‘"[An] insightful guide to a
rapidly changing nation . . . Something tremendous is
happening in India, and Das, with his keen eye and often
elegant prose, has his finger firmly on the pulse of the
transformation."
-The New York Times Book Review
"One of the most readable and
insightful books to appear on India's tortuous economic path
in its 54 years since shaking off British rule. . . . India
Unbound excels when Das describes his and other
industrialists' maddening experiences under the so-called
License Raj, when any product launch or expansion needed state
approval. . . . Das is exuberant about what is happening today
. . . While the book is hopeful, he also makes it clear
throughout that India, Internet or no, still has lots of work
to do before its renaissance is secure."
-- Business Week
"INDIA UNBOUND is a lively,
interesting and well documented answer – the first of its kind
– to a key question: why was India rich, why is it poor, when
will it be rich again? It is also full of the kind of stories
which make that fascinating country come alive for the
reader."
-- Olivier Bernier, author of "The World in 1800"
India today is a vibrant free-market
democracy and has begun to flex its muscles in the global
information economy and on the world stage. Now, acclaimed
columnist Gurcharan Das traces India's recent social and
economic transformations in an eminently readable, impassioned
narrative.
Das tells the stories of the major players
in a period of rapid and profound change—from early days of
Independence to the current software impresarios—and makes
comprehensible and compelling the economic and political
developments responsible for these changes. He weaves his
personal story into the larger context of contemporary
history: his family's move t America in the mid-1950s, his
education at Harvard, his years in India as a young marketing
executive wrestling with a socialist system he feared would
undermine the country's vast potential. He also shows us the
reasons behind his optimism for his nation's future, among
which is the exciting landscape of information technology
today.
Das argues that the changes of the past
fifty years have, at last, amounted to a revolution—and it is
one that has not been chronicled before. With India Unbound,
he gives us a book that is at once vigorously analytical and
vividly written—an essential insider's road map to India, then
and now.
Table of Contents
- Introduction: The Wise Elephant
- Part One: Our Spring of Hope (1942-65)
- 1. Ranting in English, Chanting in Sanskrit
- 2. Smells of the Bazaar
- 3. The Train to Nowhere
- 4. Blind Then, Blind Now
- 5. If We Were Once Rich, Why Are We Now Poor?
- 6. The Paper Route
- 7. Capitalism for the Rich, Socialism for the Poor
- Part Two: The Lost Generation (1966-91)
- 8. Bazaar Power
- 9. Lerma Rojo and Taichung Native No. 1
- 10. Caste
- 11. Multiplying by Zero
- 12. Merchants of Marwar
- 13. Dreams in Kabutarkhana
-
- 14. Licensing Blues
- Part Three: The Rebirth of Dreams (1991-99)
- 15. The Golden Summer of 1991
- 16. A Million Reformers
- 17. New Money
- 18. Old Money
- 19. The Rise and Rise of a Middle Class
- 20. Modern vs. Western
- 21. Democracy First, Capitalism Afterwards
- 22. Knowledge is Wealth
- 23. A New Country
