About the Book: A Sixth Of Humanity: Independent Indias Development Odyssey
Indias journey has been distinctively 'precocious in comparative terms. It opted
for democracy before development and social change, promoted high-skilled
services before and over low-skilled manufacturing and chose a globalization
that favoured exports of talented people and short-changed the poor. The
socialist state became an inefficiently capitalist one before providing the
public goods of physical infrastructure and human capital. The outcomes have
been surprising, with the country achieving success in creating and sustaining
democracy, albeit flawed, and maintaining a modicum of order.
Four decades of economic dynamism and the emergence of a somewhat more capable
Indian