Education and Society in India

Abstract

The beginning of this decade (1990s) saw major changes in India's economic policies. Although some of these changes had been in the making for at least a decade, the formal announcement of the 'New Economic Policy' made it seem more dramatic because of the kind of vocabulary used. The old vocabulary of government policy used words like 'planning', 'mixed economy', 'self-reliance' and 'socialist form'. Such vocabulary originated in the 1950s when India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru chose to keep India formally non-aligned in the post-World War II era, standing on its own feet but with a slight leftward tilt. The new vocabulary of the 1990s also emphasized the importance of being self-reliant, but this time there was a tilt towards the right. In this new environment, words like 'liberalization', 'privatization', 'globalization' and 'market-friendly' began to be used in government policy and dominant thought.