India Unbound 1st Edition

The book divides the growth of Indian economy into 3 eras: 1942- 65, 66-91 and 91- 2005. At the beginning of each chapter, the book explores the socioeconomic effect of the policies of each era on the life of the author. Thus an interesting narrative acts as a preamble to the insightful commentary on the policies enacted then and their implications. A person in the present generation would have heard a lot of isolated information about the years before without much understanding the reasons and their implications well. Hardly does anybody know why India prefers being a closed economy. It answers a crucial question "how did Indian economy get to be so backward even after about 40 years of independence?" I believe it should be made mandatory for every economics and sociology student in our country. I feel it is a book to be read by all who wonder why our nation is the way it is.

I am thankful to Mr. Gurucharan Das for such a lovely composition. Why i call composition because the book was less like a text and more of a music composition. Like the rhythm of any music raises and falls and captures you from every corner, like the tones takes you into your control and you happily surrender yourself to the surrounding created by the music and then when it ends, you feel a different world around you, exactly the same way the book takes us to the 1947 and before. It teaches us the every possible situation that resulted our nation to attain independence....independence from primitive business policies and plans....what caused such changes. Which business houses and region brought the changes, the feudal system prevailed during a century ago and peoples view towards business and business houses. Struggle by the top business men, their hard work to produce goods and services, their arguments in every possible way to make our Government understand the pros and cons of their plans, scarcity faced by consumers, our dependence on bureaucrats and ministers watching the rest of the world grow in terms of GDP and NNP by keeping eyes closed and investors at their mercy. Well if i start speaking about this book then i am sure that i will end up writing another one to praise this great writer. He has written another great book "The difficult of being good", i read it in 2009 and this made me to decided to buy India Unbound.....Guys it is a must for all specially to all the MBA's....the net 373 pages will take you through a roller coster experienced by our economy and economic history...

I read this book after reading the Book by Bipin Chandar titled "India's struggle for Independence". In many ways it was confounding of sorts to me. Reading Bipin Chandra and Gurucharan Das was a complete contrast in many ways that one. The first hand narration of some stories from his work life are just too moving to read, especially if you can empathize with the entrepreneurship of state mind. how the License Raj era curtailed the dreams of so many. The part where the interaction of Gurucharan Das with Indiara Gandhi, the then PM of India was eye opener of sorts to me.
Gurucharan Das, so often, or mostly comes across as a very liberal in his views on policies, though he never suggests this as a panacea for all the issues India faces today. but I find it, at times too liberal. or maybe for the fact that the recent occupy wall street campaigns et.al. have kinda of made me wary of the effectiveness of capitalism and liberalism in the absolute form they exist today. I may want to differ with Grucharan Das a bit here and there but all in all I just had to agree with the views expressed in this book while reading.

How mixed economy caused has wrecked havoc and the Idealism based Foreign Policy is bad, and authors interaction with Henry Kissinger where Kissinger criticizes Nehru's Foreign Policies are some of the highlights of the book.

Read this book, Every Indian need to read this book, just to get an idea why India could have been a better story and why it is not.

To give you a head's up, this book is going to make you cringe and feel at times awfully angry at the missed opportunities India's socialist fools let pass by! But, then as a balm you see the writer making a case for why Indians are touted as immensely entrepreneurial. Americans and lots of NRIs, have managed to achieve their 'American Dream' through favorable policies but Indians have kept the hope alive in extremely unsuitable economical climate by clinging on their dreams as if it's their dear life!
If I could ever meet the folks mentioned in this book, I would touch their feet and seek their blessings! Oh yeah, about the book, I request everyone reads it. Guru as mentioned somewhere '.. yields the pen dexterously'.

This book provides a reasonable argument to questions in our minds as to why our country is still a developing economy.

It's interesting to read how India could leap to progress as the author throws light on the 1991 economic reforms,also quite shocked to know how the East India Company funded it's trade deficit by investing from India's trade surplus then!.
(Now, the scenario is reversed,our trade deficits are accruing year on year)
The author also talks about India's social system and how our low aptitude for co-operation affected our productivity at work.

An interesting book to read on India's transformation from a controlled economy to a liberal one.