Sectoral Impact of World Bank Loans to India in the Pre and Early Liberalisation Period: An Assessment of Agriculture, Social and Power Sectors

India’s relations with the World Bank can be traced back to the latter’s origin. India was one of the 17 countries, prepared the agenda for the Bretton Woods Conference ( June 1944). It was also one of the 44 countries which signed the final agreement for the establishment of the Bank. As the Bank operates in India through many kinds of projects, the country obviously offers an experimental ground for learning lessons and getting insights. In the mid of 20th century India assisted the World Bank, by facilitating it to study various problems in sectors like agricultural, social and power sectors to learn and, to “increase its understanding of the fundamental interactions of agriculture, poverty alleviation, and environment development efforts”. Based on these studies World Bank started to suggest policy prescriptions to various problems in these sectors and subsequently what was emerged as and conditionalities based funding. The article provides an insight understanding of the impact of these loans in general and in Agriculture, Social and Power sectors in particular. It confines till the middle of 1990’s from when the actual liberalization period started before engaging the country to a rapid economic growth.