Although austerity in the Global North attracts significant backlash and political scrutiny, Western institutions continue to promote these policies in the Global South through conditional lending programs that restructure economies and reshape social relations. This paper centers India's severe balance-of-payment crisis in 1991 when the country turned to the IMF for guidance after a bailout. The study embraces a subnational framework to evaluate how IMF-driven reforms unfolded in different states, comparing the results in Bihar, Kerala, Maharashtra, and Punjab. The results reveal how aggregate indicators obscure the distinct trajectories taken by individual states. This paper capitalizes on ongoing debates by highlighting the limitations of one-size-fits-all policy solutions and exploring how austerity is mediated differently, actively shaped by local contexts and conditions.
Please sign in
If you are a registered user on Laidlaw Scholars Network, please sign in