ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the route, the political system, the state, and the economy had been taking since the mid-1960s was already preparing the foundation for the Indian government to make the momentous decision to embrace globalisation in 1991. The 1990s witnessed two major developments on the international plane which have posed new challenges for Indian politics on ideological grounds as well as on the politico-economy plane. While examining the structures and processes of Indian politics, Rudolph in their seminal work on India's political economy analysed Indian politics along two axes: the nature of regime, whether democratic or authoritarian, and the nature of polity, which they categorised as command polity or demand polity. Rajni Kothari has provided a very apt analysis of electoral fatigue of the Indian polity. Recently, Atul Kohli has given a still more favourable assessment of Indian democracy, which is very aptly summed up in the title of his edited work, The Success of India's Democracy.
