Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India are Reshaping Their Futures, and Yours
Tarun Khanna
Viking, Rs 595

When the comparison of China and India has become a flourishing industry and the speculation on how a rising Asia might transform the world has become much too common, it is with some trepidation that one approaches Harvard Business School Professor Tarun Khanna’s volume. Yet, Billions of Entrepreneurs easily rises above most of the recent books on the over-worked theme of “the dragon and the elephant” for three important reasons.

The first is the author’s intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the Chinese and Indian economies. Nearly five years ago, Khanna and Yasheng Huang from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology triggered a huge controversy by challenging the conventional wisdom on the economic performance of China and India.

Looking beyond the aggregate growth figures and the flows of foreign direct investment, Khanna and Huang argued that many micro-economic indices pointed to India’s long-term advantages over China. Their emphasis on the Indian corporate sector’s capacity to better utilise capital and the larger political and financial environment in India that nurtures entrepreneurship are now part of conventional wisdom.

Second, Khanna combines the professional economist’s insights with a passion for the extraordinary transformation that is unfolding in China and India. Empathy for the two great civilisational states allows Khanna to boldly imagine their future global impact. Khanna’s economic story is enriched by the political context he brings to bear upon it.

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