This book, the first of two volumes, explores India’s economic development from 5000BC through to the India’s independence period from 1947AD to 2022AD. The specific characteristics of economic development in India are examined to help determine development paths India can pursue to create sustainable development in the 21st century. The transition from the primary section to the secondary sector, through the process of industrialisation and in turn the move towards the services sector, is discussed in relation to climate change and the pressure on resources posed by population growth. This book aims to contextualise India’s economic development within the political economy of trade, sustainable development and culture with a particular focus on the institutions that have emerged in the Indian sub-continent since 5000BC. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in economic history, development economics, and the political economy.

‘This book is different from most other attempts to understand the politics of Indian economic development. Breaking down the last 65+ years of Indian development into several episodes of growth, it provides a rich set of insights into the political economy of the Indian development process and is a valuable addition to the literature.’ –Pranab Bardham, University of California, Berkeley, USA ‘Sustained economic growth in the world's largest democracy is critically important to human well-being, but the ups and downs of growth in India are not well-understood. This book provides a fresh and insightful approach to understanding what drives the starts of booms and the onset of slowdowns.’ –Lant Pritchett, Harvard University, USA ‘This is a little book with big arguments. The authors' explanation of the changing character of the deals done between political and business elites makes for the most original contribution to studies of the political economy of Indian development since Pranab Bardhan's seminal work of the early 1980s’ –John Harriss, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada This book moves beyond the usual economic analysis of the Indian growth story and provides a fresh perspective on the determinants of growth episodes in post-independence India, based on its political economy. Using a robust and novel technique, the authors identify four such episodes during this period. The first, running from the 1950s to 1992, was mostly characterized by economic stagnation, with a nascent recovery in the eighties. The second, covering the period 1993 to 2001, witnessed the first growth acceleration in the economy. A second acceleration ran from 2002 to 2010. The fourth and final episode started with the slowdown in 2010 and continues to this day. The book provides a theoretical framework that focuses on rent-structures, institutions and the polity, and demonstrates how changes in these can explain the four growth episodes. Kar and Sen argue that the transitions from one growth episode to another can be explained by the bi-directional relationship between growth outcomes and institutional arrangements, and by the manner in which institutional arrangements and their transitions are determined by the political bargains struck between the elite groups in Indian society.

This book examines the economic and political rise of China from the perspective of Japan’s economic development. Beginning with Japan’s rise to statehood in the Kamakura Period (1185 to 1333) and detailing the evolution of its economy through to 2018, parallels are drawn with the economic development of China. Many of the challenges Japan faced in the first decades of the 20th century, including nationalism, militarism, income disparities, social deprivation, and economic crisis are applicable to modern day China. China’s Economic Rise: Lessons from Japan’s Political Economy aims to detail the possible economic and political upheavals that could accompany the slowing of the Chinese economy from the experience of Japan. The book will be of interest to researchers and students in Political Economy, Economic History, Economic Transition, and Development Economics. The book supplements the other publications of the author: China’s Lessons for India: Volume 1 – The Political Economy of Development, China’s Lessons for India: Volume 2 – The Political Economy of Change and The Rise of Empires: The Political Economy of Innovation.

This book describes and evaluates how institutional innovation and technological innovation have impacted on humanity from pre-historical times to modern times, and how societies have been transformed in history. The author interrogates the relationship between innovation and civilisation -– particularly the dynamic whereby innovation leads to empire-building -– and explores innovation efforts that stimulated economic and social synergies from the Babylonian Empire in 1900 BC up to the British Empire in the twentieth century. The author uses historical cross-cultural case studies to establish the factors which have given competitive advantages to societies and empires. This book will be of interest to researchers and students in political economy, economic history, economic growth and innovation economics.