Repeating past mistakes

Govt should walk the talk on protectionism

One of the well-acknowledged policy mistakes in the initial decades after gaining independence was Indian policymakers’ fascination with protection of domestic industries via high import tariffs. Far from providing a fillip to either industrial growth or domestic employment or consumption, these policies resulted in India lagging behind its Asian counterparts. For the better part of the past three decades, economists have been pointing to the trade-led growth of China to explain how India missed the global growth bus. When the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power after getting a majority on its own in the Lok Sabha — the