Indian Politics & Policy Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 2018 | Page 136

India’s Search for Economic Prosperity and Global Power
process as one, continuous process that
began in 1991 (or for some scholars,
in the 1980s). The scholarship also often
tends to conflate various policy dimensions
involved in India’s economic
liberalization. Moreover, following Jenkins
(1999), numerous studies characterize
the process of reforms as incremental
and carried out by “stealth.” In
contrast, Sinha highlights the distinct
nature of “second generation reforms”
in the area of trade policy, which in her
view were extensive (not incremental)
and rapid. This is a significant contrast
to Joshi’s general description of the reforms
process. As such, her study implies
that the Indian reforms process
is potentially uneven in terms of speed
and scope along different policy dimensions,
and disaggregating reforms along
different policy dimensions is likely to
be a useful exercise.
A third contribution of her book
is the nuanced treatment of the state
and the state–business relationship. In
contrast to accounts that discuss a secular
decline in state capacity in India over
the last few decades, the Indian state in
Sinha’s analysis played a major role in
facilitating global integration. In that
sense, her analysis, in contrast to Joshi’s,
suggests that the state might still be able
to play a positive role in facilitating development
in certain policy realms. Indeed,
she suggests that there is evidence
of a new developmental state in India,
at least in the two sectors she analyzes,
which has sufficient capacity to propel
change and enjoys a close relationship
with the private sector. Moreover, she
suggests that this new developmental
state is distinctive in combining “statism
with multiple plural interests” (281).
While emphasizing close relations between
state and business fostered by
greater global integration, Sinha is also
careful to recognize that both the state
and the private sector in India are fragmented
and diverse; interests within
each are not monolithic.
Apart from these strengths,
Sinha’s analysis leads to certain questions
that the book does not address
squarely. Sinha’s book is defined in
scope—it examines the realm of trade
policy and it draws significantly on empirical
evidence from the textile and
pharmaceutical sectors. In the realm of
external economic integration and in
these two sectors, the state comes across
as relatively effective and as enjoying
considerable capacity. Yet, as Sinha recognizes
but does not elaborate, state capacity
is very uneven and indeed weak
in many other areas. What explains
why the Indian state is more effective in
some realms than others? As such, the
unevenness of state capacity suggests
that the Indian state is not so much a
new developmental state as Sinha classifies
it, but a state that exhibits pockets
of developmental efficacy in certain
realms in the midst of general weakness
and inefficiency. Moreover, this raises
the question of whether trade policy is
relatively unique. In particular, did the
technocratic nature of trade policy insulate
the state to a certain extent from
“mass politics”?
Finally, throughout the book,
Sinha paints a positive picture of the
state–business relationship and ability
of a close relationship in particular to
effect positive change. In contrast to
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