In 1958 B.R. Shenoy wrote the only dissenting note against India's Second Five-Year Plan. He was one economist against a consensus, and he was right. We keep his mug on the shelf.
This is that argument seventy years later, made cheerful.
Akash Kumar and Kumar Anand open with questions rather than definitions. Virat Kohli earns four times what Rohit Sharma does — how is that justified if Kohli is not four times better? Congo, Nigeria and Venezuela sit on some of the world's largest reserves of oil, diamonds and cobalt, and are among the poorest countries on earth. Why does the government of India run hotels and sell condoms while five crore cases rot in the courts?
Zero jargon and almost no graphs. Every example is Indian, which is the point — a reader in Patna should not have to learn about the American corn subsidy to understand price floors.
Kumar grew up in Motihari, spent a school year in the United States on a State Department programme and came back unable to stop asking why some places stay poor while others get rich. He studied at IIT Madras and ran academic programmes for Students For Liberty across South Asia. He also, by his own account, spends his spare hours hunting for a good cup of specialty coffee, which is how he ended up on this particular shelf.
Hachette India, 2026. Buy it on Amazon India — it is published there and priced in rupees.
