ECONOMY AFTER INDEPENDENCE

The second half of the 20^th century, with broadly two phases: 1950–1980 and 1980–2000, holds an amazing Indian economic story. From 1900 to 1950, the net growth in income per capita was stagnant because both the economy and population grew at the same rate (0.8%). The slow rise took a sharp upturn in the eighties and nineties. An economic liberalisation standing on the shoulders of a huge agricultural revolution by 1991–2000 increased the GDP to 6.2 percent while population growth slowed to 1.8 percent—a per capita income growth of 4.4 percent a year.

	1900-1950	1950-1980	1981-1990	1991-2000
GDP growth	0.8	3.5	5.6	6.2
Per capita growth	0	1.3	3.5	4.4

Gurcharan Das (India: How a Rich Nation became poor and will be rich again) points out that it is important to remember that the West’s industrial revolution took place at a rate of 3 percent GDP growth and 1.1 percent per capita income growth after 1820. Das says that Nehru’s Democratic socialism pressures, like free power to farmers and other subsidies, dampened growth and reform processes in the first three decades of independence. The state as an entrepreneur failed mainly because of corruption and bureaucracy. Nehru’s strategic planner, P.C. Mahalanobis, made two wrong assumptions: there were no opportunities for rapid export expansion in the 1950s, and competition was wasteful. India’s share of world trade declined from 2.2 percent in 1947 to 0.5 percent in 1990.

Productivity of Indian manufacturing declined half a percent a year from 1960 to 1985, considered the ‘dark period for the Indian economy’. Nehru, perhaps not much to blame, went with the socialist wisdom of his age; many international economists supported him; and he was eager to break from the colonial legacies. Indira Gandhi had the successes of Japan and Korea in view, and yet she persisted with the previous model with more force.

The dreaded licensing system, beginning with the Industrial Licencing Act of 1951, inflicted the worst damage on the private sector. An entrepreneur had to get clearance from a rising hierarchy of controls at the Directorate General of Technical Development, Administrative Ministry, an inter-ministerial licencing committee, and a capital goods licencing committee. Loans, after the completion of previous approval, went through another round of fresh scrutiny! There were huge delays, extensive corruption, and bureaucratic hurdles. Finally, a law punished anyone producing beyond the capacity granted by the licence!

The system resulted in stifling competition, which allowed only state monopolies. Ignorant and inefficient bureaucrats often ran these monopolies in remote places with improper technology. In the late 1960s, Indira Gandhi went for even more controls, along with the nationalisation of banks. Industrial growth plunged from 7.7 percent a year between 1951 and 1965 to 4.0 percent between 1966 and 1980. The poor performance of India between 1950 and 1980 was due to continuing to close our economy and denying the fruits of a golden period of world trade between 1950 and 1970.

An agricultural surplus is a precondition and backbone for industrial growth. We achieved an agricultural revolution in the early 1970s, yet industrial take-off did not happen. Gurcharan Das attributes six state policies as reasons for this:
1) adopting an inward-looking, import-substituting path rather than an export-promoting route;
2) setting up a massive, inefficient, and monopolistic public sector;
3) over-regulating private enterprise;
4) discouraging foreign capital and denying itself the benefits of technology and world-class competition;
5) pampering organised labour to the point of extremely low productivity; and
6) ignoring the education of its children.

Modest liberal reforms happened in the 1980s, but it was in July 1991 that PV Narasimha Rao announced sweeping reforms and opened foreign investment and trade; dismantled import controls; lowered custom duties; removed licenses on private enterprise; lowered taxes; and generally diminished public sector monopolies.

This resulted in a 7.5 percent growth rate, three years in a row, in the mid-nineties. Inflation came down from 13 percent to 6 percent by 1993; exchange reserves shot up from $1 billion to $20 billion by 1993; and they crossed $100 billion by 2003. The successive governments continued this, making India one of the fastest-growing economies in the world by the turn of the century. Information technology was to India’s advantage as a new set of entrepreneurs and professionals contributed eagerly to the growth of the Indian economy.

Gurcharan Das says that uniquely, India had democracy first (1950) and capitalism afterwards (1991), a reverse situation of the West. Because of democratic pressures, ‘welfare’ began before there were welfare-generating jobs. Democracy before capitalism led to the throttling of free enterprise, decreased productivity, and a slowing of growth. Over the decades, the political scene in India has manifested as populist giveaways and loan waivers to win votes at any cost.

India’s damaging fiscal deficit, or spending beyond means (around 10 percent of GDP for the centre and states combined), proves the downside of competitive politics. Thus, the transition is happening at a slower rate. However, this may finally be a good thing, says Das, because it is more likely to preserve its way of life and culture. The routine explanations for the slow economic growth (‘the otherworldly values of the Hindus’, ‘the immobilising caste system’, ‘the conservative merchant caste’) including the label ‘the Hindu rate of growth’ may not be true at all, says Das.

‘Hindu’ Rate of Growth

Economist Raj Krishna coined the ‘Hindu rate of growth’ in 1978 to denote the around 4 percent growth in GDP from the 1950s to the 1980s. Amazingly, despite his knowledge and position in the past, Raghuram Rajan, ex-RBI Governor, recently made a statement that the present economy is ‘dangerously close’ to the earlier Hindu rate of growth. The colonial-missionary narratives attached the problems of Indian social systems to Hinduism, and we still have not been able to reject them. The surprise comes when, either with ignorance or deviousness, even economic issues attach themselves to the Hindu religion.

There were three economic phases in the 20th century: 1900–1950; 1950–1980; and 1980–2000. The first two phases were of stagnation. An economic liberalisation standing on the shoulders of a huge agricultural revolution in 1991–2000 rapidly increased the strength of our economy. In the previous section, we saw Gurcharan Das detailing the various reasons for this stagnation, which were more related to political and economic decision-making than the religion of the majority of people. It is rather an incredible allegation revealing Hinduphobia than anything else.

On the other hand, Angus Maddison’s research shows how India (very Hindu in its character) was contributing to almost 35–40% of the world GDP consistently from the beginning of the common era to the 17th century when the East India Company landed. Indian degeneration in terms of its economy, culture, heritage, and educational systems during the colonial plunder ensured that at independence, India was contributing a pathetic 1.8% to the world GDP.
The question is: if ‘Hindu’ ideas slow economic growth, why did everybody in the world come to India to make money, and why did we cross our civilizational borders only for trade and exchange of culture rather than to loot and plunder?

If at all, Hindu ideas and metaphysics may be a great factor in improving the economics of the country (along with other areas like science, technology, the arts, literature, and music). Hence, unlike what distinguished economists may say, the ‘Hindu’ rate might actually mean hugely positive growth! In fact, historically, Hindu India was cruising along well until other factors halted it, such as colonialism and socialism. Ananda Coomaraswamy and Swami Vivekananda, in fact, argued strongly to include Hindu metaphysics right from the beginning of the education system to have a true renaissance of our country. The English removed Hindu philosophy from our education systems, and sadly, we are continuing to do the same with the distorted application of secularism, where we insist on calling our philosophies religion.

Unique Indian Economy Model

Gurumurthy argues that India’s economic strength comes from household savings, the informal sector, and public sector banks. The household sector is the strongest and most stable component of the Indian economy and a result of a relation-based cultural life. The integrated family institution takes care of the elderly and the infirm, the ill and the jobless, which drives its propensity to save. In the West, atomistic families decrease the pressure to save. In the West, traditional government functions like water supply, road building, and public utilities became increasingly private, even as caring for family became a state responsibility.

Household savings (bank deposits, gold, and properties) have increased after liberalisation despite falling bank interest rates, an ever-growing stock market, and an intense consumerist agenda. The Indian economy grew primarily through domestic savings (from 21 percent of GDP in 1991–92 to 31 percent in 2016). The ratio of spending to savings declined from 64 percent in 1991–2 to 58 percent in 2007–8, implying that Indian families have defied new consumerist trends. A domestically driven economy—both investment and demand—has been the core factor in the Indian growth story. In India, up to 60 percent of India’s goods are for internal consumption. This is unlike China, where most of its goods (64%) are for export.

The corporate sector (domestic and foreign; listed and unlisted; public and private) is glamorous, but its share of national GDP has increased from 12 percent in 1991 to merely 3 percent in two decades of liberalization. In the two decades after 1991, this sector had received foreign investment by debt and equity of over $550 billion and drew over Rs 18 lakh crore from banks as credit. However, it created only 3.5 million jobs (2.8 million in the software sector, the rest 700,000). Ironically, net foreign investment in India during two decades of liberalisation averaged around 3 percent of national investment, mainly funding external deficits.

90 percent of the total 474 million jobs in India are in the non-corporate sector, which contributes half the national GDP. Big corporations employ only 12.5 million people, compared to 120 million in the MSME sector (micro, small, and medium). The Economic Census (2013–14) says that some 57.7 million non-farming and non-construction businesses yield 128 million jobs.

The census classifies them as Own Account Enterprises (OAEs). It is legal, unlike in the West, and remains informal only because the government has been unable to reach out to it. Over 60 percent of OAEs belong to Other Backward Castes, Scheduled Castes, and Scheduled Tribes; more than half of the OAEs and as many jobs provided by them are in rural areas; and nine out of ten OAEs are unregistered. However, this sector, which ensures both social justice and generates jobs, gets just 4 percent of its credit needs, about 11.4 lakh crore, from the formal banking system. Thus, paradoxically, banks fund low-job-yielding corporations and not the OAEs, which generate ten times more jobs.

Finally, the Indian financial economy is bank-driven (mainly Public Sector Banks). The bank deposits to GDP ratio in India was 34 percent in 1992 and is over 70 percent in 2016. Even though bank deposits yield just half as much as stocks do, 40% of Indian household savings move into banks. The share of equities in the total savings stood at less than 2 percent in seven out of the 11 years (2004–2014), despite a compounded return of 14 percent.

Besides mobilising four-fifths of deposits, PSBs are involved in building financial architecture for formalising the economy on a phenomenal scale, which is impossible for the private banks, says Gurumurthy. India is like Japan, where ‘cash and deposits’ represent ‘half of total financial assets.’ It is only 16 percent in the US and 25–33 percent in Europe. Gurumurthy believes in a unique Indian model of economy that agenda-driven economists have profoundly failed to understand. Unfortunately, they direct public discourse.

The Gold Story of The World and India

The anti-gold campaign and the Great Depression forced the US to nationalise gold in 1934. The US government acquired all private gold and increased its official gold reserves from 6,500 metric tonnes to almost 20,000 metric tonnes by 1942. In 1950, member nations of the newly formed International Monetary Fund accepted the US dollar as a global currency.

The US promised to exchange one ounce of gold for $35. The US dollar acquired the status of a global currency, and the US became a global financial power. The international exchange rates were fixed to the dollar from 1950 to 1972. To maintain the price at $35 per ounce, if the unofficial market price of gold rose, the London Gold Pool, formed by eight major European countries, agreed to sell their gold.

Disastrously, the Pool and the US lost almost two-thirds of their gold reserves. The US gold reserves nosedived to 8,000 metric tonnes in 1971 to meet the demand for gold in exchange for dollars. A panicked US government suspended gold-dollar convertibility, legalised private gold, and then emerged with floating exchange rates.

Some two-thirds of the gold-plated US dollars were now outside the US. The US now strategically coerced oil-producing countries to accept payments in the form of dollars—the Petrodollar, which ensured that dollar remained supreme during the globalisation of the 1990s until the 2008 financial meltdown.

The Bank of International Settlements (BIS) said in 2015 that extreme levels of global debts ($49.1 trillion now) threaten the world financial system. More importantly, it conceded that gold and silver offer protection against crises in the financial system.

Indian women, who love gold, may have some lessons for modern economists. Gold has been a highly preferred mode of investment for most Indian families since ancient times. Taking the American cue, Indian establishments first were hostile, then ambivalent, and finally accepted gold as a reality of the Indian economy, now with bank-supported gold deposits, Sovereign Gold Bonds, and gold coins for the people, says Gurumurthy.

The rupee has depreciated against the dollar (47% in the last 5 years), but gold has appreciated (28%) against the rupee. Gold holdings are the quantities of gold held by individuals, private corporations, or public entities. India, at the top with 25,000 metric tonnes, is way ahead of the second (US), with 8133 metric tonnes!

Caste as A Social Capital

Caste as social capital is under-recognised in the Indian economy. In 2013, the Indian economy was growing at a compounded average growth rate of more than 8.5 percent in the last five years. More than 60 percent of the economy was in the service sector, characteristically partnership and proprietorship firms consisting of tiny, small, and medium enterprises. 70 percent of this service sector (mainly construction, trade, hotels and restaurants, non-railway transport, storage, and real estate ownership) was the non-corporate sector, with 90 percent of the funding from domestic savings. In contrast, the US economy has a corporate sector with more than 75 percent of its GDP in 2010.

As Professor Vaidyanathan (Caste as a Social Capital) shows, an exhaustive economic census between 1998 and 2005, conducted by the Central Statistical Organisation [CSO], covering 30.35 million non-agricultural enterprises, threw up surprises. In 1998, in rural areas, SC/ST/OBC’s owned more than 50 percent of these and 45 percent of the total. In 2005, these figures were 55 percent for rural and 50 percent for total. 90 percent were self-financing, coming from informal caste networks.

Scholars now stress the role of social capital in financial growth. Strong communities based on common rules and mutual help, discouraging deviant behaviour, creating trust, uniting against threats from outsiders or natural disasters, sharing technical knowledge, dealing with failures by acting as cushions, handling administrative hurdles, and group financing facilitate a huge financial benefit.

One economist says that human and financial capitals being equal; it is social capital that decides success and failure. The Bania traders, the Palanpur Jains in the diamond business, the Gounders in the Tirupur garment industry, and the Nadars in the matches and printing industry are fine examples of social capital acting as a push for economic growth.

Clusters occupy a significant place in the Indian economic scene. There are approximately 350 small-scale industrial clusters and around 2000 rural and artisan-based clusters, contributing almost 60 percent of the manufacturing exports and 40 percent of the employment in the manufacturing industry. The clusters are self-funded businesses of extended families, castes, and communities developing as full-fledged centres of economic, social, and religious activities. They establish schools, colleges, and other common facilities like marriage halls or temples.

Recognising caste as the natural social capital, Harish Damodaran (India’s New Capitalists: Caste, Business, and Industry in a Modern Nation) delineates three general trajectories of industrial transition by communities: ‘Bazaar to Factory’ route (Banias and Vaishyas); ‘Office to Factory’ route (urban middle class); ‘Field to Factory’ route (rural middle-class communities consisting of many backward castes). The latter two trajectories have undermined the time-honoured association of ‘business communities’ with an exclusive Vaishya order. Thus, caste has played an important role in the consolidation of business, particularly in the last fifty years. Dalits are increasingly getting into entrepreneurship and building impressive empires. The Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry [DICCI], playing an increasingly important role, marks the emergence of a nascent trend in Indian economic growth.

Caste has always been a persistent stick for intellectuals to attack anything connected to Indian religions, customs, and culture. The jati-based Indian communities unify families and communities, improve economic status, and provide upward mobility. As Vaidyanathan sums up, with caste (or jatis) as a social capital, it brings unity in economics. Unfortunately, in politics, it brings division.

The Indian Middle Class and the Demographic Changes

Sanjeev Sanyal (The Indian Renaissance) writes on the rise of the Indian middle class. Most industrialization produces a middle class, which becomes politically and socially strong gradually. This happened in Western countries in the 19^th and 20^th centuries. However, in India, there was already an educated middle class at the time of liberalisation, which spurred growth in the service industry, which included communications, outsourcing, transport, tourism, hotels, and so on. The rest of Asia was more into heavy industry, which required capital and labour. We were grossly deficient in the former, says Sanyal. The policy of focusing on higher education while ignoring primary education led to the creation of an unemployed middle class, many of whom migrated to greener pastures. This was perhaps a major reason for the brain drain that happened in our country, which could be slowing down after 1991.

Our projected demographic changes in the next few decades are a story of immense hope for India. In the next 20–30 years, our average age will be in the 30’s. Every country goes through three phases demographically: first, with a high birth rate and a high death rate; second, when the young working group forms the major labour force; and third, where the ageing population increases. Most western countries and Asian giants like China and South Korea are in the third phase, where the ageing population is a reason for the loss of productivity, increasing healthcare costs, and thus affecting the economy.

Sanyal predicts that the combination of the focus on primary education and demographic changes will cause a huge leap in infrastructure and heavy industrialization. Urbanisation will increase, and the high rural population presently comprising 70% of our country will reduce. Our gold reserves have exceeded our debts, and the capital is no longer deficient. We can indeed look forward to a huge increase in our prosperity and economic progress. However, Sanyal calls for major reforms in our archaic and stifling laws and a decrease in corruption. The cities should be prepared for the massive urbanisation, industrialization, and infrastructural issues. Bangalore, Gurgaon, and Kolkata are examples of random, unplanned growth, and they should not be examples for structuring cities.

Conclusions

In 1500, Asia accounted for 65% of world GDP. For four and a half centuries after that, until 1950, it stagnated while the rest of the world went forward. In 1950, Asia’s share was only 18.5%, and it has doubled over the next half century, making it the fastest-growing economy. Though China and the Far East are growing faster, India’s growth has been impressive too. A GDP per capita growth rate of -0.2 from 1913–1950, jumping to 3.7 in 1990–1999, is impressive.

Variations in Per Capita GDP Growth Momentum: Resurgent Asia
(Annual average compound growth rates)
	1913–50	1950–99	1950–73	1973–90	1990–99
India	–0.2	2.2	1.4	2.6	3.7
Resurgent Asia	–0.3	3.4	2.5	3.9	4.6
Western Europe	0.8	2.9a	4.1	1.9	1.4b
United States	1.6	2.2	2.5	2	2.1
(Maddison)

With a nominal GDP of $2.94 trillion and a purchasing power parity (PPP) of $10.51 trillion, India is the fastest-growing trillion-dollar economy in the world. It is the fifth-largest overall in 2019 behind the US, China, Japan, and Germany, recently overtaking the UK and France. India is third in terms of purchasing power parity.

The service sector is the fastest-growing sector in the world, contributing more than 60 percent to its economy and 28 percent to employment. The agricultural sector has declined to around 17 percent, but is still higher in comparison to western nations. The Indian economy’s strength lies in its limited dependence on exports, high saving rates, favourable demographics (average age in the thirties), and rising middle class.

Understanding poverty is a bigger problem than understanding the economic prosperity of a country. Economists confuse people by constantly changing the definitions of poverty. Some different methodologies include Income-based calculations, consumption or spending-based calculations, Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), nominal relative basis, Multi-dimensional Poverty Index; and Global Hunger Index. The prevalence estimates of poverty in India using various definitions swing widely: from 6.7 percent to 60 percent of the population!

The rich 1 percent perhaps holds upwards of 58 percent of the total wealth, making it one of the most unequal countries in the world. Only 1.5 crore out of a total population of 130 crores pay income tax. Though about 5.78 crores disclose their income for tax purposes, a whopping 4.28 crores are below the 5-lakh limit with tax exemption. Surprisingly, the number of individual tax payers with an income of more than 5 crores in the whole country is only 8600.

Though India’s annual growth rate has exceeded 7 percent over the last 15 years and is pulling out an increasing number of people from poverty, the main issue of inequality needs urgent addressing. The middle class constitutes more than 50 percent of the Indian population, and obviously there is a gross underreporting of incomes by individuals and institutions. Corruption also accounts for a good amount of unaccounted money.

Extreme poverty, hunger deaths, and famines no longer exist as in colonial times; we have steadily progressed as one of the fastest-growing economies; we have 13,854,000 Indians in the top 10 percent of global wealth holders and 827,000 in the top 1 percent; and yet, what stares at us as a goal in the next few decades is to bring a more equitable distribution of wealth and decrease the levels of corruption in both the public and private sectors.

To a layperson, history can be a variable mix of confusion, anger, and disappointment. The same set of events can have radically different interpretations shaking the very idea of truth. As Nassim Nicholas Taleb says (Black Swan, 2008), history is opaque to cause and effect. The biggest blunder a historian might commit is to retrospectively assign reasons for historical events. Each event is a complex interplay of thousands of factors coming together, and in such complexity, making simplistic explanations is a foolish task.

Taleb rues that the human mind suffers from ‘triplet opacity’ when meeting history: 1) the illusion of understanding what is going on in a world that is more complicated than realized. 2)
the retrospective distortion, or how we assess matters only after the fact, and 3) the overvaluation of information and the handicap of authoritative and learned people, particularly when they create categories.

Whatever the interpretations across decades, our economic past, present, and future should finally give us pride, strength, and hope. The facts and evidence demand this and not despair, despite many contradictions, ambiguities, and controversies. India was a rich country that attracted plunderers across ages; India is a rich country that the world still needs. We never had the need to go out to invade and loot; we did venture out, but only for trade or spreading knowledge.

SELECTED REFERENCES AND FURTHER READINGS:

1. https://www.academia.edu/41232833/2020_Trends_in_Economic_History_Writing_of_Early_South_Asia Trends in Economic History Writing of Early South Asia by Mamata Dwivedi
2. Orientalism: Western Conceptions Of Orient (2001) by Edward W. Said
3. Culture And Imperialism (1994) by Edward W Said
4. https://www.indica.today/long-reads/vartta-in-ancient-india/ Ancient Indian Economy by Sneha Nagarkar in six parts
5. Ancient Indian Economy: The Role of Vārttā (2023) by Sneha Nagarkar
6. The Lost River: On The Trail of the SARASVATI (2010) by Michel Danino
7. https://faculty.washington.edu/plape/citiesaut11/readings/Childe-urban%20revolution%201950.pdf The Urban Revolution by V. Gordon Childe
8. The Making of Early Medieval India by BD Chattopadhyaya
9. Interpreting Medieval India (2009) by Vipul Singh
10. https://www.academia.edu/72237165/Early_medieval_currency_pattern_North_India_  Early medieval currency pattern (North India) by John Deyell
11. The World Economy: Vol. 1: A Millennial Perspective & Vol. 2: Historical Statistics by Angus Maddison (2007): A must read for anyone having an inkling of interest in the history of Indian economy. For a layperson, no book perhaps opens the eyes to the Indian economic wonder better than this one.
12. How ‘Rich’ was Mughal India? In Narrativizing Bhāratvarṣa & Other Essays (2021) by Saumya Dey
13. The Agrarian System Of Mughal India, 1556-1707 (2013) by Irfan Habib
14. The Ruler’s Gaze: A Study of British Rule over India from a Saidian Perspective by Arvind Sharma
15. Ocean of Churn: How the Indian Ocean Shaped Human History (2017) by Sanjeev Sanyal
16. An Era of Darkness: The British Empire in India (2016) by Shashi Tharoor
17. Churchill’s Secret War (2018) by Madhusree Mukerjee
18. The Goa Inquisition: The Terrible Tribunal for the East (2010) by Anant Kakba Priolkar
19. The Theft of India: The European Conquests of India, 1498-1765 (2016) by Roy Moxham
20. https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=8a5a624dce31f3d47d51e5f2fd7e4ffa36650082 The Economic Importance Of Indian Opium And Trade With China On Britain’s Economy, 1843–1890 by Sarah Deming
21. The Economic Legacies of Colonial Rule in India: Another Look by Tirthankar Roy in Economic and Political Weekly Vol. 50, No. 15 (April 11, 2015), pp. 51-59
22. The Economic History Of India, 1857-2010 (2020) by Tirthankar Roy
23. https://fid4sa-repository.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/664/1/Presidential_address_Mukherjee.pdf The Return of the Colonial in Indian Economic History: The Last Phase of Colonialism in India by Aditya Mukherjee
24. https://gurcharandas.org/node/255 India: How a rich nation became poor and will be rich again by Gurcharan Das
25. https://www.thehindu.com/business/Economy/india-is-dangerously-close-to-hindu-rate-of-growth-says-raghuram-rajan/article66583585.ece India is ‘dangerously close’ to Hindu rate of growth, says Raghuram Rajan
26. Education in India; Memory in Education; and Music and Education in India in the book Essays in National Idealism by Ananda Coomaraswamy
27. https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinions/columns/s-gurumurthy/2016/feb/18/Indian-Economy-for-Dummies—I-893840.html  Indian Economy for Dummies in three parts by S Gurumurthy
28. https://www.newindianexpress.com/opinions/columns/s-gurumurthy/2015/nov/14/Gold-Indian-Women-Teach-Modern-Economists-842545.html Gold: Indian Women Teach Modern Economists (2015) by S Gurumurthy
29. Caste as Social Capital (2023) by R Vaidyanathan
30. India’s New Capitalists: Caste, Business, and Industry in a Modern Nation (2008) by H. Damodaran
31. The Indian Renaissance: India’s Rise after a Thousand Years of Decline (2015) by Sanjeev Sanyal
32. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2008) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb