Rethinking Economics and Economic History

At a time when India is navel-gazing and cocooned in a self-indulgent haze, this book of Lord Meghnad Desai might appear to be an avoidable dampener. Middle class Indians in the Prime Minister Narendra Modi era do not think that the poor and poverty are any more the perennial challenges that they seemed to be. The second thing that makes this book irrelevant for the intelligent general reader in India—this book is not an economics textbook as Desai himself admits when he says, ‘One publisher to whom I submitted my manuscript rejected it saying this was not “a trade book”. It certainly is not. It is a book for general conversation with everyone who cares to build a better world.’ The book is a response to the Dickensian gloom that Desai saw in the country of his domicile—Britain. Intelligent Indians are not moved by the fact that there is misery in Britain. They are not touched by it.