ABSTRACT
For alongside the rise in its GDP, India has witnessed a deepening agrarian crisis, increased hunger, poverty, and malnutrition. The reduction of per capita expenditure and investment in rural areas in context of such immiseration illustrates not so much a failure of political will as a commitment across party lines to neoliberal economic policy. Neoliberal ideology is fundamentally opposed to a strong public sector, even though the role of the state was critical to the rise and maturation of the US and European economies. Efficiency, transparency and choice become the grounds for the neoliberal assault on the public sector, a critique that is generally articulated as its reform. In certain respects, the rhetoric of neoliberalism in India contrasts with that in the United States. The economic and legal reforms required by India’s pursuit of a neoliberal path are usually justified by reference to what are described as ‘global norms and standards’.
