International Journal of Advance Study and Research Work (2581-5997)/ Volume 4/Issue1/January 2021
Book Review-Reset Regaining India's Economic Legacy Reviewed by: Dr. Jonardan Koner Professor and Dean, NICMAR, Pune, India Email: jonardankoner@nicmar.ac.in
Author Year Price Pages ISBN Edition Publisher
Subramanian Swamy 2019 ₹595 216 pages 978-93-5333-651-6 First Rupa Publications India
The book describes a journey of India from British period to present stage from a macroeconomics perspective. The book deals with one of the most discussed topics today - India's economic struggles and the way forward. The book aptly describes India's economy in three stages - Pre-Independence, Post-Independence till liberalization, and Post-Liberalization India. This book is termed as most comprehensive document detailing the growth and development of Indian economy till date. The book helps to identify focal points of economic gaps, out of box realistic ideas to fix them and gripping narration covering the landscape of India's economy history of 150 years backed by data analytics at every stage. The author urges India not to miss out knowledge and Innovation revolution of 21st century after missing out industrial revolution of 19 th and globalisation in 20th due to command economy framework. The book ‘Reset Regaining India's Economic Legacy’ has six chapters and concluding chapter ‘Appendix’. The book provides huge amount of data showing multi-dimensional economic parameters in various periods to support his arguments but no tabulation is overpowering, as he also provides lucid and easy explanation. To provide such a bird’s eye view of 150 years in a few pages is in itself quite remarkable. In the First Chapter ‘Imperialism Uproots Agriculture’ the author provides an interesting narrative of the extent to which Britain’s exploitative “Revenue-Extracting Zamindari System” took a toll on India’s peasantry and the agriculture sector as a whole. The author has studied the Chinese economy closely and written a fair amount on it. He makes frequent and fairly compelling comparisons of farm output between the pre-independence economic trajectories of China and India. While in 1950, around the time that the two countries founded their new republics, China had a comfortable food surplus enabling it to finance rapid industrial growth, India’s two-century-long decline in foodgrain yield left it lacking such a cushion. The Second Chapter speaks about ‘Industrialization: Missed Opportunities and Unfulfilled Promises’. In this historic narrative he compares the growth of Chinese economy vis-à-vis Indian economy. He has chosen these two nations as both suffered from Imperialism. He gives interesting example of how Chinese elite first opposed the railway lines in their country while Indians welcomed it. So, India had initial advantage in infrastructure. But, even though railways covered most of India well before Chinese, the British goal was only to exploit the resources by making it easier for primary products to be exported to UK at exploitative prices while taxing the industrialists and Indian traders very heavily so they were at disadvantage when they used the railways. In a way this advantage saved India during famines. China had two famines in the period of 1870 to 1950 while India had 12. But, due to better infrastructure India hardly saw any deaths while Chinese suffered nearly 32 million deaths. He shows how Indian entrepreneurs did better and produced low cost goods but were dis-incentivised by the British through various levies and various obstacles. The Third Chapter expresses view on ‘The Albatross around India’s Economic Neck: The Soviet Model’. It is the second period, extending for four decades from 1950 that attracts the most trenchant criticism from the author, who makes no bones about his complete disdain for the socialist ideology that informed the economic policies of the era. Terming the Soviet command economy model with its focus on planning as ‘The Albatross around India’s Economic Neck’ author is emphatic that it was this flawed policy approach that caused a “monumental loss of opportunity”.
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