Perspectives on Development

This is an unusual book of memories of both a distinguished economist and a successful public servant. His contributions qua economist could surpass those of many others who devoted their life-time only to teaching and research in India. He has figured conspicuously in the top international journals in economics with articles on different aspects of subject. Bhatt as a memorialist has scrupulously avoided being on a self-adulatory ego-trip; he has focused mainly on contextualising his personality in the economic profession of his time in India. He imbibed his apparatus of thought from his great teachers at Harvard like professor, J. Schumpeter, W. Leontief, A Hansan and A. gerschenkron, which he harnessed with great success for his creativity in economics. His memories are a unique narrative of how economics as a rigorous social discipline evolved in India, superseding most of the arid descriptive economics of his predecessors in pre-war India. He meticulously but without being self-referential describes how the research department of the Reserve Bank of India created a niche for itself in economic research, even overtaking the leading and older central banks in the US and the European continent.