In the decades after independence in 1947 India adopted a strictly Socialist approach to economic development, characterised by wide-scale protectionism, public ownership and heavy regulation on the one hand and massive inefficiency and corruption on the other. This produced an annual “Hindu growth rate” of around three per cent. However, for the past 20 years India has undergone a huge liberalisation process shifting it towards a firmly market-based economy. In that time both growth and international trade have increased spectacularly. In the past ten years alone GDP per head of population in India has trebled.