Why does India lurch from economic crisis to economic crisis? There’s been one every decade since 1950. Why is a decade of high growth always followed by a decade of low growth? How does India’s economic management differ from China’s? What’s the mindset that has shaped policy since Independence? Are we doomed to bumble along?

These are some of the troubling questions that T.C.A. Ranganathan and T.C.A. Srinivasa Raghavan attempt to answer in this thoughtful book. Both experienced observers of the Indian economy and its constraints, they analyse the economy over the past seven decades to examine how successive governments have managed the Indian economy. They find that there has been a remarkable continuity in policy and strategy, mostly of the wrong sort!

In All the Wrong Turns, they investigate all major strands of the economic, political, constitutional and administrative system to delve deep into factors that have constrained the country’s development. The solutions they offer are implicit in their analysis.