Renowned development economist, and peer, Lord Meghnad Desai has been one of the foremost observers of India and its economy in the last forty years. Passionately written and decidedly non-neutral in tone, his essays, collected here for the first time, constitute perhaps the most significant statement linking policy choices and outcomes on independent India. This volume retells the story of India as one of unexpected surprises and unfulfilled expectations. For four decades after independence, to the world around it, India epitomized under-performance swathed in a posture of moral arrogance. Scarcely a decade after being written off, India occupies an enviable place in the new global economy. Even so, acute problems of poverty, deprivation, and ethnic troubles still exist and India is yet to come to terms with several aspects of development and nationhood–the twin pillars of democratic societies. The essays in this volume explore issues as diverse as federalism and economic change in India, the imposition of emergency, the rise of the BJP, Communalism, socialism, the future of socialist planning and capitalist development, as also questions of nationality and the singular challenges presented by globalisation. The collection offers a rich tapestry of South Asia’s political and developmental impulses. The textured analysis will interest all students and observers of South Asia including social scientists, developmental economists, and historians as well as journalists, activists, policy planners and other professionals.
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