Sanjaya Baru’s 75 Years of Indian Economy is part of a series that looks back at the past 75 years of independent India. But Baru’s book doesn’t restrict itself to that time frame alone. He sees India’s current economic resurgence as part of a long history.
The book starts with a reference to British historian Angus Maddison and his book The World Economy: A Millennial Perspective (2001), which estimated that in 1700, China and India together accounted for half of the world’s national income and that, by 1950, their combined share was down to less than 10 per cent. Seen from such a historical perspective, India is not like any other “emerging” economy — it is, as Baru calls it, an economy that is “re-emerging” at the world stage.
There are 14 chapters in the book, but they are, on purpose, not written in chronological order. Baru starts by explaining the different strands of economic thinking that drove our…
