Essay --

Name of the book - India Grows at Night by Gurucharan Das I haven’t read any of the two Gurucharan’s previous books. Besides, this is the first book I will be reviewing for Developmental economics. The title of the Book only caught my attention for two reasons. First it reminded me of the famous speech by Jawaharlal Nehru â€Å"At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.† His speech somewhat depicted the reality as India only started to develop at night. Second, it gave me some sort of insight of what I might come across in this book. It’s more of a statement which leads us towards the realness of our country. He begins the first chapter with the example of Haryana and Gurgaon. The unexpected rise of the neglected and underdeveloped Gurgaon in becoming a â€Å"Millennium City â€Å"and the surrender of a would-be planned city Faridabad, later even struggling to capture up with India’s first wave of modernization. It was discussed how private player s took charge in Gurgaon- which arose without an effective state whilst Faridabad with a proper functioning state, withered. Indian model was discussed – which was different than the rest of the world as India got democracy before capitalism. By the end of this chapter, das speaks about the shortcoming of the state and how to move from the private success and public failure in order to become a successful nation. In the next chapter he talks about the Anna Hazare’s movement and how a weak government was shaken to its core by a strong society. Delay in implementation of projects like POSCO – which had been caught in the web of red tape for 5 years. He also mentioned how 168 projects of Coal India had been awaiting clearance – which led to powe... .... In the last section he concludes by giving suggestions on what should be done and redefines the definition of a Strong state and mention that a state is required to grow - no matter how many inefficiencies it may have, he writes â€Å"a weak state is better than no state at all". This book is a brilliant piece by Gurucharan Das, which talks about India’s impressive economic rise despite the presence or rather the absence of a state. With its narrative approach it is easy for readers to understand. Das takes you on a journey beyond 1900 and gives a glimpse of our past and present in order to understand the lacunae that India is facing. The part I disliked is he stressed a lot more in explaining the relevance of a strong state. But this book attempts to show us a path which could help the state deal with governance shortfall effectively. Nishant Sharma Radio stream