India Unbound
Gurcharan Das

At one time India was the byword for wealth. Columbus wasn't trying to find North America, he merely blundered into it looking for a shorter route to India. Why then is it so poor now? When will it be rich again? Gurcharan Das explores these questions in a provocative history, weaving together his personal story with the economic changes in post-British India.

However, India Unbound is more than an autobiography or an economic textbook, it's an introduction to a complex nation that is at once new and old. India is a fascinating and bewildering mix of religions, castes, traditions, and peoples, but Das proves to be a sure guide. At first I thought that Das was repeating himself somewhat, but I realized later that he was making related points as he thoroughly examined a complex subject. His writing is clear and easy to follow, although the book is not light reading by any means. Das points out that he followed the method of Defoe's Memoirs of a Cavalier, but the book I thought of was Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged. The intricacies of the License Raj, the forms, the inspectors, and the petty bureaucrats made me think that Rand's nightmare had come to life.

In any work one must understand where the author is coming from. Gurcharan Das is a former CEO of Procter & Gamble India, and attended the Harvard Business School. He is currently a consultant to industry and government, and is a columnist for the Times of India. Shortly before the British left India Das was born into a professional middle-class family. We later find out that such families were a tiny percent of the population.

Das places India in the context of other developing and developed nations to show what has gone wrong in India. He compares how India, China, and Japan reacted to European culture and technology, admitting that India has done the worst of the three. Surprisingly enough to me, Das does not blame India's colonial past. He puts the blame squarely on India's leaders choosing and maintaining a socialist economy even in the face of evidence that it didn't work. His strongest words are reserved for what he calls the License Raj, a bureaucratic system that regulated every aspect of business life and strangled competition.

The book contains many economic statistics, but is not the least bit dry. Das leavens them with observations of how they affected his family and other real people. You meet 14-year-old Raju, a waiter who dreams of running a computer company just like Bilgay (sic), the richest man in the world, and you meet Dhirubhai Ambani, the creator of India's largest petro-chemical company.

While reading, I couldn't help but think of Canada's economic history and our own problems with a poor minority. Canada has a mixed economy, not so regulated as India is now, not as open as the United States. We have had to struggle with tariffs, various regulatory acts to restrict foreign ownership, short-sighted monetary and fiscal policy, a massive bureaucracy, and decades of paternal government that feels it knows best. Plus, we live right beside the world's economic 800 kilo gorilla. I wish Prime Minister Chretien would read India Unbound to see what the Canadian government is flirting with by making so many grants and subsidies to poorer parts of Canada.

No discussion of India is complete without caste. I confess to not understanding caste very well before reading the chapter, and I'm still coming to intellectual grips with it. Canadian Native people are not a caste, but in some respects they act like one, and are treated like one. Native people are among the poorest in Canada, the most frequently jailed, and the least educated. Native people are struggling to improve their standard of living, but there is a great deal of discussion of what it means to be Native in Canadian society. Many Natives who have succeeded are accused by other Natives of having sold out, or become an apple, ie, red on the outside and white in the middle.

There are quotas that are designed to create space for Natives in industry and education, but this satisfies nobody. Das points out that education is the answer, and exposure to the marketplace allows the use of that education. He explores some innovative educational changes in detail, and shows how it has changed life for the lower castes. I find it ironic that caste and Native leaders do not wholeheartedly support education.

Das points out that castes are beginning to behave like modern interest groups, a tactic Canadian Natives have begun to employ effectively. The problem is that Canadian Natives are a small percent of the total population, while the former untouchable castes are a majority in India.

When (non-Indian) Canadians think of India at all, they are likely to think of Ghandi and his struggles with the British Raj, tea, and the exotic. Many might be hard pressed to say if India is a democracy or not. India Unbound is an excellent book to begin to learn more about the largest democracy in the world by population. I borrowed it from the Calgary Public Library, and will seriously consider buying it to add to my personal library. It isn't a reference book, but I can easily see myself wanting to look up something in it.

Alfred A. Knopf, 2000
ISBN 0-375-41164-X