Two Reviews of “Transforming India”

Now I can say for sure that my book, “Transforming India”, has been read by at least two people. How do I know that? Because two people have recently written about it. My sincere appreciation for the reviews. Selected bits from them, below the fold.

Let’s start with the review by “The Third Eye”. (Dated Sept 11th. Coincidence? I think not.)

Atanu rightly argues that the key component for economic development is freedom. This is not just political freedom which India gained in 1947 but also personal and economic freedom. In the post-independent socialist milieu, the government decided what people should produce, buy and consume. While we have liberalized our economic landscape, much needs to be done as the government still controls large swathes of the economy such as education, transportation and telecommunications. Indians’ personal freedoms continue to be curtailed in the name of national security. Websites and books are periodically banned. The irony is that the government thinks that the people are smart enough to vote them in but not smart enough to decide what to read.

Most of the ideas in the book are familiar territory – privatizing education and railways, promoting urbanization, favoring railways over roadways and airlines and solar energy over fossil fuels. Since he is an economist, Atanu tries to analyze the problem using a systems approach by identifying the feedback loops and the linkages. However his book is almost two years late with Nandan Nilekani’s “Imagining India” having beaten him to the finish line. Nilekani deals with mostly the same ideas and in much greater depth.

I think that Nilekani’s book and my book belong to different genres. Nilekani’s book is a tremendous work of staggering proportions, of famous people and their views, full of interesting details that you can get engrossed in for days and make you the center of attention at cocktail parties. It is 500+ pages of carefully researched writing, professional editing and first class printing. It is a reference work of considerable heft. You have to be a Nandan Nilekani to write a book like that.

Here’s how different the two books are. It took me about the same time to read Nilekani’s book as to write my book. Chew on that for a bit.

Mine is narrowly focused on what went wrong with India’s development, why it went wrong, and what we should be doing to get on with the program. You can read my book in one sitting — a bathroom book, if you get my drift. It’s the kind of book that you pick up on a whim at the airport, and at the end of the flight, you are ready for something else to read. You can pass on my book to a friend and not worry that he may not return it for you to proudly display it on your coffee table for visitors to admire your obvious good taste in reading serious books of great social value.

My book is modestly priced and has no pictures on the cover. It is slim because if I were to go ask important people for an interview, they will not even bother replying to my emails. It is a book of ideas, which of course anyone can come up with just by sitting and thinking hard for a bit. There is one central idea in my book and it is this: economic policies made by a colonial government do not spell economic growth and development. Now you don’t have to read my book to understand that point. But if you do, you will see that we have to do something about them policies that keep India at the bottom of the economic barrel.

I should pause here to make a crucial distinction between privatization and liberalization. I really don’t care if a sector is privatized or not. Privatization is the selling of public enterprises to the private sector. What matters is whether the sector is liberalized — that is, whether the private sector is allowed to compete on a level playing field. Merely privatizing a public sector monopoly, for instance, does no good; it just becomes a private sector monopoly and the same dead-weight losses obtain as before. Liberalization, in contradistinction, increases competition in the market and that is what leads to welfare improvements.

Anyway, here’s TTE’s view of the idea of “United Voters of India” (for details of UVI, start with this.)

However I can think of atleast one major flaw with the UVI idea. The decisions of the UVI are selected democratically. Since UVI is based on hijacking the democratic process, it in turn is susceptible to hijacking in the same fashion. So a political party can infiltrate its agents within the UVI forcing it to take decisions that are in its favor.

UVI is not about hijacking anything, leave alone the democratic process. The idea is to vote strategically by collectively voting for that party or candidate that comes closest to an ideal.

And one final point. TTE writes,

My views about India’s governments are not as virulent or pessimistic as Atanu’s. The founding fathers were mostly ignorant on policy matters and did not go out of their way to oppress their fellow citizens. We did have a stroke of misfortune though – in our hatred for Britain, we ran into the arms of the Soviet Union and in turn embraced their disastrous ideas and policies. The Godfather was right – “Never hate your enemies, it clouds your judgement”.

I realize that TTE is using a metaphorical “we” above. He does not literally mean that you and I embraced Soviet-style socialism. But I must stress the point that it is not some diffused bunch of randomly selected nameless people that made the choices on behalf of the hundreds of millions of Indian — it was a handful of well known people led by one authoritarian gentleman who made the disastrous decisions. Perhaps they acted out of ignorance but it is more likely that they acted out of self-interest because socialist economic polices requires authoritarian rule and this the aforementioned gentleman was most eager to deliver.

TTE uses the phrase “stroke of misfortune.” It was not a misfortune, it was a disaster. (Churchill explained the difference between a misfortune and a disaster thusly: “If Benjamin Disreali falls into the Thames, that’s a misfortune; if someone pulls him out, that’s a disaster.”)

Moving on, let’s take a look at my friend Shashi Shekhar’s column in The Pioneer of Sept 25th, “Engaging with Indian Voters.” He generously mentions my book.

In his recent book titled Transforming India, blogger and economist Atanu Dey proposes an interesting construct for such non-sectarian political engagement. Atanu Dey calls for a voluntary association, ‘United Voters of India’, that functions as a lobby of sorts to pressure political parties and Government to make policies consistent with what he describes as “Pretty Good Principle”. Atanu Dey’s UVI is not much unlike what Mr Arun Shourie calls a “Lobby for Excellence” in his book We must have no price. Where Mr Shourie stops short of spelling out what the lobby of excellence must do, Atanu Dey is quite forthright in what he believes the UVI to be — a vote-bank of urban educated voters. The Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi led India Against Corruption movement could come close to being such a vote bank that Atanu Dey envisions. The upcoming Lok Sabha bypoll in Haryana for the Hissar constituency will likely tell us much if the IAC can be such a vote-bank that Atanu Dey envisions or if it will reduce itself to a negative force that merely knows how to say no, but hasn’t quite figured out how to engage by saying yes.

A riveting point Atanu Dey makes in his book is that any urban middle class vote bank like the UVI must not be apolitical. He sees the vote-bank as a means to change politics in India by becoming part of the political process. Atanu Dey’s book is an easy read. The pretty good principles are clearly stated that should appeal to the common sense of any urban middle class Indian. The book also stands out for its clarity on the kind of economic choices Middle India must make in the pursuit of its own enlightened self-interests. In the respect Atanu Dey’s book is quite similar to one other book by Sanjeev Sabhlok titled Breaking Free from Nehru that makes a case for economic freedom as a basis for political engagement in India.

I like Shashi’s incisive writing. But I have a confession to make. The stuff he wrote above the bits that I quoted here went right over my head. I will have to ask him to explain it to me the next time I see him. Better yet, go read it and explain it to me in a comment to this post.

Thanks. That’s it. Bye for now. See you later.

PS (stands for Parting Shot, not Post Script):

Disraeli (running his hand over Churchill’s bald head): Why Winston, your pate feels just like my wife’s bottom!

Churchill (doing the same to himself): So it does, Benjamin!