Ben Waber reviewed Breaking the Mold by Raghuram G. Rajan
An Insightful but Uneven Proposal
4 stars
This is a well-researched proposal for reshaping Indian development in the coming decades, with Rajan and Lamba laying out the case for why India should break with previous approaches for becoming a high income economy, combining an emphasis on services along with more economic openness. This is backed up with a good amount of research, although the large number of non-academic citations don't always inspire confidence. This proposal is at its best when it's focusing on issues that economists' methods are best suited for - namely trade, work, and long term predictors of positive outcomes. It mostly falls flat in advocating for some techno-solutionist approaches to health and education, and the less said about the sections on primary and secondary education the better. That being said, I'm not the primary audience for this book, and the vast majority of the proposals here deserve to be taken seriously. Highly recommend
This is a well-researched proposal for reshaping Indian development in the coming decades, with Rajan and Lamba laying out the case for why India should break with previous approaches for becoming a high income economy, combining an emphasis on services along with more economic openness. This is backed up with a good amount of research, although the large number of non-academic citations don't always inspire confidence. This proposal is at its best when it's focusing on issues that economists' methods are best suited for - namely trade, work, and long term predictors of positive outcomes. It mostly falls flat in advocating for some techno-solutionist approaches to health and education, and the less said about the sections on primary and secondary education the better. That being said, I'm not the primary audience for this book, and the vast majority of the proposals here deserve to be taken seriously. Highly recommend