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Toward A Free Economy: Swatantra and Opposition Politics in Democratic India
Author: Aditya Balasubramanian
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Pages: 323
Price: Rs 799
By 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi jettisoned his election promise of delivering economic reforms. Instead, his government embraced what his Finance Minister Arun Jaitley would privately decry as “povertarian” politics. The government also turned to pursue a hard-line Hindutva agenda, disillusioning those who thought Mr Modi would reshape the Bharatiya Janata Party on the lines of the Swatantra Party, a non-denominational right-wing conservative party wedded to the ideals of free market and anti-statism. To some, in hindsight, the Swatantra experiment seems like
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