Journal Articles

Over the last year, CPR has been working to understand why the relationship between the business community and the Indian state has deteriorated so much over the last decade. Whether it is plunging private investment, increasing concentration of capital, the alienation of informal businesses and SMEs, or the rising NPA problem, many indicators show that India’s economy is in deep trouble, even prior to the Covid-19 pandemic. No nation-state has grown without some degree of collaboration with its business community, and we strongly believe that trust needs to be rebuilt between capital and the Indian state in order to accomplish any of the optimistic goals that have been set out by successive governments.

This October 2020 of Seminar gathers a range of experts from business, journalism, policy research and academia to diagnose discrete problems of the business-state relationship, establish the background for why things have deteriorated, and suggest some possible directions to repair this fraying trust. We hope that some of the ideas from this issue can help capital and the state have productive conversations again.