In this New Indian Express article, Shankkar Aiyar analyses how the birth of free-market politics predated economic liberalisation in India. Excerpts:

"With the Avadi Resolution of 1955, the Congress party adopted the socialistic pattern for national economic development, but it relied on laissez-faire to expand political market share. In a study on The Politics of Defection, a former secretary general of the Lok Sabha pointed out that there were 542 defections between 1957 and 1967, of which the Congress netted 419 gains.  

The votaries of state-led industrialisation were also the pioneers of capitalistic politics. Congress strongman Yashwant Rao Chavan, who popularised the phraseology of Aaya Ram Gaya Ram, is said to have wooed to the party’s fold members of parties representing peasants and workers as also communists. The Chavan brand of inducing defections was known as “berij rajkaran”, which literally means “addition politics”..."

Read the whole article here.