Skip to content
Indian Liberals
Filter:

Tip: search runs across all languages; results are tokenised per-page using the document's lang attribute.

interview

Sunil Bhandare on his experiences with Indian liberal organisations

By Sunil S. Bhandare

2015

Summary

Sunil Bhandare recounts his involvement with Indian liberal organisations beginning in the mid-1980s with the Forum of Free Enterprise and continuing in the early 1990s with the Indian Liberal Group. He describes attending conferences organised by S. V. Raju on economic reforms, privatisation and globalisation, and his subsequent participation in Freedom First and the Project for Economic Education.

The core of his account focuses on the Project for Economic Education's effort to produce alternative 'liberal budgets' in the weeks before each Union Budget. Preparatory workshops were held at the Leslie Sawhney Programme near Nashik, drawing participants such as T. N. Ninan and Suresh Tendulkar, and covered fiscal, trade, pricing and regulatory policy. Four or five alternative budgets were ultimately produced and presented at press conferences in Bombay and Delhi, with input from figures like former finance secretary Geethakrishnan, though Bhandare notes the initiative did not receive the attention they had hoped for.

Key points

  • Bhandare's association with the Forum of Free Enterprise began in the mid-1980s and with the Indian Liberal Group in the early 1990s.
  • S. V. Raju organised conferences on economic reforms, privatisation and globalisation that drew Bhandare into liberal circles.
  • He became involved with Freedom First and the Project for Economic Education, a wing of the Indian Liberal Group.
  • The Project for Economic Education produced alternative 'liberal budgets' released two to three weeks before the Union Budget.
  • Preparatory workshops were held at the Leslie Sawhney Programme near Nashik with participants including T. N. Ninan and Suresh Tendulkar.
  • Four or five alternative liberal budgets were produced, covering fiscal, trade, pricing and regulatory policy, with input from former finance secretary Geethakrishnan.
  • The liberal budget initiative received some attention through press conferences in Bombay and Delhi but less than its organisers had hoped.

Transcript

Sunil Bhandare on his experiences with Indian liberal organisations

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g52qPVVXICE Duration: 222.6s

Sunil Bhandare (00:05): My sort of association with Forum of Free Enterprise started probably somewhere in the mid eighties, quite late, and with the Indian Liberal Group early nineties. Now, in early nineties I think there were lots of those conferences which are being organized by the Raju on understanding the economic reforms process, question about privatization, questions about globalization and so on. So I used to participate in that and there used to be a great number of great thinkers coming for those kind of deliberations and discussions. And that is how the whole process became sort of you know participative for me getting involved with the Raju’s Freedom First and as well as the Project for Economic Education. Now, the Project for Economic Education, which is a wing of the Indian Liberal Group sort of thought about producing alternative budgets and just before the presentation of the normal central budget, just about two to three weeks before that or about a month before that, we used to come out with our own publication. And there were in the early stages of this particular first liberal budget which was being presented, We had a had a conference held in in what is this place sort of in Nashik, close to Nashik, I forget the name of the place, but Leslie Sawhney programme which was there and we used to have the this kind of a workshops and conferences. And the first that kind of a conference was attended by T. N. Ninan, then Suresh Tendulkar all these people were there and we used to discuss about what should be the fiscal policy for this country, what should be the trade policy, what should be the pricing policy, what should be the regulatory institutions and all that. Based on those deliberations we came out with the first Indian liberal budget and we also made presentations on that liberal budget both in Bombay and in Delhi held the press conferences and so on. It did receive some attention, but the kind of attention which we were expecting from that kind of activity did not happen. We came out with another three subsequent publications of the Indian Liberal Group’s, so in all about four or five such alternative budgets were being prepared. So, these budgets enable us to at least look at the entire fiscal system at a great deal of sort of in a specific details. We had discussions with Geethakrishnan who was the former finance secretary and he was from Chennai and many others. That was a good kind of contribution which came from the Project for Economic Education for liberal economic thinking.

Notable passages

"that is how the whole process became sort of you know participative for me getting involved with the Raju's Freedom First and as well as the Project for Economic Education"
Traces his path into the institutional networks of Indian liberalism.
"Based on those deliberations we came out with the first Indian liberal budget and we also made presentations on that liberal budget both in Bombay and in Delhi held the press conferences and so on."
Bhandare positions himself as a direct participant in producing the alternative liberal budgets.
"there were lots of those conferences which are being organized by the Raju on understanding the economic reforms process"
Shows Raju's role as the convener of the liberal reform-era discussions Bhandare joined.
"The first that kind of a conference was attended by T. N. Ninan, then Suresh Tendulkar all these people were there and we used to discuss about what should be the fiscal policy for this country"
Indicates the calibre of economic journalists/economists drawn into the Project for Economic Education's deliberations.
"we used to discuss about what should be the fiscal policy for this country, what should be the trade policy, what should be the pricing policy, what should be the regulatory institutions and all that"
Frames the substantive policy questions Tendulkar and others debated at the liberal-budget workshops.
"We had discussions with Geethakrishnan who was the former finance secretary and he was from Chennai and many others."
Shows the Project for Economic Education sought senior bureaucratic expertise to inform its alternative budgets.

Metadata and summary are AI-extracted from the source PDF and reviewed for editorial accuracy. The original work is available via the Read PDF tab above (where present); paragraph-level citation inside the PDF is deferred to a future engagement.

People in this work

Related across the archive