ABSTRACT
The main focus of this chapter is on exploring the literature to identify when the catch-up growth and social progress occurred and what might have triggered it. The chapter builds up to a discussion of this debate by first briefly summarizing India’s early economic history post-independence, its early use of economic planning, exploring current policy options and where they fit into its reforms in the 1980s and early 1990s. However, framing the debate of India’s economic success in terms of a couple of economic policy approaches is limiting and so other explanations that do not fit into this mold are also explored.
