INDIA IN SEARCH OF GLORY written by Ashok Lahiri. This is A Rare Book on India’s Quest for Glory releasing this December. Lord Meghnad Desai calls it the Mahabharata of India’s political economy.

India and Indians have made some progress over the last seventy-five years since Independence. The literacy rate has gone up. The Indians have become healthier, and their life expectancy at birth has also gone up. The proportion of people below the poverty line has halved in number. But the shine from the story fades when development in India is compared with that in the Four Asian Tigers and China. It looks good, but not good enough. India looks far away from the glory it seeks. This is the core subject matter of India in Search of Glory.

The book tries to argue why India could not achieve more since Independence and what all it could have achieved. It paints a picture of its possible future and highlights the areas that need immediate attention.

INDIA IN SEARCH OF GLORY is a chronological account of the evolution of economic policies, divided into three parts.

· Part I deals with challenges confronting the newly independent country and how they were met in the Nehruvian period (1947-64).

· Part II deals with the twenty-seven years post-Nehru (1964–1991)

· Part III covers the period from 1991 to 2019, when the balance between the state and society was back, and when reforms, albeit with their ups and downs, continued and were accelerated.

Early Endorsements

‘It is said that democracy enables a nation to make amends for its own mistakes. Through the unbiased lens of the eminent economist Ashok Lahiri, the book examines how geopolitical conflicts, economic compulsions and political landscapes have shaped our policies, some of which have worked more successfully than others . . . This timely and intellectual “tour de force” reaffirms India’s unwavering faith in democracy and is a must-read for policymakers who need to take India’s past into account while deciding upon growth-oriented and inclusive measures’

DEEPAK PAREKH

Indian businessman and chairman, Housing Development Finance Corporation, India

‘Ashok Lahiri has written the Mahabharata of India’s political economy . . . Lahiri displays a deep knowledge of political economy as well as of the economics of politics which is comprehensive as well as analytical. He has brought to this account all his knowledge and skill pertaining to the economic theory and economic history of India, along with an account of political history such as we have not seen before and are unlikely to see again’

MEGHNAD (LORD) DESAI

India-born naturalized British economist and former Labour politician