Devaluation

Summary

This August 14, 1966 issue of The Illustrated Weekly of India presents a symposium on India’s decision to devalue the rupee. Contributors respond to four editorial questions: whether devaluation should be approved, what alternatives were available, what policies should accompany it to contain inflation, and how they assess the Indian economy’s underlying strengths and weaknesses. The responses divide between conditional approval, reluctant acceptance of an irreversible decision, and outright criticism of the government’s economic management and dependence on foreign assistance.

Across the rendered pages, contributors repeatedly call for fiscal discipline, reduced deficit financing and public expenditure, expanded agricultural and industrial production, import liberalisation, fewer licences and controls, greater use of existing capacity, and stronger export performance. Several argue that India’s resources, skills, agricultural potential and industrial base remain substantial, while others describe the economy as distorted by planning, bureaucratic controls, inflation, dependence on food imports and foreign capital, and political unwillingness to impose austerity. The issue also includes a Hindi article by Minoo Masani, “उदारता या समाजवाद” (“Liberalism or Socialism”), which contrasts individual freedom and private initiative with socialist economic organisation and argues for a free and equal society.