The 1991 Project

India's second freedom movement

The 1991 Project commemorates 35 years of India's economic liberalization, promoting discourse on growth-centered economic reforms.

Writing

Conversations

Public Repository

Oral History

Latest Featured Writings

Oral Histories

First-hand accounts from the technocrats, bureaucrats, politicians, economists, and entrepreneurs who conceived, negotiated, implemented, or closely witnessed India’s economic reforms.

Shreyas Narla, Shruti Rajagopalan, and Kadambari Shah

Manmohan Singh: India's Finest Talent Scout

Economists live and die by a mantra: resources must flow to their highest-valued use. Manmohan Singh embraced this idea as he steered the Indian economy out of command-and-control and into a market system. But he also applied it in a strikingly personal way—to people. He believed that individuals...

Shruti Rajagopalan, Shreyas Narla, Ankita Dinkar, Kadambari Shah, and Ankit Bhatia

Reforming Agricultural Land Conversion Laws in Indian States

Land sits at the center of every developing economy’s structural transformation. When economies shift from being agrarian to industrial to service and knowledge driven, the way they use land must also change. This reallocation of land determines whether transformation succeeds or stalls.

Samrudha Surana and Ankita Dinkar

Powering Progress: Resolving Electricity Challenges Faced by India’s Manufacturers

Reliable electricity supply is vital for India’s manufacturing sector. Despite great strides in access and consumption, manufacturers continue to face unreliable power supply and high electricity prices. This paper examines how financially distressed electricity distribution companies shape those...

Latest Featured Videos

Shreyas Narla on the State’s Power to Detain

Sowmya Dhanaraj on Gender and India’s Manufacturing Workforce

Luis Miranda on Deregulating Indian Healthcare

Rahul Tongia on Why Electricity Needs Re-Regulation, Not Deregulation

Janhavi Nilekani on India’s Labor Compliance Burden

Anirudh Burman on Deregulating India’s Urban Land Markets

Prachi Mishra on a Growth Roadmap for Bihar

Kshitij Batra on India’s Land and Property Markets

The 1991 Timeline

A chronology of the political and economic decisions that turned a balance-of-payments crisis into a reform moment.

Political and Economic Turmoil

August-November 1990

Moody’s places India on a credit watch with the possibility of a ratings downgrade because of unfolding political and economic events. In the aftermath of communal tensions Prime Minister V.P. Singh's government falls in November, 1990. His successor Chandra Shekhar forms a politically fragile minority government.

IMF supports India

December 1990

Senior bureaucrats along with Gopi Arora, India's representative at IMF, mobilize support to manage India’s balance of payments crisis. Their efforts lead to an agreement that the Indian government will implement reforms to liberalize the rupee and manage the fiscal deficit, with the IMF supporting a US$ 1.8 billion loan.

Government of the day falls

March 6, 1991

Prime Minister Chandra Shekhar resigns after 5 months in office, precipitating fresh elections.

S&P downgrades India

March 7, 1991

S&P downgrades India’s sovereign rating to BBB- for long term credit risk, and A- for short term credit risk.

An assassination

May 21, 1991

Rajiv Gandhi, the front-runner in the elections, is assassinated while campaigning, resulting in a leadership vacuum and a power struggle within the Indian National Congress.