What The Economy Needs Now by Abhijit V. Banerjee

What The Economy Needs Now Reviews

• 
  A Man Called Ove

  What was the target audience for this book ? People who are actually a part of policy-making will find this 100-page book superficial with most articles at hardly 2-3 pages doing a hit-and-run on issues that require depth. For readers like me who are interested in current-affairs, again more depth was expected as this was not the first book on the subject that I have read and I have also read much better over the years.
  And ironically, I doubt if casual readers which publisher Juggernaut seems to target will be able to wade through the sea of jargon. I picked up this book as I was attracted by the names - Abhijit Banerjee who wrote the superb
  Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, Raghuram Rajan our ex-governor of RBI and Mihir Sharma who is a loony on twitter but wrote the sensible
  Restart: The Last Chance for the Indian Economy
  Some chapters were truly good and learnt a few new things here and there. But, mostly the book described problems. A lot of books will tell you the problems with India's economy - the devil is in the details and finding solutions that truly work. Avoid !
• 
  Siddharth Gupta

  Had this been a book by any other set of authors, I would have rated this book higher. But, being a book containing notes and writings from some of the best India-associated economists, I had high expectations from the book, which it delivered, only marginally.
  
  For starters, the book does an excellent job of summarising and succinctly doing what its title claims i.e. tell one what the economy needs. However, the brevity of the book is its key problem. The book takes on major issues such as environmental change, land acquisition reforms, financial sector reforms etc, and wraps up the solution in bullet points, ironically doing exactly what it largely criticises the government for - being broad based in policy declaration and ignoring the specifics.
  
  Overall, I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to get up to speed on where India stands vis-a-vis its economic problems, and a special shout out to Karthik Murlidharan's outlier essay on reforming the Indian education system, which is truly a wholesome recommendatory piece backed by ample evidence, quite unlike the generic nature of the other chapters.
  
  The book can be bought here
  (Amazon)
  
  Read more book reviews by me at my blog
  www.thestandingcoin.com
• 
  Monisha

  Good short read. Gives a glimpse of all major growth/ non-growth sectors that play a primary role in India's economy, the problems they're riddled with and what should be the future course of action to make them robust so that they can contribute to the strengthening of our economic trajectory that seems to be struggling in being on the right track. Some knowledge of basics like fiscal deficit, balance of payments, current account deficits helps understand the crises better.
• 
  Shivangi Chouhan

  Contains short chapters concerning different topics related to economy and governance. Chapter on fixing school is interesting. However, the book lacks the indepth knowledge of what looks like brainstorming ideas. With such promising writers, the book is sub-par. I'm not sure what the audience target is for this book. Overall a light read.
• 
  Srijan Raj

  While it is true that this book only contains short notes on the issues but, I can't deny the preciseness of the content. This book is in my opinion is successful as it initiate your thinking and grabs your attention that too with solutions.
• 
  Bhaskar kumar

  Surface level recommendations that would be made available by a little googling. Belies expectations as some of the biggest names have contributed to the book.
• 
  Ietrio

  Apparently the Economy sends a clear message through its shamans: love your leaders, give us more money.
• 
  Sangam Agarwal

  must read for Indian investor if you wants to protect your money
• 
  Bharat

  Good writeups on policy changes needed to aid India's economy
• 
  Manavdeep Singh

  A lot of generic things, with less focus on how solutions can be implemented.
• 
  Anjali

  This book explores the major problem that India faces today. It breaks down the complex problems into simpler smaller subparts and tries to address each of them individually. Most of the solutions related to health and education are implementable at the very grassroots levels.
  To ease up the reading process every chapter starts with bullet points of the smaller questions. It then discusses the problems, causes and the solutions with help of relevant supporting arguments and data. Finally, it concludes the chapter by summarizing the solutions discussed in bullet forms.
  Though not very comprehensive, it is easy to understand for the beginners who want to understand the Indian economy and the pressing problems in it.
• 
  Robin

  This is how western trained/influenced Indian intellectuals seem to think & talk to each other in India. If only the economy were more liberalised & the toiling poor could be screwed further, the minimal environmental regulations loosened further, existing almost non existent social protections eroded further, the Indian economy would be right back on track.
  If the poor majority in India dislike the proposals, well ..who cares about them.
  Almost shit.