The Reserve Bank of India's policy of ‘bespoke liberalization’

India stands out among its peers for not having experienced a financial crisis, which has been attributed to its cautious liberalization agenda. This perspective overlooks the extent to which India's big businesses are integrated into global financial markets and act as shock transmitters. Thus, while standard capital-account measures show India to be a relatively closed economy, the investment and borrowing activities of India's big businesses speak to a tailored liberalization process that renders India vulnerable to global liquidity shocks, which the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) manages through a mix of administrative and market-based measures. This has resulted in a heavily managed liberalization process that can only be described as narrow and deep, and that this article terms ‘bespoke liberalization’. India's path to liberalization does not register the growing dominance of global finance accompanied by a retreating state. Rather, what we observe is the growing influence of India's big businesses accompanied by an interventionist state. India's access to the liberal financial order is guaranteed through the RBI's decisively anti-liberal policies of restrictions on the capital account and interventions in foreign exchange markets. Bespoke liberalization has adverse effects on smaller businesses, particularly with regard to access to credit.