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The book is written with a view to fulfilling my childhood dream of realizing the prayer I had every morning: let all be happy, let all be healthy, let all see the right, let there be no conflict. To realize this dream in my motherland India and elsewhere in the world, I studied and practiced econometrics and then economics. These techniques were institutionalized in the powerful countries of the west and revered across the world. But I soon found them to be limited and dangerous. Although they spurred some achievements, I saw first-hand the havoc they also caused in Africa and the Soviet Union. Despite these problems, economic techniques remained entrenched. Western academia and international development agencies were more interested in securing power and marketing their economic prescriptions than in seeking truth. This insatiable search for control, even over nature, has caused deep misery to the whole world and is now bringing Earth to the brink of disaster. Economic prescriptions failed my dreams. So this book leans back to my childhood teachings of Hindu philosophy, which sees divinity inherent in mankind, and attempts to bring my two worlds together into one.
About the author
Dr. Agarwala holds M.A. in Economics from Calcutta Univ. & Ph.D. in Econometrics from Manchester Univ. After teaching economics and working on macroeconometric models of UK and Canada, joined World Bank in Washington D.C. and worked there for 25 years. Most recently, he served as a Distinguished Fellow in NITI Aayog of the Government of India.
