Home » Entertainment  » Books »  Das Capital(ism) All clouds have silver linings, even the fact of Indian Airlines being consistently late.

All clouds have silver linings, even the fact of Indian Airlines being consistently late. When you realise that a lot of Gurcharan Das' writing was done while waiting for these flights. Not to say that Das indulges in 'flights' of fancy! Das' book, 'India Unbound' is a work of non-fiction that he says is solidly grounded in fact. It is a personalised account of his experiences pre- and post-liberalisation.

India Unshackled

Since Das has been actively involved in industry in high level positions for a long time, his account is not that of an academician. Instead, it is a racy account with illustrative examples from his corporate career. The book first describes the corruption and inefficiency that pervaded during the Nehruvian era of 'license raj'. It goes on to praise the liberalisation and sweeping economic reforms that Prime Minister P.V Narasimha Rao, Finance Minister Manmohan Singh and the bureaucrats and economists of the time, launched. He enthuses about this process as the unshackling of India as an economic and industrial power. In antithesis to the opinion held by a majority of economists and social observers in India, Das says that the process of liberalisation will enable many people to rise in economic terms in the fastest possible manner. He adds that this will happen by the process of dismantling the 'poverty industry' comprising of politicians, academicians, the left, labour unions and the bureaucracy.

Alfred P.Knopf paid out the highest advance ever paid to a work non- fiction to 'India Unbound', a figure rumoured to be around the range of $250,000.

Needless to add 'India Unbound' is not Das' maiden literary effort. He has been a winner of the Sultan Padamsee award for his first play, 'Larins Saab'(1967). His novel, ' A Fine Family' is to be filmed as a serial by Shyam Benegal.

Gurcharan Das says that writing satisfies his contemplative side and that it prompted him to seek early retirement at the age of 50 in early 1994.

We will have to wait to see whether India has benefited from liberalisation. But for Gurcharan Das, there is no waiting period. The benefits of liberalisation have already started trickling in.