In the broad setting of reforms in many countries in the 1980s, India was an apparent anomaly. India was at the crossroads. She was facing a macroeconomic crisis that required immediate attention. The macroeconomic crisis provided the opportunity and the necessity to address meaningfully the inefficiencies in our policy framework that had altered our economic performance and to begin constructively the task of undertaking the necessary microeconomic or structural reforms that had long been overdue. The reform process began in India in 1991.
The reform process has affected the indigenous communities of India, particularly their culture, languages and style of life. The indigenous people are largely the deprived section of India. They continue to become poorer due to the impact of reform measures. The paper studies the process of adverse impacts of reform measures on the indigenous communities of India with some case studies.
For nearly two decades, a “silent revolution” has been sweeping through the world – in developed countries as well as in developing countries. It is the revolution of economic reforms, in other words, a change from an economic system of central planning to a market based economy. Economic reforms have become a universal phenomenon and are viewed as indispensable for rapid and balanced development. It involves both macroeconomic stabilization and structural (microeconomic) reforms. Rangarajan rightly points out that.
While the stabilization policies were intended to correct the lapses and put the house in order in the short term, the structural reform policies were intended to accelerate