Gurcharan Das, an author and public intellectual, blends the pragmatism of a CEO with the soul of a philosopher and the pen of a playwright. Best known for India Unbound and The Difficulty of Being Good, he weaves economics, ethics, and history with equal ease. In this insightful conversation, he traces India’s economic journey and advocates economic governance reform, rooted in dharma, a moral compass, for the country’s journey forward.
You’ve had a remarkable journey—from leading Procter & Gamble India and making Vicks a household name to contributing richly to economic and philosophical discourse. How would you summarise your economic philosophy?
I am a classical liberal. I believe in openness, mutual respect and concern for others. I am for maximum equal liberty, but I place liberty above equality. I am wary of power—be it state, military, religious, or economic. For a liberal democracy to thrive, it needs checks and balances and a strong rule of law. The government should not run businesses. It needs to regulate markets, but it should do so with a light touch. That said, I am not a libertarian: I am not for a minimal, night-watchman state. The government should be responsible for providing quality healthcare and education, but it doesn’t have to run hospitals or schools.
How do you trace the historical evolution of Indian enterprise?
I have recently edited for Penguin Random House a 15-volume business history of India, which begins with the Arthashastra. So it’s a subject fresh in my mind. Let’s start in Rome in 78 AD. Pliny the Elder rose in the Senate, urging senators to stop wearing their togas made of Indian cotton and stop their wives from cooking with Indian spices and using Indian luxuries. Why? One ship from Rome used to arrive in India daily and Indians did not buy anything from the foreigners. So, Rome was losing two-thirds of its bullion to India every year. Pliny called India the ‘sink’ of gold and silver.
For most of its history, India was a successful trading nation with a surplus. Angus Maddison estimates that India was a leader, holding a 25% share of global trade in the mid-18th century. Although India was rich, its people were poor. But common people were poor everywhere before the Industrial Revolution, except for the aristocracy.
How did the Industrial Revolution and colonial rule disrupt this story?
Britain discovered machines to make cloth more efficiently. This led to technological obsolescence. Handlooms suffered everywhere with the rise of mechanised mills. The thriving traditional American cotton industry also died due to the Industrial Revolution. So, don’t only blame colonial rule. India, however, suffered more because it had the largest share in the world market, and its status as a colony made it more vulnerable. Local weavers and artisans suffered terribly because they had no protection from cheaper competition from British textiles.
