Policies for Self-reliant Development

Abstract

This article carries out an investigation into the experience of engagement with the idea of national self-reliance in the developing world during the period of last fifty years with a special focus on India's experience. It compares the experiences of implementation of the strategies of import substitution, export promotion and global integration with a view to understand their contribution to the achievement of the goals of development for a country like India during the period of last two decades. It brings out that even during the post-liberalisation period in those sectors where the policy-makers deliberately chose to delay the implementation of external liberalisation and selectively provided state protection, technological achievements have been better. However, it argues that in the post-WTO world there is the need to engineer a shift away from the exclusive reliance on either import substitution or export promotion. The strategy of development should also focus on those pathways of sustainable development that have the aim to upgrade directly the local capabilities of peasants and artisans and their access to local resources and local markets to achieve self-reliance for the people.