I am sorry but you are very wrong. And visiting India means nothing at all if you are wrong. I have lived in India for over 15 years.
They threw out the free market guy? ....What “free market guy”? Manmohan Singh wasn't appointed to the cabinet until 1991. The fiscal deficit was close to 10% of GDP when he first took charge as Finance minister, and India was already in IMF debt trap. It was Singh who first dismantled license raj, started privatization and instituted policies to attract foreign direct investment without any bureaucratic obstacles. The next Hindu nationalist government carried forward the same policies but they didn't start it.
If you have better information then please name the “Hindu nationalist” who in your opinion initiated India's economic liberalization. Yes Singh was a socialist. He was old school socialist with a Doctorate in Economics from the best known school of economic in all of British Empire. Up until he became the Finance minister of India in 1991 most of his policies were very socialist, but fact is when he became the Finance minister he was the first to start India's economic reforms that put India on accelerated growth path. Simple fact.... when he first took charge India's foreign reserves had only US$1 billion, today India has US$300 billion in her foreign reserves.
Beside... name one “Hindu nationalist” who was not a socialist. I challenge you. And I am well aware of Indian politics. BJP and Congress both came from socialist schools.
As for Indian economy slipping in the past 5 years.... yes India's slipped from 9% to 7%.
7 percent growth is still WAY better then current US economy growth....for sure European economic growth and even Chinese economic growth that slipped from 11% to 8%. There is a global slow down and all countries are facing it.
Its pure mindless nonsense to claim that his job creating schemes and ran up a huge debt. We are talking about Singh not Obama. India's external debt is only 23% of the GDP which among the lowest in the world (India has only 41% domestic debt). By contrast US external debt alone is about 102% of her GDP. And Europe blows the lid off the external debt meter.
Check this....
http://www.usdebtclock.org/world-debt-clock.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_external_debt
I think you need to do some serious fact checking.
We should have nothing to do with socialists. Singh also created some job creating scheme. See WSJ report at http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903591104576467562817474174.html on how this killed the labor market.
Why do we have apologists for radical socialists on FR?