India had a special significance for the BRICs thesis. Given its demographic bias, the thesis rested disproportionately on the Chinese and Indian cases. While India’s contribution to the aggregates for the BRICs were more modest than China’s, India’s statistics were more reliable and India was closer to the sort of market economy assumed by the BRICs thesis. The questions the Indian case raised about the BRICs thesis were arguably more critical. This article looks at what the BRICs thesis does—and does not—say. It then surveys the India’s growth experience in the last century, particularly its latter half, and the first years of this one, and its political circumstances, paying attention to the progressive liberalization of economic policy. A closer look at the last decade of the 20th century, when economically liberal policies were applied most rigorously, throws light on the patterns and rates of growth they made possible in key sectors of the economy, and how they recast the relationship between India and the world economy. The article concludes that the BRICs predictions about India, modest though they are, are based on faulty assumptions about the Indian economy and the world economy.
Access full article at Radhika’s Academia.edu page
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