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BOOKS
Talking Heads
A debate on India's economic strategy
By Rohit Saran
If the phrase "old
wine in a new bottle" could ever describe something good, this book
qualifies to be such a bottle. For it is so refreshing that even the not-so-original
wine it contains is worth tasting. The purpose of this work-it isn't stated
explicitly-is to explore why India adopted and persisted with a closed
and controlled economic model for 40 long years between 1950 and 1990.
Especially when the failure of those policies had become evident as early
as the mid-1960s.
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CONVERSATIONS
WITH INDIAN ECONOMISTS
By V. N. Balasubra- manyam
Macmillan
Price: Rs 248
Pages: 203
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Scores of experts have written loads of dry prose
on this topic. But Conversations With Indian Economists sets itself apart
for two reasons. The author, V.N. Balasubramayam, a professor at Lancaster
University, hasn't indulged in a solo analysis of the economic history
of post-Independent India. Rather, he has 10 top contemporary Indian economists-including
I.G. Patel, Jagdish Bhagwati, Manmohan Singh, T.N. Srinivasan, Bimal Jalan
and C. Rangarajan-many of whom shaped India's economic history, analyse
the subject. Better still, the views of these luminaries aren't in the
form of essays, but in a more involving format of interviews. That has
elevated the book from the level of dusty, difficult-to-comprehend analysis
to something that is alive, provocative and stimulating. One anecdote
describes how C.M. Stephen, communications minister in Indira Gandhi's
cabinet, ranted in Parliament that telephones were a luxury not a right
and any Indian not satisfied with the service could return his phone.
Or P.R. Brahmananda, one of the less popular doyens among Indian economists,
claiming that before the Janata Party came to power in 1977, a large number
of papers on economic planning were "wantonly destroyed", apparently
to prevent an understanding of how and why the self-defeating economic
policies were continued for so long. A conversation with Srinivasan reveals
how party politics forces people like Singh to oppose the economic reforms
he advocated when he was the finance minister.
Interviews with each of the economists open with
some discussion on their works as students or academicians. Much of that
may be Latin and Greek to those uninitiated in economics. Ironically,
that's what makes the book even more compelling for those interested in
economics: its somewhat hagiographical overtones.
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