Economic Development—Rarely a Solo Journey…and Never a Straight Line

At a time when India’s economic growth is often celebrated in isolation, Apostles of Development reminds us that not only have economic ideas long been in conversation across borders, but also that economic development is rarely a solo journey…and never a straight line. It makes a valuable point, that there is no one path to development; development has always been a contested domain. This exposition of the development debate is based on over a decade of research, across archives in the UK, USA, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. In terms of time periodicity, the book begins in the 1950s and goes on till the end of the 20th century. It provides readers with an enticing refresher on the oft-forgotten early economic history of the then newly independent South Asia. It depicts their struggles to overcome the challenges of the colonial legacies, poverty, inequality and the pressure to grow fast in the early post-Independence period. It does this by using the life stories of six prominent economists: Amartya Sen, Manmohan Singh, and Jagdish Bhagwati from India, Mahbub ul-Haq from Pakistan, Rehman Sobhan from Pakistan and Bangladesh, and Lal Jayawardena from Sri Lanka. It traces their journeys from the lecture halls of Cambridge to policy making in Islamabad, Dhaka, New Delhi, Colombo and Washington. Engerman, the author of the book, writes that their stories reveal ‘how much the global south shaped the global enterprise of development’.