There isn't any mention of socialism, or anything related to it in your link.

It sounds like a classic balance of payments issue (importing too much compared to exports/tourism/other revenues) being hit with an exploding in price critical import (oil). Sri Lanka had the same issues just a few years back, was it "socialism" too?

India until 1991 was very socialist. After 1991 they implemented reforms to reduce state controls. This [0] explains a bit better

[0] https://www.adamsmith.org/blog/india-and-the-tragedy-of-soci...

What a shittily written article, staining the Adam Smith name.

Nationalising a bunch of critical industries isn't "socialism" and the article utterly fails to explain how it is or why it's related. Historical UK, and modern France, Russia, UAE, Saudi Arabia also had multiple crucial industries which were fully nationally owned. Were they socialist too?

Private companies needed to obtain license [0] from the govt to start or to expand.

Some companies were even prosecuted for producing more than what was allowed. This was at least Nehru's (first Prime Minister) version of Democratic Socialism.

[0]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Licence_Raj

That's still not what socialism means. Absurdly tight government control over the economy, and the existence of a private market economy, doesn't mean that workers owned the means of production.

It was along the lines of public owns the means of production.