent nation. The chapter highlights those changes in India’s economy and policy that relate, and are relevant, to our understanding of Palanpur’s development. Amongst the key events in India’s history that are of particular pertinence in Palanpur are the land reforms of the 1950s associated with zamindari abolition, the green revolution, diversification of employment into non-farm activities, with increasing incomes in rural areas, the slow expansion of education, rapid population growth, changing social, political, and demographic structures, transformation in communications, liberalization, and the opening of the economy. These changes in the overall economic environment have constituted crucial context for, and forces behind, the changes observed in Palanpur. The seven decades of data and close know ledge of Palanpur also help to illuminate the overall story of India’s development and locate it in a specific and human context.