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A review by marginalian
India Is Broken: A People Betrayed, Independence to Today by Ashoka Mody
informative
medium-paced
This book seems like a post hoc analysis of past events. Mody's analysis is top-down. He covers macroeconomic policies, political leaders and businesspeople through newspaper and other global reports over the decades. Thus the book doesn't have much new information to provide on the recent years than available from credible news sources. Yet, it provides valuable information about the first few decades of India's independence. The book might be interesting for rich investors or students of macroeconomics. And unemployment as shown in the book is, indeed, a huge crisis.
But the stories of ordinary Indians don't find any voice here. They are considered to be mere victims of bad politics and economics. Also, despite reading the entire book, I don't know what Mody as an economist wants India to be like. He criticizes almost everything that it is difficult to figure out where he stands as an economist. Mody, like Nehru in the book, have all the diagnoses correct without any solutions ahead! At times, there was no choice but to be tired of what I felt like the armchair cynicism of an academic who has never stepped into the grassroots.
Aren't we at a juncture where we should be asking better questions? Why do we come back to the old narratives on the need of manufacturing more and more consumption goods (despite the environmental damages) to feed western fantasies, the spread of school-based literacy and education just for the sake of being better employees, and the need to move away from all types of farming in a world where we are already facing the consequences of a destructive and illogical western model of development? What we need is probably a new culture with radically different priorities suited to our planet. From that perspective, the concerns presented in this book seem a little bit overdebated and outdated. When the author touches on aspects like UBI, decentralisation and civic communities, he does so only in passing reference.
But the stories of ordinary Indians don't find any voice here. They are considered to be mere victims of bad politics and economics. Also, despite reading the entire book, I don't know what Mody as an economist wants India to be like. He criticizes almost everything that it is difficult to figure out where he stands as an economist. Mody, like Nehru in the book, have all the diagnoses correct without any solutions ahead! At times, there was no choice but to be tired of what I felt like the armchair cynicism of an academic who has never stepped into the grassroots.
Aren't we at a juncture where we should be asking better questions? Why do we come back to the old narratives on the need of manufacturing more and more consumption goods (despite the environmental damages) to feed western fantasies, the spread of school-based literacy and education just for the sake of being better employees, and the need to move away from all types of farming in a world where we are already facing the consequences of a destructive and illogical western model of development? What we need is probably a new culture with radically different priorities suited to our planet. From that perspective, the concerns presented in this book seem a little bit overdebated and outdated. When the author touches on aspects like UBI, decentralisation and civic communities, he does so only in passing reference.