I have been trying to understand India’s evolution especially its economic path for the last half-century— by reading, traveling, and writing on aspects of that evolution. Originally this started with the Cold War concern about how a democracy would navigate using a democratic political system. So I took appropriate courses in college and graduate school, worked in India in the Peace Corps, and then spent a little under a decade teaching about it a doing research. For the following five decades I have continued my interest and publishing and studying. Whether I have understood much is for others to determine but these are my five book nominees.
I wrote...
The Marwaris: From Jagat Seth to the Birlas
By
Thomas A. Timberg
What is my book about?
What makes the Marwaris so successful?
The book shows how Marwaris rely on their centuries old system for conserving and growing capital along with a community business ethic and supporting network. Building on an earlier book by the same author on the history of Marwari businessmen up to 1960 it surveys the extent to which they have been able to retain their position relatively and absolutely into the twenty-first century.
When you buy a book we may earn a small commission.
The Books I Picked & Why
Age of Pandemics (1817-1920) : How They Shaped India and the World
By
Chinmay Tumbe
Why this book?
It manages to leverage the world history of coping with pandemics over the last couple of centuries by focusing on India’s Experience with them. A readable academic book with frequent reference to the author's own life experience. It uses the history of public health to illuminate all aspects of the nation’s history
When you buy a book we may earn a small commission.
When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics
By
Milan Vaishnav
Why this book?
Deals with a phenomenon not limited to India, the extent to which voters support or even prefer candidates who engage in violence and corruption. In India’s case on the supply side, it is the advantage political power gives criminals and on the supply side the need of parties for candidates with deep pockets and for the voters confidence that the criminals can deliver the goods the voters want.
When you buy a book we may earn a small commission.
India Transformed: Twenty-Five Years of Economic Reforms
By
Rakesh Mohan
Why this book?
A summary of the dramatic economic transformation of India since 1991 by one of its key economic policymakers. Though abstracting from some of the debate about details, this is a readable presentation especially from the point of view of policymakers. What all of this meant for the general public can be seen in the next volume. Both but especially this volume are one of competing accounts of how it happened. Success has many fathers.
When you buy a book we may earn a small commission.
How Lives Change: Palanpur, India, and Development Economics
By
Himanshu,
Peter Lanjouw,
Nicholas Stern
Why this book?
This is ostensibly the third book documenting the history of a North Indian village from 1950 until today, but it also records much of the anthropological literature documenting the development in other villages in India over that period which parallels that in many other villages of South Asia. Viewed in the context of statistical data which is collected on a much broader scale this confirms the remarkable economic evolution India has experienced from basketcase to development model.
When you buy a book we may earn a small commission.
In an Antique Land: History in the Guise of a Traveler's Tale
By
Amitav Ghosh
Why this book?
I choose this volume though each of Ghosh’s novels, including his forthcoming Nutmeg’s Secret, I presume might deserve my encomium. He manages to entangle his novels with lively pictures of different social aspects of India over the last two centuries. He emphasizes the interactions of whatever is occurring in India with the broader world. This particular novel draws on an earlier period with an Indian in Egypt with experience based on documentation from the period 1000-1200 found in the discarded book room of a Cairo synagogue— including extensive commercial correspondence covering the trade between India and Egypt.