Indian Politics & Policy Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 2018 | Page 132

India’s Search for Economic Prosperity and Global Power
ty, thus, highlights the need for a radical
reorientation of the involvement of
the state in the economy.
In the final part of the book,
Joshi reiterates the inadequacy of India’s
current “partial reforms model” and the
need for sweeping reforms to achieve
higher prosperity. He also includes an
interesting evaluation of first two years
of the performance of the Modi government.
How has the Modi government
performed? Joshi suggests the answer is
“mixed at best” (309).
Politics and the Radical
Reform Agenda
India’s Long Road is a comprehensive,
accessible, balanced, and nuanced
account that is an important
reading for anyone interested in India’s
political economy. The central argument
of the book is persuasive and Joshi
marshals strong evidence in support
of his call for a radical reform agenda.
Joshi’s emphasis on the state and its
role in India’s future prospects is also a
refreshing departure from typical analyses
on the Indian economy written by
economists. Despite these strengths,
there are a few aspects, mainly related
to the political arena, that the book
downplays and could consider more
substantially.
The book views the relationship
between state and private business in
India in a relatively simplistic fashion.
In particular, the tone of the book often
juxtaposes a weak and inefficient
state with a dynamic private sector, and
the private sector seems to be treated
as a passive recipient of economic policy
decisions. There is little doubt that
private sector dynamism has been a
central theme of India’s economic acceleration
after 1991 and the state in
India has exhibited growing weakness
in several areas in this period. However,
at least three aspects point to the need
for greater complexity in the treatment
of state–business relations in India, and
suggest that it is important to go beyond
the venal state versus passive private
sector narrative.
For a start, private capital’s role
in broader trends of cronyism and corruption
that have characterized the
post-liberalization environment in India
cannot be downplayed. Second, the
period since the 1980s has generally
been marked by a closer relationship between
state and business. Arguably, the
connections between the political and
economic elite in India are closer now
than at any other point in Indian history.
Importantly, both the structural and
instrumental leverage of business have
grown in the post-liberalization period.
This growth in leverage is evident in
several arenas—for example, the growing
presence of businesspersons in parliament
and state legislatures, and the
increased scope of activities and influence
of business associations in policy
arenas. As such, Indian business is not
a passive recipient of policies currently
and it also bears some responsibility
for trends of cronyism and corruption,
which Joshi identifies as a central weakness
of the state.
Third, the book tends to treat
the state and the private sector as
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