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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | How the Black Economy Grew in Post-Independence India -Arun Kumar

How the Black Economy Grew in Post-Independence India -Arun Kumar

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published Published on Feb 7, 2017   modified Modified on Feb 7, 2017
-Caravan Magazine

Arun Kumar is an eminent economist who has been studying the black economy in India for close to four decades. His 1999 book The Black Economy in India is among the foremost accounts of the black-money problem in the country.

In Understanding the Black Economy and Black Money in India: An Enquiry into Causes, Consequences and Remedies, released in February 2017, Kumar discusses the misconceptions around black money, the growth of the black economy and remedies to curtail it. “Suffice it to say that the demonetization has had little effect on the problem of the black economy,” he writes in the introduction to the book.  In the following extract from the book, Kumar explains the origin and growth of the black economy—a parallel or illegal economy, which encourages the rise of black money—after 1947. Kumar contends that this economy remains unaffected by demonetisation, and contributes to making socio-economic policies less effective.

Independent India started with high aspirations but a weak democracy because the power was transferred from the colonial masters to a relatively unaccountable political class and a civil service that was accountable mostly to the ruling elite. As the democratic aspirations of the national movement weakened, the political class became more corrupt. The government of India report of 1956 argued for the need to keep the black economy in check so that more resources could be raised for development. It found businesses generating profits from black market activities in all sectors of the economy.

The Indian national movement understood that colonial rule was responsible for not only impoverishing the common man but was also the reason he was unable to better his lot. Therefore it was decided that society as a whole had to overcome these basic problems (poverty, education, health and so on) of the people and the state was given a large role in economic matters. The optimum utilisation of resources required, among other things, central planning, which required the licensing of capacity in industries. This reinforced the role of the state in the economy.

Due to deindustrialisation in India during colonial rule, Indian capitalists were too small to generate the capital necessary for the creation of the essential infrastructure for transportation and power, for example. They lacked the technology and capital to invest in basic goods like metals and petroleum, or in capital goods manufacturing. The corollary was that a large public sector was needed to support both the growth of the private sector and the planning process. This required the mobilisation of savings in a country that was poor. Consequently, consumption had to be restrained through taxation and limiting the production and importation of luxury goods. Imports were limited so as to conserve the foreign exchange required to import capital goods for development. A strategy of import substitution was adopted to boost industry and high customs duties were introduced for this purpose.

In 1944, representatives of Indian big business drew up a plan of industrialisation in post-independence India that contained the above-mentioned elements of policy. These plans were also incorporated in the industrial policy statements of 1948 and 1956. However, what the business class agreed to collectively, they undid through their private actions by fouling up policies through illegality. They cornered licenses by bribing authorities and creating monopolies for economic gain. Corruption was introduced into various development activities and projects in order to make extra profits. This would not have been feasible without the connivance of politicians and the bureaucracy. Luxury goods, or those goods that were either banned or faced high customs duties, were smuggled in.

As India developed, the size of the middle class increased and the shortages of basic goods (eg. food, scooters, cement) or basic services (eg. telephone and railway reservations) appeared. Queues formed for each of them, and soon thereafter black markets developed. Businesses took advantage of these black markets and corruption spread to the lower levels of society. Big business in India realised that the manipulation of trade and economic policies required close proximity to political power. It started exercising direct control over the political process by financing political parties and individual candidates for legislatures. It also increasingly interfered in appointments at the senior levels of the bureaucracy in key ministries.

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Caravan Magazine, 7 February, 2017, http://www.caravanmagazine.in/vantage/black-economy-grew-post-independence-india


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