Toward a Free Economy: Swatantra and Opposition Politics in Democratic India by Aditya Balasubramanian. Published in 2023 by Princeton University Press, 41, William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540, 99, Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6JX. Pp: 352. Price: $13.50, £ 11.40.
How did a Parsi, Minoo Masani, become the effective leader of the opposition in the Indian Parliament in 1967? And how did the party he helped helm, the Swatantra Party, carve out a space for neoliberal and libertarian ideas in an avowedly socialist India?
These are some of the questions Aditya Balasubramanian addresses in Toward a Free Economy, an account of the......