Journal of Economic Literature 2009, 47:3, 771–780 http:www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/jel.47.3.771
A Review of Edward Luce’s In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India
Lant Pritchett*
India poses a development puzzle on a grand scale. Sixty years of electoral democracy, thirty years of rapid growth, and a number of world class institutions (such as the Institutes of Technology or Election Commission) have led to talk of India as a superpower in a league with the United States and China. Yet, on many fronts, India’s indicators of human well-being (e.g., malnutrition, immunization) are at, or below, those of much poorer sub-Saharan African countries. Measures of the administrative capacity of the state on basics like attendance, performance, and corruption reveal a potentially “flailing state” whose brilliantly formulated policies are disconnected from realities on the ground. This review essay of Ed Luce’s In Spite of the Gods attempts to articulate the puzzle that is modern India and pose questions about the development trajectory of a country whose fortunes will shape our century.
ndia is typically presented in the United States as one of two juggernauts: economic or mystic. The economic transformation of India through an extended period of very rapid economic growth, coupled with its absolute size and increasing integration into world markets, creates a view of India as the next superpower, an economic juggernaut. This is the India of the business pages that provide stories of Indian firms (or firms owned by people of Indian descent) buying up established Western firms, the next “Silicon Valley” full of computer programmers and engineers in Bangalore (and more recently
* Pritchett: Harvard University.
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Hyderabad), the rise of major firms and family dynasties both old, like Tata, and new like the Ambhani brothers and Reliance. There are already a collection of books, both by economists (e.g., Arvind Virmani 2006 and Arvind...