'And so these men of Indostan...were in the wrong'

in 1895. At breakfast in the bishop's home, the curate got a bad egg, but didn't dare tell the bishop the egg was bad. So he said parts of it were excellent. The only bad and ugly eggs in this book are in this segment, that too, on grounds of selection.

Second (I hope Shankar doesn't mind my saying this), he is getting better at being a columnist. The original columns were good, hence the book is good. If you lose the reader in the first couple of sentences, the reader isn't going to read the rest of the piece. Part of the answer lies in not taking oneself too seriously (even if the subject matter is serious) and lacing one's writing with liberal doses of humour. Have short and crisp sentences. Experiment with styles ("Reviving industrial employment", "Bad ideas versus good men" and "China's India strategy" are examples). These are simple enough precepts, but easy to preach, hard to practise. However, it is because of this touch, practised rather than preached, that this book is so very readable. At 187 pages, this is a slim book. And it is the kind of book one will pick up at an airport and finish reading during the flight. Despite the seriousness of subject matter, I mean this as a compliment. In passing, one hopes the Hindutva brigade doesn't take umbrage at Shankar ascribing the blind men and the elephant story to the Sufis. Not only are there Jain, Buddhist and Hindu versions, Rumi did credit Hindus with the story.

What's the terrain covered in the book? The first column (the Outlook one) looks back (but not in anger) at how India has changed since 1990. The clutch of three essays under the second head ("The employment challenge") contrasts the demographic dividend with a possible demographic deficit, since transmission mechanisms between higher growth and employment increases (and poverty reduction) are often missing, especially in certain regional areas. The title of the book is borrowed from one of these columns, with Bharat standing for the Hindi heartland, rather than rural India as a whole. A separate column focuses on the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. Five columns under the third head ("Reforms: on or off") are almost generic and are devoted to issues of why India reforms and why it does not. Why is it that the best-laid plans (Shankar wouldn't use the adjective "best" for the Common Minimum Programme) of mice and men (the good men are Manmohan Singh, Chidambaram and Montek Singh Ahluwalia) come to naught? Three columns under the fourth head ("Economic growth") question whether recent growth dynamism reflects a structural change (in which case it can be sustained) or cyclical phenomenon and whether 8%-plus growth is possible on service sector cylinders alone.

Three columns under the fifth head ("Infrastructure") actually offer a limited savouring of the infrastructure menu, since only the water problem is directly addressed. The other two are on using foreign exchange largesse for infrastructure development and a tale of three cities (Kolkata, Dhaka, Mumbai). The sixth head of "Budget and tax policies" has already been mentioned. And that leaves three heads of "Foreign trade and payments" (like a potpourri), "Foreign affairs" (another potpourri focused on China, with a Turkey sojourn thrown in, Shankar giving the highest rating to the UPA for foreign policy, not economic policy) and "Monetary and fiscal policies" (farewell to fiscal responsibility). In the 19th century, John Godfrey Saxe wrote a poem titled, "The Blind Men and the Elephant", about the "six men of Indostan". Read Shankar's readable book and wonder where the afore-mentioned three men of Reform-stan are taking us.

Can India grow without Bharat?

Shankar Acharya
Academic Foundation, 2007
Price: Rs 395; Pages: 187