India Unbound by Gurcharan Das

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India today is a vibrant free-market democracy and has begun to flex its muscles in the global information economy and on the world stage. Now, acclaimed columnist Gurcharan Das traces India's recent social and economic transformations in an eminently readable, impassioned narrative.

Das tells the stories of the major players in a period of rapid and profound change—from early days of Independence to the current software impresarios—and makes comprehensible and compelling the economic and political developments responsible for these changes. He weaves his personal story into the larger context of contemporary history: his family's move t America in the mid-1950s, his education at Harvard, his years in India as a young marketing executive wrestling with a socialist system he feared would undermine the country's vast potential. He also shows us the reasons behind his optimism for his nation's future, among which is the exciting landscape of information technology today.

Das argues that the changes of the past fifty years have, at last, amounted to a revolution—and it is one that has not been chronicled before. With India Unbound, he gives us a book that is at once vigorously analytical and vividly written—an essential insider's road map to India, then and now.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Wise Elephant

Part One: Our Spring of Hope (1942-65)

1. Ranting in English, Chanting in Sanskrit

2. Smells of the Bazaar

3. The Train to Nowhere

4. Blind Then, Blind Now

5. If We Were Once Rich, Why Are We Now Poor?

6. The Paper Route

7. Capitalism for the Rich, Socialism for the Poor

Part Two: The Lost Generation (1966-91)

8. Bazaar Power

9. Lerma Rojo and Taichung Native No. 1

10. Caste

11. Multiplying by Zero

12. Merchants of Marwar

13. Dreams in Kabutarkhana

14. Licensing Blues

Part Three: The Rebirth of Dreams (1991-99)

15. The Golden Summer of 1991

16. A Million Reformers

17. New Money

18. Old Money

19. The Rise and Rise of a Middle Class

20. Modern vs. Western

21. Democracy First, Capitalism Afterwards

22. Knowledge is Wealth

23. A New Country