Twenty years ago India was still generally thought of as an archetypal developing country, home to the largest number of poor people of any country in the world, and beset by problems of low economic growth, casteism and violent religious conflict. Now India is being feted as an economic power-house which might well become the second largest economy in the world before the middle of this century. Its democratic traditions, moreover, remain broadly intact. How and why has this historic transformation come about? And what are its implications for the people of India, for Indian society and politics? These are the big questions addressed in this book by three scholars who have lived and researched in different parts of India during the period of this great transformation. Each of the 13 chapters seeks to answer a particular question: When and why did India take off? How did a weak state promote audacious reform? Is government in India becoming more responsive (and to whom)? Does India have a civil society? Does caste still matter? Why is India threatened by a Maoist insurgency? In addressing these and other pressing questions, the authors take full account of vibrant new scholarship that has emerged over the past decade or so, both from Indian writers and India specialists, and from social scientists who have studied India in a comparative context. India Today is a comprehensive and compelling text for students of South Asia, political economy, development and comparative politics as well as anyone interested in the future of the world's largest democracy.

India's remarkable economic growth in recent years has made it one of the fastest growing economies in the world. This Oxford Handbook reflects India's growing economic importance on the world stage, and features research on core topics by leading scholars to understand the Indian economic miracle and the obstacles India faces in transforming itself into a modern 21st-century economy.

Essays by leading academics, policymakers, and industrialists examine India's economic success in the late 1990s. India's economy over the last decade looks in many ways like a success story; after a major economic crisis in 1991, followed by bold reform measures, the economy has experienced a rapid economic growth rate, more foreign investment, and a boom in the information technology sector. Yet many in the country still suffer from crushing poverty, and social and political unrest remains a problem. These essays by leading academics, policymakers, and industrialists -- including one by Amartya Sen, the 1998 winner of the Nobel Prize in economics for his work on poverty and inequality -- examine the facts of India's recent economic successes and their social and cultural context. India's rate of economic growth after the 1991 reforms were instituted reached a remarkable 7 percent for three consecutive years, from 1994 to 1997. Several contributors to India's Emerging Economy ask what this means for the nation as a whole. In his essay "Democracy and Secularism in India," Amartya Sen argues that economic progress is not the only way to measure a nation's performance. Other essays examine the actual effect India's economic growth has had on reducing poverty and recommend policies to empower the poor. Essays also address such issues as globalization and the vulnerabilities and opportunities it creates, India's experience with monetary and fiscal reform, the rapid growth of the information technology sector (including a case study of India's software industry), and India's grassroots economy.

How are “grey market” imports changing media industries? What is the role of piracy in developing new markets for movies and TV shows? How do jailbroken iPhones drive innovation? The Informal Media Economy provides a vivid, original, and genuinely transnational account of contemporary media, by showing how the interactions between formal and informal media systems are a feature of all nations – rich and poor, large and small. Shifting the focus away from the formal businesses and public enterprises that have long occupied media researchers, this book charts a parallel world of cultural intermediaries driving global media production and circulation. It shows how unlicensed, untaxed, or unregulated networks, which operate across the boundaries of established media markets, have been a driving force of media industry transformation. The book opens up new insights on a range of topical issues in media studies, from the creative disruptions of digitisation to amateur production, piracy and cybercrime.

The twenty-first century has witnessed the rise of India as a major media producer and consumer market increasingly engaged with the global economy. Aided by rising incomes, technological remediation, regulatory strategies, and a shifting political terrain, the business of media has been given official recognition as a substantive component of India’s economy and as a prominent feature of its economic thinking. In light of these developments, these two pioneering volumes investigate the dynamics of an increasingly integrated media economy encompassing television, film, music, sport, and telecoms. Volume 1: Industrial Dynamics and Cultural Adaptation illustrates the distinctive industrial dynamics of India’s media economy, tracking the deeply embedded cultural, political, and economic forces that determine its everyday operation. The selection of essays serves to demonstrate the unique patterns of development and the complex field of exchanges that have constituted India’s media economy. As a whole, this volume posits a comprehensive approach to understanding the nature of media resources, the negotiation of industrial norms and the cultural context of a media economy firmly situated in the realities of India’s distinct regions, cultures, and human networks. Volume 2: Market Dynamics and Social Transactions provides a comprehensive analysis of the interlocking markets that constitute the media economy, focusing upon its particular commodity forms, labour conditions, and spaces of consumption. Taking account of a rich set of case studies, this volume argues for the necessary consideration of multiple and interdependent markets in explicating our everyday encounters with media. By foregrounding the social transactions that encapsulate market exchanges, it begins to illustrate some of the novel aspirations, meanings, and relationships arising with India’s media economy.

India is the second most populous country in the world and also one of the poorest. From the late 1940s to 1980, India's per capita income grew at an average annual rate of only two percent. Expansionist economic reforms during the 1980s boosted economic growth but also unfortunately resulted in high inflation and a balance of payments crisis. As a consequence, in 1991 the government announced sweeping new changes in economic policies. Economic Policy Reforms and the Indian Economy evaluates the effects of those changes and identifies areas of the Indian economy still in urgent need of reform. After an overview of Indian economic policies and development since independence, papers focus on the country's fiscal situation, the environment for private economic activity, education, the reservation of certain activities for small-scale industry, and determinants of differentials in rates of growth across the different Indian states. Contributors include respected academic specialists on India and policy reform, high-level Indian administrators, and present and past policymakers.

When did categories such as a national space and economy acquire self-evident meaning and a global reach? Why do nationalist movements demand a territorial fix between a particular space, economy, culture, and people? Producing India mounts a formidable challenge to the entrenched practice of methodological nationalism that has accorded an exaggerated privilege to the nation-state as a dominant unit of historical and political analysis. Manu Goswami locates the origins and contradictions of Indian nationalism in the convergence of the lived experience of colonial space, the expansive logic of capital, and interstate dynamics. Building on and critically extending subaltern and postcolonial perspectives, her study shows how nineteenth-century conceptions of India as a bounded national space and economy bequeathed an enduring tension between a universalistic political economy of nationhood and a nativist project that continues to haunt the present moment. Elegantly conceived and judiciously argued, Producing India will be invaluable to students of history, political economy, geography, and Asian studies.

The subject of India's rapid growth in the past two decades has become a prominent focus in the public eye. A book that documents this unique and unprecedented surge, and addresses the issues raised by it, is sorely needed. Arvind Panagariya fills that gap with this sweeping, ambitious survey. India: The Emerging Giant comprehensively describes and analyzes India's economic development since its independence, as well as its prospects for the future. The author argues that India's growth experience since its independence is unique among developing countries and can be divided into four periods, each of which is marked by distinctive characteristics: the post-independence period, marked by liberal policies with regard to foreign trade and investment, the socialist period during which Indira Ghandi and her son blocked liberalization and industrial development, a period of stealthy liberalization, and the most recent, openly liberal period. Against this historical background, Panagariya addresses today's poverty and inequality, macroeconomic policies, microeconomic policies, and issues that bear upon India's previous growth experience and future growth prospects. These provide important insights and suggestions for reform that should change much of the current thinking on the current state of the Indian economy. India: The Emerging Giant will attract a wide variety of readers, including academic economists, policy makers, and research staff in national governments and international institutions. It should also serve as a core text in undergraduate and graduate courses that deal with Indias economic development and policies.

This volume provides a critical examination of the evolution of platform economies in India. Contributions from leading media and communications scholars present case studies that illustrate the social and economic ambitions at the heart of Digital India. Across interdisciplinary domains of business, labour, politics, and culture, this book examines how digital platforms are embedding automated systems into the social fabrics of everyday life. Encouraging readers to explore the phenomenon of platformisation in context, the book uncovers the distinctive features of platform capitalism in India.