Book Review : Restart - Last Chance For The Indian Economy

A book on Economics is prone to be one that can be classified as a serious bit of study, and a truckload of hard complex reading, full for jargon and indecipherable terms {even to economists, ,no joke there};  a subject to be broached only in a particular mood and mindset. One does not normally look to find anything but the above, especially if the book has been penned by one of India’s better known economics writers on Business Media. Well, the above is just about exactly what this book – ReStart, Last Chance For The Indian Economy – written by Mihir S Sharma, is not.

THE BOOK

This is a book that approaches it the core question – how do we genuinely grow – in a refreshing new look, basis hardcore fundamentals, devoid of jargon and needless complexities. It is divided into 5 parts : Why We Fail, When and Where We Failed, The Real Reasons Behind What Went Wrong since 2011-2012, How and Why Private Companies Have Failed To Be Innovative & Failed to Drive Growth, The 5 Bad Choices We Made That Must Be Corrected and the 5 Steps that Need to be Taken.  

Within each part, the book lays bare some of the fundamental issues that caused the situation where are now, asking some tough questions in hard language. It looks at the key causes, issues like infrastructure and our inability to build it; honesty and its lack in India; Unfinished reforms and their cascading impact; Corruption; The scepter of top-level growth on the base of a comparatively weaker foundation; it looks hard at the curse of Jugaad, and how Private Enterprise in India has failed to truly innovate; and sums it up by looking at 5 bad choices we made :

1.     PPP

2.     Special Exceptions to Rules

3.     Energy

4.     Distrust Market Prices

5.     Environment,

and the 5 steps we need to take :

1.     Flexibility in Land, labour, Capital & Entrepreneurship markets

2.     Black Money

3.     Government Expenditure

4.     Agriculture

5.     Cities

THE ANALYSIS

There is a little that is wrong in the book; but I would rather look at the pluses which far outnumber the minuses by a large margin. Given the fact that we are a developing nation, let me keep a positive approach. For starters, it was refreshing to read an author who made the connect between honesty, corruption, black money and true inclusive growth. This is, beyond any doubt, one of the key issues facing our nation in this modern day. While others like Bibek Debroy have given a numbers based analysis of the impact on the economy, this is a more base-level  blunt and hard-hitting attack on this most key and fundamental  of issues that confront us.

The book also makes no bones, pointing out the failure of private business to innovate in India. A rough look at any industry today will prove the point unequivocally; the majority {in some cases, all} brands / products are of foreign origin. There is an abyss and an absence of Indian Leading Brands.  Sure, we may have a bustling consumer market, for example – but the brands and the intellectual capital are from  outside India. Add to this the truly Indian concept of Jugaad, which is in reality a curse, leading to cutting corners; and the sorry habit of ours of making exceptions to each rule, as well as crony capitalism.

The book also does a bang-up fantastic job of anaylsing the business environment, looking at the issues of doing business in India, in its former inspector raj, its regulatory framework, the unfinished reforms and the land, labour and capital markets and the need to reform them – as well as the Infrastructure Scenario and crony capitalism, in addition to Education and its problems. But the most nuanced and thoroughly stunning part is the short and sharp deconstruction of the issues emanating from our handling of the Environment, and the costs it has imposed.   

The longest part of the book is the analysis of how do we grow from here, taking a look at the five bad steps and the 5 steps needed to grow. Here is where the first problem appears – as the section on Agriculture does not go to the full correct analysis. There are other issues, but not too many; even in Agriculture, it does identify some of the right issues – it just doesn’t go far enough in my opinion.  The panorama it touches in this segment is breathtakingly vast, spanning cities, GST, Taxation and the need to increase its base, Judicial reform and much more. Far too vast to summarise in a review.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, this  is a book that asks some hard and accurate questions, and successfully punctures any false impressions and balloons that might be residing in your mind about the Indian Economy, painting a picture that asks way too many questions. The author himself offers a way we can achieve this; social reform. Reform Ourselves. If that sounds strange, I invite you to read the book; it isn’t strange. It is, in fact, the only way for us to really  sort out our problems. If you look at the list of what is wrong above, you will note the presence of internal societal habits and factors standing side-by-side with Economic Factors. The proof of the pudding is in the simple fact of the state of Private Enterprise and the absence of Indian Brands as leaders in quality in any number of consumer or industrial markets…