Mint asks if India is more socialist now and goes on to answer in the affirmative. The authors Manas Chakravarty and Mobis Philipose state, “It’s also widely accepted that liberalisation started from the Rajiv Gandhi era in the early 1980s”. Not according to Matthew McCartney of SOAS, University of London, who in a “Department of Economics Working Papers” argued that the reforms of 1980s, which were abandoned in the late 80s — and successfully reintroduced in 1991 — “can be traced back to the early 1970s”. In his view economic reforms in India demonstrate a continuity:

Reforms, “in India have been prosecuted by or on behalf of social elites which have been in revolt against an earlier model of state directed economic development.” (Corbridge and Harriss, 2000, p145)… The neo-liberal project has followed the grooves of least resistance, a certain ‘logic of capital’, focusing narrowly on elite concerns, capital markets, NRIs and consumer durables.

Mint report here, McCartney’s paper here