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incomes rising just 0.3 percent annually between 1965 and 1975, and private final consumption rising even more slowly. By the mid-1970s, evidence was visible that the rapidly expanding government controls had closed nearly all avenues to growth, and at least some within the government began to recognize the need for unwinding the system. A process of ad hoc and piecemeal liberalization strictly within the existing policy framework therefore soon got under way.
    This process continued haltingly in the 1980s with some acceleration under Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, especially in 1985–1986 and 1986–1987. The liberalization, complemented by large fiscal deficits, led to some acceleration in growth in the 1980s. But since the deficits had been financed through substantial external borrowing and the export earnings necessary to finance the resulting debt service payments were small due to inward-looking policies, the economy wound up facing a balance-of-payments crisis in 1991. That crisis provided the occasion for turning the ad hoc reforms into a more systematic and systemic process.
    This happened to the chagrin of the intellectuals on the Left. Indeed, during the first half of the 1970s when Indira Gandhi was implementing her socialist agenda, these intellectuals had sought to justify her policy changes by propagating many critiques, indeed myths, about the development strategy that India had adopted at independence. Principally, they had argued that India had pursued growth for its own sake, and that growth had failed to alleviate poverty. They had also insisted that redistribution offered the only effective avenue to alleviating poverty. These and related critiques would now be revived as weapons to undermine the reforms that were clearly a massive shift away from socialism.
    The critics had little option but to retreat from reality into fantasy if they were to carry any conviction. By 1980 the wave, in fact a tsunami, of socialist measures had virtually drowned out the prospects for rapid growth of the Indian economy. The long-standing commitment by Indian leaders to the objective of eradicating poverty had also been frustrated by the stagnant economy. It was abundantly clear to those who did not wear ideological blinders that the socialist path Indira Gandhi had chosen had failed to deliver on the promise forcefully conveyed in her memorable slogan, “Garibi Hatao”—end poverty.
    The shift to the “liberal” (or “neoliberal,” which sounds more sinister) reforms meant that the myths that had fed the turn to socialism by Indira Gandhi were revived to shift the focus from socialism’s failures. The psychological need to decry the liberal reforms, gathering steam since1991, was all the greater precisely because they were so successful, not merely in accelerating India’s growth rate, but also in finally reducing poverty.
    These myths in fact are manifold and define a rich tapestry, relating to growth, poverty, and social goals. Among the litany of complaints, one can find passionate assertions that the reforms address growth but not poverty or social goals, that the growth they may generate is in any event not “inclusive,” that the reforms have increased inequality, that they have increased corruption, that they even hurt the socially disadvantaged Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) groups, and indeed much else that makes one wonder if the critics have let their ideology and political preferences entirely cloud their judgment.
    These myths, endlessly repeated in different forms and contexts in virtually all developing countries that seek to combat poverty by embracing outward-oriented and pro-market policies, and in international forums by self-proclaimed development experts and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), muddy the discourse on economic reforms. Indeed, the myths are used as effective weapons to wound and maim the reforms in the public eye.