2 - The Beginnings of Indian Economics

Summary

In the 1870s, a generation of economists was born amid a troubling reality in India. The country faced many crises around this time – suffering some of the worst famines in its history, having an imperial administration that struggled to balance its budget, and the crumbling of its textile industry, to name but a few. Indian Economics, argued its founder, Mahadev Govind Ranade, in 1892, would create economic knowledge that explained India’s distinct problems and would find appropriate solutions. The first generation of modern Indian economists had been convinced that India was different. But they used their difference for other ends. By contrast, they intended to prove India’s difference in such a way as to render its economy, institutions and people visible. From the 1870s there had been an increase in the number of Indians studying and informing their imperial rulers about conditions in the country. This first generation of modern Indian economists started to study their economy from new perspectives. Ranade’s and Ganapathy Dikshitar Subramania Iyer’s founding texts of Indian Economics bundled the studies that started to come in the 1870s with a common goal of progress and placed future studies under the intellectual umbrella of Indian Economics.