The Bihar Election: Impact on Reform

Following the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) loss in the Bihar state assembly election, the world began to wonder what impact these results might have on the Narendra Modi government’s interest and ability to enact economic reforms. Separately, there had been an emerging narrative that India had already achieved high, sustainable growth rates and that India had emerged as the world’s top investment destination — data points that could potentially erode the administration’s interest in expending political capital on reforms. But just two days after the Bihar election results were announced, we clearly found the answer with the announcement of foreign investment reforms in 20 sectors and subsectors, several of which will likely be individually significant.