Indian Economic Reform: Much More Than You Wanted To Know

An MMTYWTK on whether India's 1991 economic liberalization caused its growth and poverty collapse. Scott is first struck by the scale (extreme poverty 60%→20%, soaring literacy and life expectancy — 'should be up there with the rise of China'), then finds the 1991 attribution unsupported: both GDP and poverty graphs show gradual improvement from ~1980, with no 1991 break. He works the literature — Panagariya's 'stealth reform' (mid-1980s) argument, multiple structural-break analyses landing on 1975-1980, Rodrik-Subramanian's 'Indira Gandhi's pro-business attitude shift' (with no corresponding policy) — and concludes the cause is genuinely unclear. The coda argues this matters: understanding how Fabian-socialist overregulation quietly doomed millions (without mass killing) is the strongest available argument against 'nice' democratic socialism, and faults the Charter Cities Institute for citing Panagariya uncritically.

Quality 72 · Strong. A careful, honest MMTYWTK — it debunks the popular 1991-attribution with the structural-break evidence and frames why the question matters — but it is shortish (≈2.2k) and deliberately inconclusive (the cause stays open). Strong.

Claude’s paradigm shift 52 · Moderate. Debunks a popular attribution and surveys others' econometric work; the 'best anti-nice-socialism argument' framing is the more novel bit. Moderate.

Real-world impact 2 · Minor. A within-discourse development-economics explainer; no material-world effect. Within-blog influence.