The Indian economy has grown fast and poverty has reduced considerably since the “opening up” of the economy and the International Monetary Fund’s bailout in 1991.
Could India have done better? More importantly, should it do better? These were questions Manmohan Singh posed to me when I joined the Planning Commission in 2009.
I was surprised by his invitation to become a member of the Planning Commission and asked him if he might have made a mistake. I pointed out that I was not an economist, nor an academic and I had no experience of working in government – qualifications which seemed necessary for a country’s apex policy-making body.