India today has the fifth-largest economy in the world—and with an annual growth rate of roughly 7 percent, one of the fastest-growing. But for decades, the country was an economic laggard. The policies pursued by India’s founders, most notably its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, produced neither growth nor equity. They granted a disproportionate role to the state, dramatically regulated industry, and limited India’s integration into the global economy.

After fitful attempts to bring about reform in the 1980s, Indian policymakers were forced to grasp the nettle in the wake of an unprecedented fiscal crisis in 1991. Faced with few options, they sporadically embraced market-friendly reforms that ultimately set the country on a path of steady economic growth. That growth, in turn, played a critical role in reducing endemic poverty even as it contributed to deepening inequality.

India today has the fifth-largest economy in the world—and with an annual growth rate of roughly 7 percent, one of the fastest-growing. But for decades, the country was an economic laggard. The policies pursued by India’s founders, most notably its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, produced neither growth nor equity. They granted a disproportionate role to the state, dramatically regulated industry, and limited India’s integration into the global economy.

Devesh Kapur and Arvind Subramanian, A Sixth of Humanity: Independent India’s Development Odyssey, Oxford University Press, 824 pp., $44.99, June 2026

After fitful attempts to bring about reform in the 1980s, Indian policymakers were forced to grasp the nettle in the wake of an unprecedented fiscal crisis in 1991. Faced with few options, they sporadically embraced market-friendly reforms that ultimately set the country on a path of steady economic growth. That growth, in turn, played a critical role in reducing endemic poverty even as it contributed to deepening inequality.

India’s economic circumstances—despite the numbers—are decidedly mixed. Even amid the adverse effects of the Iran war and trade uncertainties in U.S. President Donald Trump’s second term, the country’s growth rate remains sound. However, India is confronting head on the problem of jobless economic expansion with soaring youth unemployment, as underscored by the Cockroach movement protests this summer.

Both political scientists and economists of repute have sought to trace India’s development trajectory and offered various explanations for its successes and failures. These works have documented the ideational sources of the country’s policies, discussed critical historical junctures, and offered prescriptions to promote sustained growth and tackle persistent poverty.

Few have taken on a task as monumental as Devesh Kapur and Arvind........

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