How to reform India which also makes the country has a strong enough economic position now?

As India reforms launched 20 years ago this week, the country can not be found Coca-Cola. Installation of the phone takes one year and there was only one television channel.

For the owner of the workshop in New Delhi, Promod Bhasin (56) life before the revolution that began in the financial July 24, 1991 when the fiscal year begins, it is very different. For the owner of the workshop in New Delhi, Promod Bhasin (56) life before the revolution that began in the financial July 24, 1991 when the fiscal year begins, it is very different. He kept shaking their heads in disbelief over all the changes.

“To get a telephone connection at home just need to struggle,” he said.

In the decades before 1991, India seemed to shut the door on all foreign investment and international brand. The country seeks to meet its own needs based on the ideas of socialism and nationalism.

The result? Densely populated country that almost collapsed because of a stagnant economy grow under the “Licence Raj” a program of state-controlled economy.

Within the program, the government controls all aspects of business ranging from labor to production. “Goods and services is very limited,” Bhasin said the father of two children aged 23 and 18 years. “People up begging if there are families who go abroad to buy Levis jeans and electronic appliances,” he recalls. “I live in the U.S. in the era of the 1970s and knew how the world outside India.

Here, 95 percent of the contents of the store is an item of India and only a few specific places that sell imported goods.”

Bhasin told how the Indians very difficult to go abroad. They used to be difficult to exchange rupees into foreign currency and banks are always checking their foreign exchange transactions.

“Now, we can Malaysiai or vacation to Thailand without fear anymore,” he said.
Reform of India removed all restrictions on direct foreign investment.

Deregulation is also carried out, privatization and tax reform propagated were carried out. For Promod wife, Minoo (46) India in the 1980s recalled the population in big cities are reluctant to shop.

“I just have to make your own baby clothes because the clothes are very poor quality. Toys are also not widely available. Now, people can buy toys from all over the world.

Things like that do not change over night, it was slow but things have changed now this, “he said. One of the iconic products of India are Thums Up, a kind beverage Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

Coca-Cola bought the factory in 1993 when India began to open. Thums Up when it ruled the stalls across India. “We drank Thums Up and there are few cars as the brand Ambassador that it still exists,” said Naresh Kambiri (78) “There is a television station Doordarshan GOI but no private television. Isn’T colors television, calculator also does not exist,” he said again. Like others, are also mixed feelings Kambiri face of modernization of India launched by Manmohan Singh, who later became finance minister and current Prime Minister of India.

“Now, more options, but we are concerned with the existing system. Money is now a growing power and corruption become rampant. People are now obsessed with goods from abroad just for show. Before we look for goods abroad because they need it,” said Gurcharan Das, a businessman who wrote a bestselling book about the transformation of India India Unbound.

“The fiscal year 1991 was a good moment, such as independence in 1947,” he said. Before 1991, we felt a shudder if the local authorities told us to
go to Delhi. All must have permission from the government.

After 1991, we can establish our own business. Even the poor opinion, their lives were better than the previous generation, “she said. This is disappointing is India failedto move on. “Singh is more cowardly than last time. We really need government reform,
judiciary and bureaucracy,” she said.

by Joyce Anastasia – KOMPAS