Even as India’s privatisation programme gathers steam, there is a perception, reflected in the pronouncements of ministers as well as in writings in the popular press, that the benefits of privatisation can be taken as axiomatic. There is little in the literature on privatisation that lends...

India public sector banks (PSBs) are compared unfavourably with their private sector counterparts, domestic and foreign. This comparison rests, for the most part, on financial measures of performance, and such a comparison provides much of the rationale for privatisation of PSBs. In this paper,...

That India faces a ‘fiscal crisis’ has been a recurrent refrain of the literature on India’s economic reforms. Indeed a central objective of the reforms process, one that has proved elusive so far, is the reduction in the fiscal deficit of the central government. The supposed...

India’s halting attempts at privatisation and its preference, for the most part, for disinvestment have been roundly criticised by many as being inadequate. A more aggressive privatisation drive, it is contended, would make for superior economic performance. In popular discourse, China’s...