EVERY COUNTRY HAS its optimists and dreamers, but India produces them in spades. Thanks to visionary leaders like Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India became democratic and not autocratic.
However, according to entrepreneur Gurcharan Das, when it came to economics, the Congress Party's wisdom deserted it. It wasn't until 1991 before a government came along that got it right.
In this authoritative book, Das, a former head of Procter & Gamble India, reflects on a working life spent struggling within the straitjacket of India's command economy. Five years old when the country became free in 1947, he looks at the stages of his development and the nation's.
By personalising developments he makes India's story more accessible to readers. That story reveals a man who often eschewed the boardroom to mix with and listen to the people.
Das dismisses historians who blame the colonial legacy for India's immediate post-independence woes. While colonialism was a part of it, Indian attitudes did not help.
Merchants were generally mistrusted and prime minister Nehru's socialist programme placed restrictions on the growth of new industries. It was a big mistake.