In 1991, the economic crisis did not matter to most Indians. Why would the aam aadmi care whether you have enough forex to pay for two weeks’ imports or not? It doesn’t impact him.

Today it does. Several hundred millions of Indians are now part of the consumption story. They buy consumer goods, eat out, buy mobikes, and shop at malls. They also had, till recently, rising incomes to look forward to. In fact, the UPA's economic mismanagement helped foster this sense of entitlement in all classes of people from the poor to the middle classes to everybody. Read More

Jyothi Shankaran

    Jyothi’s last role was as Senior Editor with the business news channel Bloomberg TV India. He also worked as News Editor at business-standard.com, the online version of the business newspaper Business Standard. Jyothi is a chemical engineer from the Regional Engineering College, Srinagar.