How did the story of India’s liberalization go from triumphant breakout to risky disengagement? The answer is complicated, but the China factor dominates it Growing up during the peak of the licence-permit raj created within me an aversion to economic protectionism.
Import substitution might have succeeded in other places and times but in the India of my childhood the best it did was produce Thums Up.
Much as I admire the inventors of Thums Up, the fizzy drink was poor compensation for high inflation, lack of consumer choice, and a nightmarish bureaucracy that encouraged law breaking.
When the path of liberalization was first explored, hacking through a jungle of red tape, many commentators believed it would lead us off a cliff.