From Liberalisation to Scale: India’s Next Reform Challenge

Three decades of reform have transformed India’s economy. It must now dismantle the barriers that prevent growth from scaling.

The period from 2014 to 2019 marked a significant turn in India’s economic strategy, with a strong emphasis on formalising the economy, widening the tax base and improving the ease of doing business. The introduction of the Goods and Services Tax replaced a maze of central and state levies with a unified indirect-tax framework, creating a single national market and facilitating interstate trade. The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code provided a time-bound mechanism for resolving corporate insolvencies and tackling the accumulation of non-performing assets in the banking system.

Equally transformative was the expansion of digital infrastructure through the JAM trinity — Jan Dhan accounts, Aadhaar and mobile connectivity. It laid the foundations for the rapid adoption of UPI and accelerated financial inclusion. Major investments in highways, expressways, railways and airports improved multimodal connectivity, while initiatives such as Vande Bharat trains and UDAN strengthened mobility and regional integration.

The period also witnessed the extraordinary disruption of demonetisation. Despite its short-term economic costs, growth remained above 8 percent in 2016 before moderating to around 6 percent and subsequently slowing as consumer demand weakened towards 2019.

Changing Dynamics

The Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 delivered the most severe shock to the Indian economy since the 1991 reforms, triggering an unprecedented contraction in economic activity. Yet the formalisation and digital infrastructure built over the preceding decade strengthened the country’s ability to respond. Digital public platforms enabled rapid direct-benefit transfers, helping deliver cash assistance and food support to vulnerable households during the lockdowns.

As the global economy recovered, changing geopolitical dynamics and the emergence of the ‘China Plus One’ strategy created new opportunities for India to attract manufacturing investment. The government responded with Production Linked Incentive schemes targeting sectors ranging from electronics and semiconductors to pharmaceuticals and electric vehicles.

By the mid-2020s, the economy had rebounded strongly, supported by sustained infrastructure spending, rising private investment and expanding digital adoption. UPI transactions became a cornerstone of everyday economic activity, deepening financial inclusion while accelerating formalisation. India emerged as one of the fastest-growing major economies, with growth consistently around 7-8 percent annually. Fiscal consolidation, strong foreign-exchange reserves and relatively stable inflation further strengthened macroeconomic stability and investor confidence.

Towards Aspiration

The most profound outcome of more than three decades of liberalisation is not captured by GDP alone. India has moved from an economy defined by scarcity, rationing and limited opportunity towards one increasingly shaped by aspiration, consumer choice and economic mobility.

Greater access to markets, goods, services and digital connectivity has weakened traditional barriers to participation. Rising incomes and sustained development have contributed to longer life expectancy, lower infant mortality and better access to healthcare, sanitation, nutrition and basic services.

The transformation is particularly visible in poverty reduction. According to NITI Aayog’s Multidimensional Poverty Index, based on the Alkire-Foster methodology, India’s multidimensional poverty rate fell from 29.17 percent in 2013-14 to 11.28 percent in 2022-23, lifting nearly 24.82 crore people out of multidimensional poverty. Significant gains were recorded in nutrition, sanitation, drinking water, clean cooking fuel and maternal health, with Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh registering some of the largest improvements.

India has simultaneously strengthened its manufacturing base and export capabilities, emerging as an increasingly important exporter of defence equipment while building greater self-reliance in strategic sectors. Digital innovations such as UPI and RuPay have transformed payments and expanded financial inclusion, attracting international interest in India’s digital-payment architecture.

Yet India’s economic transformation has exposed an uncomfortable paradox. Liberalisation has been relatively successful at opening markets and encouraging entrepreneurship, but considerably less successful at allowing firms to scale.

The entrepreneurial energy unleashed after 1991 remains constrained by complex regulations, extensive compliance requirements and bureaucratic hurdles at state and local levels. Medium-sized enterprises can face a bewildering maze of regulatory obligations that discourages expansion and investment.

The result is India’s familiar ‘missing middle’: millions of small enterprises remain small while a relatively small number of large corporations have the resources and managerial capacity to navigate the regulatory landscape. This lack of scale constrains productivity, innovation and export competitiveness.

India therefore needs to move beyond the idea that starting a business is sufficient. The real test is whether a successful small enterprise can become a medium-sized one, and a medium-sized one a globally competitive large firm, without being buried under the weight of compliance.

The China Dependency

Manufacturing presents another structural vulnerability. India has built substantial capabilities in electronics, automobiles and pharmaceuticals, but critical supply chains remain heavily dependent on imports, particularly from China.

The Economic Survey 2024-25 highlighted the risks of excessive dependence on a single source for key inputs. In an era of geopolitical rivalry and supply-chain disruption, this is not merely an industrial-policy concern. It is an economic-security issue.

The answer is not autarky. India cannot build every component at home, nor should it retreat from global trade. It needs deeper domestic capabilities, integrated supply chains and globally competitive industrial ecosystems that allow Indian firms to participate more effectively in international production networks.

India faces a similar paradox in technology. Its professionals occupy senior positions across Silicon Valley and the world’s leading technology companies. Its information-technology industry is globally recognised. Yet India has not produced a comparable ecosystem of globally dominant product and technology companies.

The missing link is not talent. It is the conversion of talent into innovation, intellectual property, commercial products and companies capable of scaling globally.

Bridging this gap will be crucial to the next phase of India’s economic transformation. A country that can export engineers and software services but struggles to produce globally dominant technology products is leaving considerable economic value on the table.

The legacy of the pre-liberalisation era continues to shape economic debate. Socialist policies are often viewed nostalgically, while market-oriented reforms continue to encounter political and public scepticism. The 1991 reforms were introduced largely in response to an economic crisis rather than through a broad political mandate. As a result, pro-market reform has often lacked sustained political consensus.

Important reforms have consequently been diluted, delayed or reversed under pressure from narrow interest groups, leaving structural problems unresolved. India must now confront this ‘liberalisation paradox’. The state needs to evolve from controller and producer into an efficient facilitator and regulator. Moving from an economy approaching $4 trillion towards one worth $10-15 trillion will require reforms in land, labour, justice, agriculture and MSMEs.

More efficient labour markets, faster land acquisition, judicial reform and greater agricultural competitiveness are essential. So is deeper integration into global production networks and the creation of large-scale formal employment.

India stands at a defining point in its economic journey. It has established itself as one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing major economies, backed by sophisticated digital public infrastructure, expanding geopolitical influence and globally competitive capabilities in information technology, pharmaceuticals and professional services.

But size is not the same as prosperity. Per capita income remains far below that of advanced economies, while millions who have escaped multidimensional poverty remain vulnerable to economic and external shocks.

Recent geopolitical tensions, particularly in West Asia, have once again exposed the fragility of the global economic environment. The lesson of the 1991 balance-of-payments crisis remains pertinent: reforms undertaken only when a crisis leaves little choice carry a high economic cost. The coming decades will bring protectionism, supply-chain disruptions, technological upheaval and geopolitical competition.

India cannot afford to wait for the next crisis to force the next reform.

Its ambition to become a developed economy by 2047 will require sustained structural reform, deregulation, factor-market efficiency, human-capital development and innovation-led growth. Breaking the grip of the ‘Compliance Raj’ and building globally competitive manufacturing and technology ecosystems will be decisive. The first phase of liberalisation taught India how to open its economy. The next phase must teach it how to scale.

(The writer is a Chartered Accountant with a leading Mumbai-based company. Views personal.)