The Sovereign Democratic Republic of India occupies a small proportion of India’s long history – the half century since 1950. Within this short time span however, its economic regime has experienced two radical transformations. First, with the establishment of the Planning Commission in March 1950, India launched upon a unique experiment in state-led ‘growth with social justice’ within the constitutional framework of parliamentary democracy. However, this policy matrix came under significant pressure in the 1980s, culminating in the unprecedented balance of payments crisis in 1990–91. The Indian government responded to this crisis with an equally forthright policy regime grounded in a reform trinity popularly referred to as ‘Liberalisation, Privatisation, and Globalisation’ (LPG). These three economic concepts have necessitated a series of (ongoing) policy reforms by the Union and State governments. Since June 1991, India has been a member of a small club of 24 ‘globalisers’ (Dollar 2001). Internationally, globalisation has yielded impressive growth dividends, including for relatively poor developing countries. The list of ‘post-1980 globalisers’ includes Argentina, Brazil, China, Hungary, Malaysia, Mexico, the Philippines and Thailand which, as a group, experienced an acceleration in average growth from 1.4 per cent per annum in the 1960s, to 2.9 per cent per annum in the 1970s, 3.5 per cent in the 1980s, and 5 per cent in the 1990s. 1.2 Globalisation in India: basic premises