Economic development of nations is a vast topic that people are unlikely to reach a consensus on ever. It lies beyond what’s even theoretically feasible. It’s a big enough elephant that defies easy characterization, and the best we can hope for is that the necessarily partial views are not obviously wrong.
Economists have debated the topic since the very beginnings of the discipline of economics. Indeed, the enterprise of economics was motivated by the very question of what economic development is. Adam Smith’s book, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations”, published in 1776 represents the first comprehensive attempt at systematizing the subject.
It’s the nature of the beast that makes it so intractable. An economy is an organic, living, breathing, dynamic, evolving thing. Unlike the inanimate objects that the natural sciences (physics being the foundational science) study, economists have at the core of their subject something that thinks, has volition, acts and reacts — the individual human. Economics is not, and cannot be, a science in the sense that physics is. Continue reading “Prospects for Indian Development Models – Part 1”
Atanu Dey : Life is a Random Draw 