ABSTRACT
LIBERALISATION AND POLITICAL POWER The politics of liberalisation is the politics of moving the boundary between authority and market as allocative mechanisms. Any existing pattern of state intervention must in some sense represent a vector sum of political forces that have been operative over time. Therefore, whatever the source of economic reform, moving the boundary towards markets logically produces new configurations of economic power, and thus indirectly political power in society. 1 Moreover, economic liberalisation can be expected to redistribute political power as a consequence of the redistribution of economic power. India fits neither scenario clearly.
