ABSTRACT
India provides fertile ground to support a range of macroeconomic world views. It was in 1991 that India embraced full-fledged pro-market neoliberal economic policies, accepting the structural adjustment programme that accompanied the terms of an emergency bailout package from the International Monetary Fund. As the world made a structural break in the 1980s towards neoliberalism, embodied in the privatization-liberalization-globalization mantra, India found itself unable to swim against the tide. The Bharatiya Janata Party has been considered as India’s right or right-of-centre party with its pro-market, pro-reform and pro-business tilt. The hope for massive supply-side reforms was expected from the present government in 2014; the ‘Gujarat Model of Development’ with its business and trade friendly approach seemed in sync with the people’s aspirations rather than United Progressive Alliance's (UPA) ‘freebies’. The newly-elected Congress-led UPA government, perhaps for the first time since the 1980s made a clear-cut shift in economic policies, from right-of-centre to left-of-centre by adopting a rights-based approach to development.
