The Face You Were Afraid To See: Essays On The Indian Economy

Economists talk of prices rising or falling in response to excess of demand or supply in the market, but are at a loss to explain who sets the price in a market of many players where no one has the power to dictate price. They then have to invent the ‘invisible hand’ of a mythical god called ‘price mechanism’ to create the image of the market operating as a self-regulating system. While unregulated free trade amounts to groping in the dark, the situation is far worse when the prices and other rules of the market are set by the state on behalf of large corporations—as has happened in globalizing India in the name of economic development.