India Shunning ‘Big Bang’ Economic Change Risks Singh Legacy

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s push to deepen India’s welfare system may divert focus from the investment and regulatory changes needed to sustain an economic transformation that he unleashed two decades ago.

The government is expanding education and rural jobs plans whose costs could swell by almost 2 percentage points of gross domestic product, International Monetary Fund estimates show. Singh also aims to submit a bill in the parliamentary session that started today securing low-cost food for more than 800 million people, more than the combined U.S. and euro-area population.