India's Long Road

Vijay Joshi is emeritus fellow of Merton College, Oxford. His previous books on India (co-authored with I.M.D. Little) include India: Macroeconomics and Political Economy (1994), and India's Economic Reforms (1996). He has, from time to time, held various official and business positions, including special adviser to the governor, Reserve Bank of India; officer on special duty, ministry of finance, Government of India; director, J.P. Morgan Indian Investment Trust; and consultant to several international organizations, including the World Bank. But the primary preoccupations of his working career have been teaching and research at the University of Oxford, in the fields of macroeconomics, international economics and development economics.

India has been the subject of many extravagant predictions and hopes. In this powerful and wide-ranging book, distinguished economist Vijay Joshi argues that the foundations of rapid, durable and inclusive economic growth in India are distinctly shaky. He lays out a penetrating analysis of the country's recent faltering performance, set against the backdrop of its political economy, and charts the course it should follow to achieve widely shared prosperity.
Joshi argues that for India to realize its huge potential, the relation among the state, the market and the private sector must be comprehensively realigned. Deeper liberalization is very necessary but far from sufficient. The state needs to perform much more effectively many core tasks that belong squarely in its domain. His radical reform model includes a fiscally affordable scheme to provide a regular 'basic income' for all citizens that would speedily abolish extreme poverty.
An authoritative work of tremendous scope and depth, India's Long Road is essential reading for anyone who wants to know where India is today, where it is headed, and what it should do to attain its ambitious goals.

India could do far better. That, in a sentence, is the conclusion of Vijay Joshi's superb book. While the focus of India's Long Road is on the economy, its analysis is appropriately comprehensive. It considers the post-Independence growth record, the failure to create remunerative employment, the excessive role of publicly owned enterprises, the poor quality of Indian infrastructure and the inadequacy of environmental regulation. Joshi combines enthusiastic engagement with the detachment of a scholar who has passed much of his life abroad. No better guide to India's contemporary economy exists
-Martin Wolf, Financial Times

A central thesis of the book is that we have not defined clearly the boundaries between the state, the private sector and the market, and as a result, the Indian state [tries] to do too many things, and it doesn't do them well! . . . The book ranges effortlessly over the extensive literature to present the reader a large number of policy options which would accelerate reforms
-Montek S. Ahluwalia, India Today

A work that addresses fundamental issues relevant to black money in India. . . . Joshi is at his best in describing the disease and its symptoms. . . . [A book of great relevance] by an economist rooted in the real world
-Y.V. Reddy, Mint

Economist Vijay Joshi is a voice that deserves to be heard and read. . . . A wonderful book that takes a long view of the Indian economy since the 1991 reforms
--Bibek Debroy, Sunday Standard

This book is truly extraordinary. It provides a comprehensive and in-depth survey of India's enormous long-term potential, and what needs to be done to achieve it. What distinguishes this book is its practical and commonsense approach for finding solutions to a vast range of long-term problems that India currently faces. It deserves to be read by all researchers, students as well as civil servants, parliamentarians and policy makers
-Bimal Jalan, former governor of Reserve Bank of India

A tour de force . . . perhaps the best book in a decade on India's economic future. Effortlessly combines high economic theory and empirics and lucidly analyses the deep determinants for achieving high-quality growth in India
-Vijay Kelkar, chairman, Thirteenth Finance Commission

At a time when the Indian scene is flooded with many books, Vijay Joshi's latest contribution towers above all others. India's Long Road will only add to Joshi's reputation for profound insight into India's economic problems
-Jagdish Bhagwati, University Professor and Director of the Raj Center on Indian Economic Policies, Columbia University

India has a complex economy; Joshi makes the issues intelligible in lucid prose, without compromising on the complexity. He also provides a balanced perspective on many controversial questions. In today's partisan and shrill policy debates this book will set an example of clear thinking
-Pranab Bardhan, professor emeritus of economics at the University of California, Berkeley

A cogent and sobering analysis of the enormity of the challenges India faces in ensuring inclusive, enduring and sustainable economic growth. Vijay Joshi lays out with rare clarity the necessary reforms that India must undertake-and the obstacles rooted in the country's political economy-if it is to fulfill its historical responsibility to improve the well-being of a sixth of humanity. One of the best-and most accessible-books on a complex and contentious subject
-Devesh Kapur, Madan Lal Sobti Professor of Contemporary India and Director Center for Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania

India's Long Road by Vijay Joshi, a leading macroeconomist, deserves to be required reading for anyone interested in India's performance and prospects. While being strongly grounded in economic theory, it succeeds in setting out a superb descriptive and prescriptive analysis of India's political economy in a readable style, without jargon or algebra. Its sensible and firm policy recommendations are based on careful argument and evidence
-T.N. Srinivasan, Samuel C. Park Jr. Professor of Economics Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of International and Area Studies, Yale University

This is a very compelling book that makes a strong case for a comprehensive agenda of economic reforms that would enable India to emerge as a high income economy over the next quarter century
-Barry Bosworth, Economist, the Brookings Institution

I only wish that this book had been available 20 years earlier, when I was appointed Chief Economist for South Asia in the World Bank. To have had available such a well-argued and reasonable guide to the many problems confronting India in its quest to join the modern world by a leading member of the Indian diaspora would have been invaluable. I would particularly have valued the chapters on political economy
-John Williamson, Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Peterson Institute for International Economics