Réformes et nouvelle économie politique en Inde
Joël Ruet
W hen India began its liberal reform in 1991, privatization
was supposed to be part of the array of public policies. But it must be recognized that fifteen years later, the measures are long in coming. The lack of
them is indicative of the nature of liberal reforms and the form taken in India
by “liberalization”. India’s political economy is changing, but the state’s role
remains one of nation-building via redistribution. Thus, although in the early
1990s recurring system breakdowns undeniably pleaded in favor of reforming it, the state’s priority over the past fifteen years has instead been to
assist the modernization and growth of private industry and show special
consideration for small-scale industry. India in retrospect has adopted the
Chinese way of first reinforcing a dynamic private sphere outside the public
sector, a clever strategy that has allowed it to free up macroeconomic
resources to finance the cost of both political and economic transition.
India’s political economy has thus been reformed on the basis of more immediate stakes than those involved in privatization, viewed as one out of many
possible instruments. This political and social compromise of seeing beyond
the idea of privatization probably hails India’s entrance into a “second economic modernization.”
• Les contraintes structurantes : Mosaïque-Inde, construction nationale
et État redistributif
• La libéralisation économique et industrielle : des réformes prises dans une
séquence politique
• La stabilisation d’une nouvelle économie politique : réformes et enjeux
de coordination public-privé