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Reviews of
India Unbound.
1) NEW YORK TIMES, MARCH
25
Techno-Brahmins
A writer and executive extols the new India and its rising
consumer class.
By
AKASH KAPUR
In 1997, when India celebrated the
50th anniversary of its independence, the world
paid homage to its most populous democracy. Other countries
had grown richer in those postcolonial years. Many had escaped
the political and religious convulsions that had so often
shaken the region. But almost alone in the non-Western world
-- barring a short interruption in 1975, when Indira Gandhi
declared a state of emergency -- India had clung doggedly to
its democratic convictions. A slew of books commemorated the
achievement. One of the finest, Sunil Khilnani's ''Idea of
India,'' described India's polity as ''the third moment in the
great democratic experiment launched by the American and
French Revolutions.''
Like many of these books,
Gurcharan Das's ''India Unbound'' is a broad summing-up of the
last half century. Part memoir, part journalism, part history
and part management bible, the book begins shortly before
independence and continues until the new millennium. A former
C.E.O. of Procter & Gamble in both India and America, and
currently a venture capitalist and consultant, Das is less
concerned with political than with economic history. And where
authors like Khilnani cherish the revolution that began with
independence in 1947, Das does not find full cause for
jubilation until 1991, when India unleashed a series of
economic reforms, the start of an ''economic revolution'' that
he believes ''may well be more important than the political
revolution.''
Those reforms were forced upon
India, adopted less than enthusiastically when the nation
found itself with foreign exchange reserves worth only two
weeks of imports. Over the course of what Das calls a ''golden
summer,'' a newly installed government surprised everyone by
easing foreign exchange restrictions, devaluing the rupee,
lowering import tariffs and undoing the byzantine controls
that had stifled Indian industry. Many -- Das included -- feel
the reforms should have gone further, but the results
nonetheless have been dramatic: after decades of chugging
along at the so-called Hindu rate of growth (a dismal 3.5
percent per year), the economy grew by an average of 7.5
percent in the mid-1990's. The growth in disposable incomes,
and the opening up of the country to world markets, has
altered the face of Indian society, creating a new consumer
middle class. Das argues that these changes are only the
beginning of a dramatic reversal of fortunes. ''The theme of
this book,'' he writes, ''is how a rich country became poor
and will be rich again.''
At the heart of ''India Unbound''
is a deep ambivalence about Jawaharlal Nehru, the architect of
Indian independence but also of its disastrous economic
policies. Das recognizes the political contributions made by
Nehru, and he writes of the admiration he felt as a young man
for the handsome leader whose lofty ideals inspired a nation.
But, echoing an increasingly common attitude in modern India,
he feels that Nehru's faith in Soviet-style central planning
cheated the nation of the prosperity enjoyed by some of its
Southeast Asian neighbors. Nehru's revolution, Das argues, was
incomplete, delivering political liberty but failing to
unshackle the nation economically. In one of the more eloquent
expressions of this sentiment, he tells of a meeting at which
the industrialist Rahul Bajaj is threatened with imprisonment
for producing more scooters than permitted by his quota. ''My
grandfather went to jail for my country's freedom,'' replies
Bajaj. ''I stand ready to do the same for producing on behalf
of my motherland.''
Such stories enliven what could
easily have been a dull piece of economic history. Das had a
ringside seat at the events he describes, and the result is an
engaging account that moves easily from the big picture to the
telling anecdote. Through Das, we are introduced not just to
the standard pantheon of political figures but to a range of
lesser-known characters from the corporate world. These
include old-fashioned industrialists like Bajaj and also a new
brand of businessman -- entrepreneurs like Narayana Murthy,
the C.E.O. of Infosys, India's most successful software
company, and Subhash Chandra, the founder of a global Hindi
satellite television channel, often called ''the Murdoch of
Asia.''
Das's sympathies clearly lie with
this later generation of managers. He sees the earlier breed
as dinosaurs, pampered by a protectionist government and
doomed to oblivion. His enthusiasm for the new order becomes
most apparent in the book's final section, where he succumbs
to a certain giddiness over India's prospects in the 21st
century. Das is particularly excited about India's software
industry, a sector whose great success has led many to predict
-- as the head of India's largest mutual fund recently did --
that ''what oil is to the Middle East, infotech is to India.''
Such optimism is not entirely
misplaced. India's high-tech industry has been the most
visible success of the reforms, generating fabulous wealth and
great opportunities. What is less clear is the extent to which
this wealth is trickling down to the 300 million Indians who
still live in poverty and the 75 percent who live in the
countryside, far away from the new economy. Das is undoubtedly
right that poverty has tarnished India's democracy, but he
seems less concerned that unequal prosperity may have the same
effect. To be fair, he does argue that democracy and
capitalism need not be mutually exclusive, and cites from the
work of
Amartya Sen, who has repeatedly written on
the importance of integrating the two. But despite his
professed preference for ''democratic capitalism,'' Das's
faith in free markets can come across as overly zealous, as
when he complains that too many Indians ''are still listening
to the background noise of democracy when we could be
listening to the music of entrepreneurship.''
However, one doesn't need to share
Das's unbridled fervor for markets to appreciate this book.
''India Unbound'' is like an opinionated but insightful guide
to a rapidly changing nation in which old clichés about
spirituality and poverty are increasingly irrelevant. Near the
end, Das writes about his son, who has decided to leave a job
in New York and return to India to start a company. ''He's
caught up in the spirit of our times, when every young person
is willing to risk the security of a job to pursue his
passion,'' Das writes. That ''spirit'' signals a dramatic
widening of horizons, a new self-confidence. 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.
Akash Kapur is a contributing
editor at Transition magazine.
2)
Washington
Post, Sunday, March 11, 2001
Unleashing the
Tiger
Reviewed by Jonah Blank
INDIA UNBOUND By Gurcharan Das Knopf. 406 pp. $27.50
As a rule, books written by
businessmen are shameless exercises in auto-hagiography, smug
tomes of self-congratulation and banality offering about as
much intellectual honesty or literary merit as a corporate
filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. I can see
how CEOs might view themselves as repositories of wisdom and
narrative brilliance (which of their overpaid lackeys is going
to tell them otherwise?), but I often wonder why respectable
publishing houses choose to encourage this delusion. Surely
editors aren't so mercenary that they'd print the musings of
moneymen solely to make money?
Fortunately, most rules have their
exceptions. Gurcharan Das, a venture capitalist and former
head of Proctor & Gamble India, is far more than a mere
harvester of filthy lucre. The author of three plays, a novel
and innumerable newspaper columns, Das is a writer whose
subject is business rather than simply a businessman who
subjects us to his writing.
The argument of Das's new book is
straightforward: From Independence until 1991, the government
of India strangled commerce and stunted the nation's economic
development; now that the shackles of socialism are being
loosened, India is poised for great financial success. It is
an argument that might be considered settled fact in most
boardrooms and seminar-chambers from Delhi to Dallas, but it
could be an eye-opener to readers unfamiliar with the radical
transformations currently under way in the subcontinent.
A decade of economic reform in
India has created a cottage industry in works of academic
analysis: Amartya Sen, Jagdish Bhagwati, Ashutosh Varshney,
Lloyd and Suzanne Rudolph -- the list of scholars examining
the phenomenon is long and distinguished. What Das brings to
this crowded table is first-hand experience and a desire to
address readers who may never have heard (or cared) about
import substitution theory or the Licence Permit Raj. His book
is partly a memoir, partly an economic policy primer, and
partly a bracingly forthright rant.
By way of background, for 44 years
India pursued an economic strategy from which it is now
seeking to extricate itself. The goals of this plan -- crafted
by the nation's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru -- were
primarily social: to provide all citizens with basic human
necessities, to ensure that India remained economically as
well as politically independent of foreign control, to narrow
the gap between rich and poor, and to solidify the foundations
of democracy in the sprawling, newborn state. These goals were
remarkably ambitious, and (even more remarkably) they were
essentially met. Critics of Nehruvian socialism point to the
lack of rapid economic growth during the years when other
Asian states were chalking up impressive trade figures. But
this was never part of the plan. Das (together with many
economists) argues that it should have been. Maybe so. Such
arguments are easiest to make with 20-20 hindsight, and at the
time Nehru was instituting his program the consensus among
Western economists advising developing nations favored
state-sponsored central planning rather than a free-market
approach.
More to the point, India may not
have been able to institute democracy and overhaul its economy
at the same time. None of the Asian "success stories" did.
Japan had its democratic constitution written and imposed by
the occupying forces of the United States, which also supplied
the massive funding necessary to build modern business
infrastructure. South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand and Singapore
have become true democracies only quite recently, long after
their economic ascent. Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines
are still wrestling (often violently) with the issue of
popular rule. And can China, where 50 million people died in
the man-made famines of the Great Leap Forward, serve as any
sort of a economic or political model? Don't get me started.
Like many other observers, Das
rails against the inefficiencies of the old Indian economy,
and waxes ecstatic about the improvements in the decade of
reform. As anybody who has tried to book an airline ticket or
place a phone call in India can testify, it's a fair charge.
Even today, there are plenty of offices (particularly in the
public sector) that employ 10 people to perform a task
incompetently instead of one person to do it well. But this
was part of what made Nehru's plan function: In a nation now
numbering one billion, barely half of whom are literate, it
may have been the only substitute for enormous investment in
social services. Most Indians would rather be employed in an
inefficient economy than unemployed in an efficient one.
Yes, with democracy and national
unity firmly established, Nehruvian socialism has outlived its
usefulness. It was Nehru's own Congress Party that instituted
the 1991 reforms, under Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao.
Even Jyoti Basu, the crusty old communist baron of West
Bengal, has gone from trashing transnational conglomerates to
pleading with them for investment capital. In arguing for
economic liberalization, Das (whose leanings are conservative
despite his criticism of the right-wing Bharatiya Janata
Party's push for indigenous production) has set up a bit of a
straw man. But for American readers accustomed to view India
as a land of tigers rather than high-tech and maharajahs
rather than microchips, this book will come as a welcome
surprise.
Jonah Blank is the author of
"Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God: Retracing the Ramayana Through
India" and "Mullahs on the Mainframe: Islam and Modernity
Among the Daudi Bohras."
© 2001 The Washington Post Company
3) The Economist, February 15th,
2001
Agree to differ
INDIA UNBOUND.
By Gurcharan Das.
Knopf; 384 pages; $27.50; 495 Indian rupees.
MISTAKEN MODERNITY: INDIA BETWEEN WORLDS.
By Dipankar Gupta.
Harper Collins; 225 pages; 195 Indian rupees
A DECADE after discarding
comforting but self-destructive ideals of self-sufficiency and
economic planning, India is in the midst of a great debate
about the consequences. The antis mourn two losses: dedication
to equality and an approach to development that was distinctly
Indian. They fear, in a word, that India is losing its soul.
The pros revel in India’s new information-technology prowess,
the unshackling of business, faster growth and the hope that
it will reduce the country’s appalling poverty. They celebrate
India’s reconditioned body.
“India Unbound” is by an unabashed
pro, an ex-boss of the Indian part of Procter & Gamble who has
moved into business consultancy and writing (he has done a
novel and three plays). Thanks to economic reforms, he writes,
“we have glimpsed paradise again and are on our way to
regaining it.” The author of “Mistaken Modernity”, a
sociologist at Delhi’s leftish Jawaharlal Nehru University, is
an ambivalent anti. He does not condemn outright the reforms
of 1991, which entailed deregulating business and opening
India up (partially) to foreign trade and investment. Like
many Indian sceptics, he is nostalgic for the days when
production decisions “were tied umbilically to national
development and sovereignty.”
Gurcharan Das is correct that the
umbilicus was strangling the baby. But there is less conflict
here than it seems. Both sides in this debate are avowed
enemies of what might be called old India, which remains in
many respects the India of today. Its features include
discrimination against women, caste barriers, Hindu
chauvinism, official corruption, advancement based on
patronage and, for business, profits without competition.
Dipankar Gupta contends, justly, that India’s fascination with
western gadgetry and lifestyles has not brought modernity. You
can subjugate women and make a weapon of religion just as well
with a mobile phone as without one, probably better. True
modernity, Mr Gupta writes, entails adhering to universal
norms, upholding individual rights, making the state
accountable. His book pleads with India to put modernisation
in place of “westoxication”.
There is nothing here that true
globalisers would not support, with enthusiasm. Their argument
with the antis is really about money. Mr Gupta and others who
are suspicious of reform seem to share the high-minded
attitudes of India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru,
who once told J.R.D. Tata, head of the country’s most
respected business house, that profit is “a dirty word”. To
take a more recent example, Arundhati Roy, India’s
Booker-prize novelist, not long ago wrote a long and
impassioned article in one of India’s weekly magazines
portraying capitalists, especially foreign ones, as
plunderers.
Mr Das, on the other hand, thinks
that capitalism will cure many of the ills that Nehru’s
socialism compounded. The cosy corruption of old Indian
business habits cannot withstand competition, he suggests.
Although the commercial bania caste was useful in
kick-starting Indian capitalism, Mr Das points out that in a
liberalised economy governed by rules rather than patronage,
companies cannot afford to hire employees on the basis of
caste. As for poverty, contemporary India’s worst blight,
education will spread the benefits of economic growth to the
masses.
One problem supporters of reform
face is that its effects do not look very egalitarian,
especially in an Indian context. Indians disagree whether the
past decade of halting reform has reduced poverty. No one
disputes that it has thrown up a vulgar, sharp-elbowed new
middle class. Mr Gupta, with a tweedy disdain, has made its
members the villains of his book, not without reason: many
dodge taxes and welcome the stark difference of income that
ensures an endless supply of cheap servants. Mr Das
nevertheless concludes that “whether India can deliver the
goods” will depend a great deal on this new middle class.
Despite its occasional
repetitions, “India Unbound” is not only more persuasive but
more enjoyable. Mr Das, whose career spanned the darkest and
brightest eras in Indian economic policy, tells much of his
story autobiographically. When he was manager of the Vicks
VapoRub brand in India, flu epidemics posed absurd dilemmas:
should he boost production beyond licensed limits (a
punishable offence) or leave market demand unsatisfied?
Mr Das looks back to the rise of
Indian business families, some of which often began with
enterprising young men outwitting British monopolists, and
offers management advice to their heirs, many of them now
addled by decades of planning and protection. His real
interest, though, is in the info-tech companies that sprang up
in the 1990s. They are India’s chance to achieve the rates of
growth and poverty reduction that East Asia accomplished
through manufacturing, or so Mr Das and many other IT-besotted
Indians believe.
Though Mr Gupta prefers
sovereignty to success, he makes good observations about the
grip of tradition. India’s tendency to throw up humanitarian
heroes like Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa is a sign of weak
institutions, he believes: where these are stronger, saints
are less needed to protect the weak. Women stand out in South
Asian politics, he explains, because they are assumed to lack
characters of their own and can take on the charisma of their
(often martyred) husbands or fathers. All in all, however, his
book relies too much on the author’s opinions and too little
on his expertise.
Mr Das’s faith that IT plus
education will restore India to greatness and prosperity can
sound over-hopeful. And he mentions only in passing the urgent
needs of agriculture, which continues to occupy two-thirds of
India’s people. But his book is informative, entertaining, and
basically correct about India’s need to embrace capitalism
more whole-heartedly, for all the costs and risks.
4) The Wall Street Journal, March
19, 2001
Why the Subcontinent Is Subpar
By Tunku Varadarajan
INDIA UNBOUND
By Gurcharan Das
(Knopf, 406 pages, $27.50)
WHEN MY MOTHER, some 15 years ago in Delhi,
started her own factory -- an initially
modest place, now grown impressive, that
produces home furnishings for export – hers was the first
instance in the history of my family when someone, anyone,
went into business.
Being Brahmins, we had disdained
the making of money. Until the 20th century, and for as long
back as there are records, the men in the family had been
priests, serving in Hindu temples or in private arrangements
with landed or moneyed families. In the early 1900s, having
imbibed a British education, they flocked to the civil
service, the new priesthood of modern India.
I mention this because Gurcharan
Das, the author of "India Unbound," shares my experience of a
high-caste family detached from the creation of wealth. "Like
many Indians," he writes, "our family did not accord a high
place to the making of money. Thus, I grew up with a low
opinion of commerce and merchants."
Mr. Das is eager to see India
freed (or "unbound") from the trammels of such presumptions,
as well as from the heavy statism that has been their result.
And indeed, he sees some hope in the high-tech revolution of
recent years. But in the main, he prefers to trace the
evolution of India's economic misery, for which, he believes,
its governing classes bear most blame.
Independent
India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, had, like the
young Mr. Das, a low opinion of
anything commercial. "Never talk to me about profit," he once
scolded J.R.D. Tata, India's foremost industrialist. "It is a
dirty word." This aversion to free enterprise can be
attributed, in part, to a Brahmin's sense that money sullies
the soul. Yet it was the product, largely, of a destructive
fascination with Fabian socialism -- that is, the
nonrevolutionary, British-born variety -- and of a blind
admiration for the Soviet system of centralized economic
planning.
Nehru, a sanctimonious snob who
was never entirely able to treat his fellow Indians as equals,
dragged his country down in the years after the British left.
He imposed on India a complex of malfunctioning, state-run,
industrial white elephants, all the while denying private
entrepreneurs the right to seek investment from abroad, or to
export without oppressive controls, or to import at will the
materials and technology needed to establish competitive
industries in India. Meanwhile, he neglected India's
agriculture, forcing the country to rely on American food aid
to feed itself while he blithely charted a
pro-Soviet, anti-American foreign policy under the flimsy
guise of nonalignment.
Mr. Das's book seeks to explain
why India, a country once rich-or, at least, once a country of
riches-is today largely impoverished. He ascribes some blame
to the British colonizers -- and who would not? -- for the
manner in which wealth was extracted from India but seldom,
if ever, plowed back. But the strength of his inquiry lies in
its castigation of those who inherited the running of India
from the British. He is commendably scathing about Nehru and
his daughter Indira Gandhi, who had her father's hubris and
contempt for businessmen but not a trace of his erudition.
The period of emergency she
presided over from 1975-77, during which many civil
rights were suspended and political opponents jailed, is
generally regarded as the ugliest chapter of postcolonial
India. Yet Mr. Das, who ran Procter & Gamble India until his
recent retirement, puts even that two-year phase in cold
perspective: "Most people remember the Emergency because it
represented a generalized loss of liberty. They do not
understand that by suppressing economic liberty for forty
years, we destroyed growth and the future of two generations."
In most developed democracies,
someone like Mr. Das would be a legislator or a cabinet
minister. Not so in India, where men like him – educated
abroad, dressed in well-cut suits and convinced of the private
sector's magic touch – are excluded from the political
process. Indian politics is now riddled with castemanship,
regional factionalism, personality cults and politicians
solely intent on personal enrichment. (Mr. Das, a patriot in
the best sense of the word, did indeed try to enter politics
after he left P&G, but was given the cold shoulder by the
major parties.)
The author regards economic growth
as the only way to strengthen Indian democracy. One of his
unsung men of mettle is Lal Bahadur Shastri, who succeeded
Nehru and set in train the Green Revolution, by which India
became a net exporter of food. Shastri's untimely death in
1966 paved the way for the ghastly Mrs. Gandhi. Another Das
hero is Narasimha Rao, the prime minister who, in 1991,
brought India its first truly meaningful package of economic
reforms.
His other heroes are the Indian
people themselves, who have flourished abroad in climes more
favorable to free enterprise and who, in India, battle
cheerfully against a system that, in spite of some reforms in
the last decade, still does more to stifle enterprise than
to encourage it. Mr. Das believes that the "information age"
will be India's salvation. He is aware that nearly half of the
country is illiterate. But his optimism is potent: "We have
good reasons to expect that the lives of the majority of
Indians in the 21st century will be freer and more
prosperous than their parents'. Never before in recorded
history have so many people been in a position to rise so
quickly." If he is right, India will soar with them. If he is
wrong, it's back to the devil's own drawing
board.
Mr. Varadarajan is the Journal's
deputy editorial features editor.
5) L.A. Times March 22, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
Promise Emerges From a Nation's Tragically Mismanaged Past
By SHASHI THAROOR, Special to The L.A. Times
INDIA UNBOUND
by Gurcharan Das
Alfred A. Knopf
$27.50, 388 pages
No per-capita-income figures, no
indices of calorie consumption, can capture the wretchedness
that is the lot of the poor in India. Whether destitute amid
the dust of countryside or begging on the sidewalks of its
teeming cities, to be poor in India is to be born of a
malnourished mother in conditions where your survival is
uncertain. It is to survive with inadequate food, clothing and
shelter, without the stimulation of learning or play; it is to
grow unequipped intellectually or physically to be a
productive member of a striving society. That such conditions
afflict 350 million Indians is worse than a tragedy: It is a
shame. It was in the name of India's poor that the Congress
Party, which ruled India for all but three of its first 42
years of independence, sought to create a "socialist pattern
of society" led by a state-controlled public sector that would
dominate the "commanding heights" of the economy. This
approach combined nationalism and idealism, seeing economic
self-sufficiency as the only possible guarantee of political
independence. It was less a strategy, however, than a reaction
to the days of the British East India Co., which had come to
trade and stayed on to rule. (One of the lessons you learn
from history is that you often learn the wrong lessons from
history.)
Gurcharan Das, a Harvard-educated
businessman who has managed to run Procter & Gamble's Indian
operations successfully while authoring three plays, a novel
and a stream of newspaper columns, has seen Indian socialism
up close and personal. When George Bernard Shaw famously wrote
that "if all the economists in the world were laid end to end,
they would never reach a conclusion," he clearly didn't have
Das' book on the Indian economy in mind. Das weaves accessibly
written history, thumbnail biographies of legendary Indian
industrialists and entrepreneurs, his own experiences as a
young executive building up the Vicks brand in the Indian
heartland and accounts of Kafkaesque encounters with
bureaucracy, into a book that traces "the struggle of
one-sixth of humanity for dignity and prosperity" and comes to
pretty clear conclusions.
Untangling the knots of India's
democratic socialism is not easy. Because the assumption was
that the public sector was good in itself, performance was not
a relevant criterion: Inefficiencies were masked by generous
subsidies, and a combination of vested interests--socialist
ideologues, bureaucratic managers, self-protective trade
unions and captive markets--made bad economics good politics.
Das is, in tempered and measured
prose, scathing about this. The combination of internal
controls and international protectionism gave India an economy
hobbled by red tape, underproductive and grossly inefficient,
making too few goods of too low quality at too high a price.
Regulations made investment difficult and production beyond
licensed quotas illegal. The resultant stagnation led to
snide comments about the "Hindu rate of growth," averaging
some 3.5% in the first three decades after independence, when
countries in Southeast Asia were growing at 8% to 15%. The
sector of the economy that grew most was neither the
agricultural nor the industrial, but the bureaucratic;
regulation became a more important economic activity than
production. It is sadly impossible to quantify the economic
losses inflicted on India over decades of entrepreneurs
frittering away their energies in queuing for licenses rather
than manufacturing products, paying bribes instead of hiring
workers, wooing politicians instead of understanding
consumers, "getting things done" through bureaucrats rather
than doing things for themselves.
There is a certain poignancy in
Das' story of Aditya Birla, establishing a string of
successful companies in Southeast Asia because the impediments
placed in his way by his own government made it impossible for
him to invest in India. Conversely, Das tells us of Dhirubhai
Ambani, a schoolteacher's son and former shipping clerk, who
worked the system skillfully enough to build a petrochemical
and rayon empire.
Das writes in an engaging style,
sprinkling his text with a well-chosen array of quotations.
There are layman-friendly discussions of economic theories of
poverty, and his arguments are leavened with a close reading
of economic texts, both classic and contemporary. But what
shines through is the telling anecdote, the personal example,
the remembered conversation. Only occasionally does Das let
his restrained indignation run away with him, as when he
writes that India had "too much democracy and not enough
capitalism." Surely one can never have too much democracy,
especially in a country of India's vast differences and
disparities.
Having constructed a comprehensive
indictment of India's economic failures, Das is optimistic
about the liberalization that has opened the economy in the
1990s. He sees India on the brink of a great transformation,
fueled by the Internet, that will rival Japan's after the
Meiji Restoration. "Never before in recorded history," he
concludes, "have so many people been in a position to rise so
quickly."
A new Indian economy based on
"globally competitive companies in software, Internet,
IT-enabled industries, generic pharmaceuticals, and
entertainment" is, he says, supplanting the old family
businesses that had made their peace with the license-quota
system. Das sees the emergence of "a new social contract of
post-reform India where talent, hard work and managerial skill
have replaced inherited wealth." Yet the reforms have yet to
reach the poor: The market does not appeal to those who cannot
afford to enter the marketplace. And Das overlooks the
powerful forces of reaction, grouped under the banner of
economic nationalism, that have united right-wing Hindu
chauvinists with communists and socialists on an
anti-foreigner, pro-self-reliance platform. Indian
politicians, dominated by short-term expediency, looking
hesitantly over their electoral shoulders and anxious to
preserve their deniability should the reforms misfire, have
not stood up for liberalization with either conviction or
consistency. One hopes that Das' staunch optimism will infect
India's political decision-makers, but it is an uncertain
hope. For as Das himself acknowledges, the weakness of
capitalism in India lies in the timidity of its defenders.
Shashi Tharoor is the author, most
recently, of "India: From Midnight to the
Millennium." His new novel, "Riot," will be
published in the fall.
6) This one is in the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch, and written by one Joseph Losos, who's
described as "a St. Louis investment adviser"
He says, "Remarkable...heads and
shoulders above the customary books [extolling the free
market].... This story, so much more persuasive and effective
than the usual free market tract, is accompanied by a sort of
autobiography. Das traces his life as a journey headed in the
same direction as the business life of his country, an almost
literary scheme that is unusually effective...The issues of
business vs. private enterprise played against the somewhat
parallel questions of modernity vs. tradition and nationalism
against cosmopolitanism--it was Gandhi who served as the
idealistic father figure whose legacy proved unusable. These
are not just intellectual concerns; Das presents them
powerfully as part of his life and thought and that of his
friends and associates.....Many of the ideas presented in this
book could have been written by an American, but the result
would have been far less cogent. The author is a Harvard
graduate who has lived in Cincinnati and London, yet it exudes
a brilliant sense of Indian pride. This elegant essay has
something for everyone."
7)
INSIDE TRACK:
Wisdom along the road to reform
By John Thornhill
Financial Times; Aug 21, 2002
Unbounded enthusiasm about India
has been in short supply of late. The horrific communal riots
in Gujarat have reminded the world of India's volatility. The
military stand-off with Pakistan has highlighted south Asia's
diplomatic instability.
Nevertheless, Gurcharan Das, a
former business executive turned author, is enthusiastic about
India's prospects. While India may never roar ahead like the
Asian tigers, he argues, it can at least advance like a wise
elephant, moving steadily and surely, pausing occasionally to
reflect on its past and to enjoy the journey.
The revised edition of Mr Das's
book, India Unbound*, is at the top of the country's
best-seller list for non-fiction, tapping into a vein of
renewed self-confidence and national pride that is itself a
central theme of his study. Part memoir, part history, part
travelogue, part polemic, India Unbound dissects the
failures of the country's Nehruvian socialist experiment and
vividly describes the changes that are transforming the daily
lives and outlooks of the country's 1bn people.
Mr Das's central argument is that
India's market reforms, which began in 1991, are proving as
revolutionary as Deng Xiaoping's embrace of capitalism in
China in 1979 - it is just that they are occurring more slowly
and have so far failed to generate as much outside interest.
In fits and starts, he argues,
India's liberalising reforms are slowly unleashing the
country's "animal spirits" and will eventually lead to its
emergence as one of the world's great economic powers. By
2025, he predicts, India could have increased its share of
global output from 6 per cent to 13 per cent, making it the
third largest economy in the world.
An irrepressible enthusiast, who
helped turn Vicks VapoRub into an improbable success story in
India during his days as a manager for Procter & Gamble, Mr
Das cites many reasons for optimism.
First, the dead hand of India's
socialist economy - the so-called "Licence Raj" - is steadily
being removed. This puts business executives, bankers,
consumers and investors - rather than corrupt, licence-issuing
bureaucrats - in charge of the economy, leading to the more
efficient use of resources.
Second, political power is
devolving from New Delhi to India's outlying states,
encouraging competitive, local democracy and self-government.
Better education and increasing literacy rates are drawing
more of the lower castes and women into the political system,
slowly improving the appalling levels of governance.
Third, a younger generation of
Indians has cast off the colonial-era way of thinking and is
embracing the opportunities offered by globalisation. While
Indians of Mr Das's generation wanted to emulate Jawaharlal
Nehru, post-colonial India's first prime minister, today's
cult hero is more likely to be Bill Gates, Microsoft's
founder. India's remarkable information technology revolution
has helped create an elite cadre of business leaders that is
now determined to drive further economic reform.
Mr Das argues that these changes
have ensured that India's "Hindu rate of growth" - which
condemned the economy to expand at an average rate of 3.5 per
cent a year, from 1950 to 1980, scarcely more than the
country's population growth - is now a thing of the past. In
the 1990s, India's gross domestic product expanded at an
annual rate of 6.3 per cent - and Mr Das predicts the economy
has the potential to accelerate even more.
In an interview, Mr Das suggests
that to do so, India's leadership needs to shed its damaging
obsession with neighbouring Pakistan and learn more lessons
from China's capitalist experiments.
"Ignore Pakistan, heed China," Mr
Das says. "Pakistan pulls us down. China pulls us up. The best
use of public money would be to take our legislators and show
them what is happening in China.
"Mr Das argues that India's
"curious historical inversion" - which resulted in it becoming
a fully fledged democracy before it became a free-market
economy - will always temper the country's economic expansion.
But, he suggests, this is no bad thing: it will also help
preserve social stability and the more fragile facets of
India's unique civilisation.
"I would rather that we had a
negotiated entry into the modern world with all our
multifarious voices being heard than an autarchic system in
which all voices are snuffed out," he says. "I would rather
have 7 per cent [growth] with democracy than 8 per cent with
autocracy.
"The central arguments of Mr Das's
book certainly provoked a lively debate when they were
discussed by a panel of distinguished economists in London
earlier this year. Some speakers doubted whether the motor of
India's IT industry would be strong enough to drive the
economy uphill in the absence of a wide-scale, efficient and
labour-intensive manufacturing industry, such as in China. It
would be difficult to skip from an agricultural revolution to
an IT revolution - as Mr Das suggested was possible - without
passing through an industrial revolution.
Others questioned whether India's
consolidated fiscal deficit of 10 per cent of GDP would not
strangle private sector investment and hold back economic
growth. The state retains a central role in India's economy
and its functionaries would not easily yield their place.
But Amartya Sen, the Nobel
prize-winning economist and master of Trinity College at the
University of Cambridge, perhaps made the most telling
critique, arguing that the deformations of India's democratic
system would continue to bind the country, hampering economic
reforms that still desperately needed to be pursued.
The "fascist elements" in the
ruling Hindu revivalist Bharatiya Janata party (BJP) were
dangerous proponents of reform, he said, favouring sectional
over national interests. India lacked a secular rightwing
party to champion liberal economic policies while the left was
more divided by regional and caste loyalties than it was
united by class interests.
This point was echoed by Lord
Desai, a professor at the London School of Economics, who
argued that it was India's balance of payments crisis in 1991
that drove market reform rather than any real ideological
conviction among the political leadership.
"It is in no one's political
interest to reform and the elite is so clever it can always
give good reasons not to do so," he said. "India has a very
unpleasant choice between secularists who do not want further
liberalisation against non-secularists who are mildly
reformist.
"Mr Das may be right that India
has done well to jettison Nehruvian socialism, but his critics
argue that the country's very future could be jeopardised by
the BJP's seeming determination to overturn Nehruvian
secularism as well.
* IndiaUnbound: From Independence
to the Global Information Age, Gurcharan Das, Profile Books,
ý9.99 paperback
Editorial
Reviews
Amazon.com
Since the start of the recent global boom in information
technology, there's been much talk in economic circles of an
India covered with bold stripes, the next Asian tiger.
Gurcharan Das, however, sees a much larger but lumbering
elephant rising out of the muggy history of a country in which
one-sixth of the world's population resides. India, as he
states in India Unbound, "will never have speed, but it
will always have stamina." How that stamina has evidenced
itself over the past half-century is the focus of Das's book,
an intricate, personal account of the beginnings of India's
ongoing economic and social transformation.
Das begins his story shortly
before India gained its independence from the British in 1947.
He was born into a middle-class Punjabi family well ensconced
in the new British-educated professional class. Das's borrowed
term of "cultural commuters" fits his father's generation
well, and his description of life lived between the more
philosophical and spiritual worlds of Indian tradition and the
Western-influenced business world of the British Raj reveal
both a versatility and disorientation that was to permeate
succeeding generations of independent Indians. Though mindful
of Jawaharlal Nehru's influence on India's embrace of
democracy, Das takes to task the economic leadership of the
man who, while beginning his democratic rule with ambitions to
end "poverty and ignorance and disease and inequality of
opportunity" ultimately failed in this regard. With an
ever-present eye on the economic plight of his fellow
countrymen (and frequent use of anecdotes and statistics), Das
examines the irony of the socialist governments of Nehru and
Indira Gandhi, which were founded in the name of the poor but
became inefficient, bureaucratic behemoths, sucking the
economic lifeblood out of the country. His education at
Harvard introduced him to a slew of influential theories,
including those of economist John Kenneth Galbraith and
philosopher John Rawls. But instead of remaining in academia,
Das began his career in business, joining the Indian
subsidiary of Vicks and rising to become head of its Indian
company, Richardson Hindustan, in 1981, and eventually, a CEO
at Proctor & Gamble. Soon after the economic reforms of the
early 1990s, however, Das left to employ his keen
observational skills as a journalist and writer, and the
latter part of this book is crammed with his insights into the
opportunities of present-day India. Das is obviously
enthusiastic about the possibilities that the knowledge
economy has opened up for India, but he thoughtfully examines
these economic options within the framework of the cultural
past and future of a country on the "brink of the biggest
transformation in its history."
As an autobiography that touches
on every area of life but focuses a keen eye on economic
development, Das's account is jam-packed with detail. At every
chance, he sets the personal story of his family and ancestors
in the wider context of history (often for full chapters at a
time), creating a broad and richly detailed picture of Indian
life. Though he writes in colorful, descriptive prose, Das's
succinct and matter-of-fact statements occasionally seem to
belie the complexity and ambiguities of historical and
cultural transitions. However, India Unbound is a vast
undertaking, and Das's combination of historical account,
economic analysis, cultural observation, and personal
experience is often intriguing and always informative. --S.
Ketchum
From Publishers Weekly
Das, an Indian venture capitalist and columnist for the Times
of India (and former CEO of Procter & Gamble India), uses his
own experiences as a businessman as the context in which to
comment on India's postcolonial economic policies. He begins
with Nehru's mixed economy (which he argues achieved democracy
but ignored entrepreneurship and competition, resulting in an
absence of industrial development) and continues through to
the economic reforms of 1991 under Prime Minister Narasimha
Rao (whom he labels a "reluctant liberalizer"), demonstrating
how India has abandoned state-directed industrialization and
finally become a free-market democracy with a burgeoning
middle class. He also points out how India's late (and
incomplete) entry into the international economy continues to
hamper its growth, as compared to other late entries, such as
that of China, which had a lower per capita income than India
did in the mid-'60s and today boasts one twice as large as
India's. Nevertheless, Das remains optimistic that "the new
India is increasingly one of competition and
decentralization," particularly because of the Internet and
the boom in software entrepreneurship. In explaining India's
economic policies, he gives much credence to theories about
high-caste Brahmins being averse to making money and the
government's fears that capitalism would crush the poor; but
Das only mentions in passing Russia's ideological sway at the
time of India's independence and does not discuss the Cold War
or the context for India's belief that import substitution was
necessary to make India less dependent on the outside world
for its survival. Business readers with an interest in Third
World development will learn much from Das.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business
Information, Inc.
From
Booklist
The title does not refer to India's struggle
to gain independence from Britain but to the
"quiet revolution" that has India,
which contains one sixth of the world's population,
on the verge of becoming a great economic power.
Das is a former CEO of Proctor and Gamble (India)
and currently a columnist for the Times of
India as well as a venture capitalist. Obviously,
he casts a jaundiced eye upon India's socialist
traditions. He views Nehru's post-independence
policies of state-sponsored entrepreneurship
as a massive failure that stifled creativity
and delayed industrialization. Over the past
two decades and particularly since the economic
reforms of 1991, India has developed a dynamic
free-market economy. While Das acknowledges
the persistence of grinding rural and urban
poverty, he points out that the vast expansion
of the middle class in India is serving as both
the beneficiary and the engine of even more
promising economic development. This is a fascinating
study of a social and economic transformation
that will soon create important new realities
in Asia and in the world economy. Jay Freeman
Copyright © American Library Association.
All rights reserved
From Library Journal
In
1991, four decades of Nehruvian socialism fell before the
economic reforms of Indian Prime Minister Narasimha Rao. In
the subsequent decade of India's deregulation, the national
debt has decreased, the middle class has doubled in size,
inflation has declined, and the restraints of industrial
licensing have been abolished. Das, a former CEO of Proctor &
Gamble and presently a business consultant and journalist,
exudes an evangelical zeal for India's entry into the world
economy. Arguing that India never experienced an industrial
revolution, he asserts that because of its conceptual nature,
the information age his country is now embracing is a superior
fit with its caste system. Das also envisions India's economic
growth as paralleling that of China, Japan, Korea, and
Indonesia. Told with verve and excitement, Das's tale is
loosely organized around a chronology of his life. He eschews
mention of worker exploitation, environmental pollution, and
new forms of corruption, but his story is an exciting, hopeful
account that can be read by all with profit, as long as
discretion is exercised.
John F. Riddick, Central Michigan
Univ. Lib., Mt. Pleasant
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business
Information, Inc.
From the Back Cover
"Gurcharan Das, a venture capitalist and former head of
Proctor & Gamble India, is a writer whose subject is business
rather than simply a businessman who subjects us to his
writing. The argument of Das's new book . . . might be
considered settled fact in most boardrooms and
seminar-chambers from Delhi to Dallas, but it could be an
eye-opener to readers unfamiliar with the radical
transformations currently under way in the subcontinent. . . .
A decade of economic reform in India has created a cottage
industry in works of academic analysis: Amartya Sen, Jagdish
Bhagwati, Ashutosh Varshney, Lloyd and Suzanne Rudolph–the
list of scholars examining the phenomenon is long and
distinguished. What Das brings to this crowded table is
first-hand experience and a desire to address readers who may
never have heard (or cared) about import substitution theory
or the Licence Permit Raj. His book is partly a memoir, partly
an economic policy primer, and partly a bracingly forthright
rant. . . . For American readers accustomed to view India as a
land of tigers rather than high-tech and maharajahs rather
than microchips, this book will come as a welcome surprise."
—Jonah Blank, Washington Post Book World
"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."-–Pete Engardio, BusinessWeek
Reviewer: Satish
Raghunath (see more about me) from TROY,
NY USA
This is a very informative book (and a thrilling one for every
Indian) on the current state of Indian economy, what policies
and factors shaped it and what can be made of it in the new
century. The book blends government policy details of the past
half a century (of independence) with interesting anecdotes of
successful businessmen. The author is a strong advocate of
free market policies and comes down heavily on Nehruvian
thinking. The statistics and facts that are presented to
support his reasoning are compelling.
After reading this book, one would
tend to see a lot of mistakes in Nehru's view of modern India.
The book squarely blames Indira Gandhi for most of the damage
done to the system, citing the nationalization of banks and
enactment of laws thwarting entrepreneurship. Overall, the
book is very positive in what the new millenium holds for
India. It presents a glowing future in the face of the recent
economic liberalization.
A must read to catch up with
post-independence Indian economy.
An "ALL TIME
GREAT" masterpiece..., May 4, 2001
Reviewer: Chandra Sekhar from Miami,
Florida
Trust me, this
book is going to be leagued as an "all time great" masterpiece
about post independence India.
The book is the "Tendulkar" of
cricket,"Sholay" of the movies,"Michael Jordan" of Basketball
or "animal farm" about communism.Atleast a million copies of
this book is going to be sold this year and is going to be in
"New York times" bestseller very soon.
It is not a book written by
someone with a motive to make money in mind. It is a book
written from heart that was filled with vision, passion,
anguish, pride ,knowledge and hope about India.If you are an
Indian,It is a shame if you do not read this book. If you are
a stranger from any other country and are looking to know the
"real india" then read this book.You will know more about
India than all the handbooks put together
A book that is going to be spoken
about for many years,that is going to inspire thousands of
Indians and is going to be an eye opener for the Western World
If Amazon.com has five stars
maximum, I recommend this book with seven stars.
Peerless,
May 3, 2001
Reviewer: A reader from New York, NY
United States
Das's book is peerless for
many reasons. While chronicling post-independence India's
socio-economic development (or lack of) through his discerning
lens, he continually underscores the tremendous potential
India possesses with nary a trace of sanctimoniousness.
Nevertheless, his subtle indictment of the Nehru years along
with a decidedly more searing assessment of the Gandhi (Indira
and Rajiv) "legacy" leaves one with a tremendous sense of
sadness and anger at "what might have been".
The language that Mr. Das employs
is notable for its clarity giving the reader a thoroughly
unrivalled perch from which to peer at the havoc wrought upon
the nation by a bunch of self seeking politicos(Nehru
included).
A powerfull opus for anyone with
an interest in how policies can change the course of any
nation.
A MUST READ!,
April 19, 2001
Reviewer: Sandeep Beotra from NY, NY
This is simply the best
piece of work on what makes India... India. Absolutely a must
read for somebody who feels strongly about India and wants to
get a modern unbiased perpective of the country.
Elephant or Tiger?,
March 17, 2001
Reviewer: Sandeep Sheth from Omaha, NE
I could relate to this book
because frustration and economic hopelessness, brought on by
the absence of free markets and strict government controls in
India, forced people of my generation overseas in droves. Das'
ability to contrast his experiences as a student and an
executive in the United States, with the ideals of Nehru
Socialism, enables the reader to peel back the onion and smell
the stink that emanated from the economic cesspool created by
the "Licence Raj".
He provides the reader with a
succinct account of the major reason why the nation with
largest English-speaking population in the world with the
second largest number of technically trained personnel was
still mired in the throes of economic poverty five years ago.
An interesting book. I hope it
inspires young Americans and people all over the world to work
hard to preserve the ideal of a free marketplace where
entrepreneurship, economic growth and freedom of expression
are held in high esteem.
Great book, many
insights and unknown facts, February
27, 2001
Reviewer: A reader from Gaithersburg,
MD USA
This book is a must for
anyone wanting a better understanding of how things really
were and are in India. Although I grew up in India and read
the official history books, I still found lots of facts and
insights that I did not know about.
One of the finest
boks written about India, December
20, 2000
Reviewer: Rajamani Rajesh from Apex,
NC United States
Recently, while vacationing
in India, I happened to watch an episode of 'Question Hour',
an Indian political talk show hosted by Prannoy Roy on BBC
World. Gurcharan Das was one of the guests and he, just like
the other guests, shared his views on the Indian economy, the
past policies and the needs for the future. The views
expressed were so insightful and honest, that I decided to buy
Gurcharan's book, 'India Unbound'.
Honestly, I couldn't put the book
down for a minute. I finished the book, cover to cover, in
three days. In my opinion, this is one of the finest books
ever written about India (in the same league as 'Freedom at
Midnight'). This book is not only superbly written, but also
provides valuable insight and perspective.
The author discusses his
childhood, his humble beginnings in corporate India, and his
views about socialism and capitalism. In parallel, he
discusses history, India's freedom, Indian politics and
government, the Indian bureaucracy and even the caste system.
Most endearing though, is how he describes the events in his
life in a broader perspective of national politics and
policies. He performs insightful analysis of the workings of
Indian bureaucracy and how it influenced/touched not just his
life, but the lives of millions and the workings of corporate
India. He talks about all the failed attempts to reform
government in the past (including his own) and the failures of
the people in power to perform introspection and to do course
correction.
He talks about the new beginnings
after the reforms of 1991, the hopes and aspirations of
millions in this new millenium, the IT boom, and the wonderful
possibilities of the future.
This
book is a must read for anyone who feels strongly
about India. --This text refers to the Hardcover
edition.
Air
Bound to provoke
A. K. Shiva Kumar
‘India
Unbound’ by Gurcharan Das; Viking India, New Delhi, 2000;
pages 420, Rs. 495 (hardback).
We forget so
easily. Gurcharan Das reminds us that in the 18th
century, India was a leading manufacturing country accounting
for almost 23 per cent of the world’s GDP. Even in 1914,
after centuries of British rule, India had the world’s largest
jute manufacturing industry, the fourth largest cotton textile
industry, the third largest railway network, and 2.5 per cent
of world trade. But by 1990, India’s share in world trade had
shrunk to less than half a percent. And today, most striking
about India is the dominance of widespread poverty and the
glaring inequalities. It is indeed a matter of shame. How
can we be proud of the extraordinary success of our software
engineers when there are close to 350 million Indians who
cannot read and write? How can we be proud of our Green
Revolution when levels of child malnutrition are among the
highest in the world – almost twice the levels reported in
Sub-Saharan Africa? How can we take pride in our democracy
when several millions lead such impoverished lives?
India
Unbound
attempts to answer a very disturbing question: if we were rich
once – and that too not so long ago - why are we poor today?
Das intricately
weaves together extraordinary events in Indian history, both
old and modern, with a thread of personal experience that is
truly fascinating. The story is partially autobiographical,
and it reveals how uniquely placed Das is to comment on events
of Independent India as they unfolded before his eyes. The
book is full of stories – of growing up in a middle class
family, of life as a Harvard undergraduate, of floundering old
Marwaris and of prosperous new age entrepreneurs even in small
towns. It is full of useful insights – describing a
fascinating corporate journey beginning as a management
trainee and later heading up Vicks, commenting on failed
business strategies, listing the difficulties with
Swadeshiness, and recalling meetings with leaders and
arrogant bureaucrats. Das captures elegantly the upbeat
post-reform mood and the new aspirations of a million
reformers. The style is racy – much too chatty at times. And
this indeed makes the book extremely readable!
Why did India
fail? Tracing developments after Independence, Das concludes:
“It has little to do with our colonial past. Neither is it a
problem of national character. Nor is it the fault of our
‘soft democracy’. The chief reason for our non-performance is
our wrong ‘mixed economy’ model, which allowed our obstructive
bureaucracy to kill our industrial revolution at birth.” Das
describes how Nehru pushed socialism, and Indira Gandhi
further strengthened a regime of strangulating controls. He
absolves Nehru as the economic policies “represented the
wisdom of his age.” However, Das writes: “One has to
blame Indira Gandhi who ruled India during most of this
period… Most people remember the Emergency because it was a
generalized loss of liberty. They do not understand that by
suppressing economic liberty for forty years, we destroyed
growth and the future of two generations. For the average
citizen, it was a great betrayal.”
Das makes apparent his
extraordinary faith in the power of private enterprise. He
overlooks many of the inherent failings of free markets.
Unethical business practices are easily explained away as an
inevitable outcome of excessive government controls.
Permeating throughout the book is also Das’ utter contempt for
bureaucracy. Innumerable achievements of many dedicated civil
servants are not even mentioned.
Das has supreme confidence in
economic reforms to usher in rapid growth and for growth to
change people’s lives. True, growth is desirable, and good
economic management is necessary to stimulate growth. But is
growth by itself sufficient to improve the quality of people’s
lives? Das stops short of providing an answer. After all,
nearly a decade after the initiation of economic reforms, the
country’s better growth record since 1991 does not seem to
have as yet led to a significant reduction in income poverty.
There are no significant improvements in the quality of
primary health care and basic education. The position of
women has not changed significantly as girls and women
continue to be denied many freedoms. And the standard of
living does not seem to have changed for millions of Indians
who even now do not have access to safe drinking water and
proper shelter.
Das defends India’s economic
reforms by arguing that “in the long run, reforms will help
the poor”. The conviction suggests an optimism that needs to
be qualified. Sound economic management and growth by
themselves do not automatically translate into improvements in
people’s lives. India needs to address more comprehensively
the poverty of all opportunities – economic, social and
political. Again, we need to address inequality, of not just
income, but of all opportunities - between women and men,
across regions, and within communities. Economic reforms are
necessary, but they need to go hand-in-hand with rapid reforms
in the political and social sectors as well. India
desperately needs better governance, greater involvement of
people in decision making, and more effective democracy.
The reader may
not always agree with Das’ interpretation of events leading to
the economic awakening of Independent India. But this is
precisely what makes the ideas in the book provocative and
worth debating. If there is one important message in India
Unbound, it is this: economic freedoms are as vital as
political freedoms, and the two must be promoted
simultaneously for India to become a prosperous nation.
Definitely something to reflect upon.
A. K. Shiva Kumar
is a development economist and Consultant to UNICEF India in
New Delhi. He has been a regular contributor to the annual
Human Development Reports since 1990, and serves as a member
and advisor to UNDP’s Human Development Report Team.
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