It
was the summer of 1991 and before the Choli
and the Chunari conquered the Indian
cinemas, the Chumma, with Amitabh Bacchan
(doing his pelvic thrusts) and Kimi Katkar (her seductive allure) was the craze
of the nation - The nation that financially & economically was going
through its toughest phase since independence. India was on a brink of default
and there was a sudden need of bail out. Reserves were down to 30 days of
import and government had started transferring part of its gold reserves as a
guarantee to IMF. This dire state of affairs led to what we all know now as the
Big Bang reform of India’s economy, by the then finance minister Dr. Manmohan Singh. (Back then he was
actually walking his talk…yes, he was talking then!!)
This
summer is the silver jubilee (25 years) of the Big Bang reform. The calamity of
1991 led to liberalizing reforms that ended decades of stagnation and allowed a
spurt of fast growth. India has changed in ways unimaginable in the last
25-years and the momentum favored economic reformism. For those who have lived
long enough under the oppressive license/permit/quota
raj, it would be ludicrous to even compare the pre-1991 India. I just hope
that we don’t wait for another catastrophe to trigger reformist policies. I like
how Anand Mahendra puts it, India
has been pregnant with potential since the Big bang reform, but we are still
waiting for the potential to enter the real India.
The
present Indian government won a historic mandate two years back. Expectations
were very high and all of them might not have been converted into reality as
yet, but it’s safe to say from what we have witnessed…Aache din are ‘almost’
here!!
If you want to learn more about what
life was like before 1991, please visit IndiaBefore91.in
