Here comes another book on independent India’s development journey. Devesh Kapur and Arvind Subramanian’s book — A Sixth of Humanity: Independent India’s Development Odyssey — is a deep dive into India’s economy over the last seven decades and counting.

This 604-page book is a deeply researched one — the notes section itself runs to close to a 100 pages and the reference section to another 25. The authors have analysed a whole gamut of data, official reports and other published material on the Indian economy.

According to the authors, India’s story is not only one of many surprising successes but also many wrong turns and missed opportunities. To begin with India’s development journey is beset with paradoxes and contradictions. The most surprising one was India’s conscious choice of adopting democracy with universal franchise when it was still a desperately poor country at the time of Independence. Most Western democracies and even those in the East adopted democracy gradually and became a full-fledged one only when they acquired middle income status. In this aspect India is truly unique.

Kamadhenu State

Now to the contradictions. The authors argue that India in the early days privileged public investment (especially in heavy industry) over welfare spending, higher education over primary education and curative care over primary healthcare. Paradoxically, the authors say, that India became a decisively more ‘welfarist’ in the post-1991 ‘neo-liberal’ phase of its journey. The authors call it the ‘Kamadhenu’ State.

Though the situation on primary education improved in the 1990s, the lack of investment in the early years of Independence left a tragic mark on the economy, especially when compared to how the East Asian economies tapped an educated labour force to power their export-led manufacturing story.

But, according to the authors, the early focus on higher education had one entirely unanticipated benefit. The engineering colleges started in the 1950s created a high-end skilled workforce that played a key role in propelling India as a global software giant in the 2000s.

The authors try to bust a few myths about the Indian economic history. They believe that the 1950-80 ‘planning’ period was one of poor growth where an inefficient and bloated public sector stifled private sector initiative. The ‘Kafkaesque’ (a term the authors use) system of controls and licensing comes in for trenchant criticism. The authors also argue that real import substitution happened only in the 1980-90 phase where the policy thrust was ‘pro-business’ but not ‘pro-market’.

The 1991-2011 ‘liberal’ phase was where India achieved impressive growth with millions being lifted out of poverty. But the authors argue that this phase was also marked by contradictions — high growth and exports did not lead to a major structural transformation of the Indian economy (like it did in East Asia in the seventies). So the post reforms period succeeded in delivering high growth but failed in creating good quality factory jobs for the poor.

The post-2011 period is described by the author as the ‘welfarist’ phase. Though the growth in this phase was high, other indicators, especially private investment and consumption fell. The authors blame the ‘twin balance-sheet’ problem for this and say that this problem has not quite got the attention it deserves — from academics, policymakers and the media.

The authors devote two sections on state capacity and nation building. Here they discuss the role of the bureaucracy and the peculiar character of Indian business that was incubated during the Nehruvian years.

On infrastructure, the authors say that though this has improved markedly over the last two decades, they observe a marked dichotomy in this sector — airports, ports and communications are dominated by private players, while railways and roads are still under public sector’s domain with the power sector having players from both domains. The authors also make a crucial observation about how the government’s focus has now shifted to infrastructure from manufacturing or ‘state capitalism’.

PSU woes

The sorry state of India’s public sector — its poor performance both in terms of returns to capital and other ‘social’ objectives — comes in for severe criticism by the authors. They also highlight some crucial differences between ‘social business’ and ‘social finance’ — under the former, PSUs were formed, under the latter, existing banks were nationalised. The authors argue for a major PSU privitisation, for which they believe governments since 2004 have had little appetite for. Governments have preferred the ‘strategic’ sale route to the politically sensitive outright sale to a private party — Air India privatisation being a rare exception.

In the chapter on nation building, the authors say that the basic strong edifice of Indian democracy has worked in its favour despite the many attempts at subverting it. The authors bring out the pitfalls of focusing public policy on group identities (caste) and are particularly disturbed by the economic and social state of Scheduled Tribes.

There is also a data-heavy chapter on fiscal federalism and the knotty issue of distribution of tax revenues between the Centre and the States and between States. The southern and western States’ grouse of being given the short shrift despite contributing heavily to the nation’s economy is also discussed threadbare, but the authors argue that India’s fiscal federalism can be seen as a success story where poorer States have been looked after. The authors also point out to the States’ double-speak in whining to the Centre on tax shares while also denying funds to their rural and local governance bodies.

The one criticism about the book is that its canvas is so wide that it does spread itself thin. Each chapter can be spun out as a separate book. But the authors deserve credit for poring over large sets of data to make their arguments.

So how has India fared in these 78 years? For the authors it is a ‘mixed bag’ (to use a journalistic cliche) — some surprising success and many missed opportunities.

Title: A Sixth of Humanity: Independent India’s Development Odyssey

Authors: Devesh Kapur and Arvind Subramanian

Publisher: HarperCollins

Price: ₹1,299

Published on December 19, 2025