Third, unlike most economists who find it difficult to communicate with ordinary folks, Khanna’s tale flows easily. For a professor of economics, he has the instincts of a good reporter. This allows him to pick up and integrate rich details into his grand narrative and make the remarkable story of Asia’s rise more accessible and credible.

Khanna’s volume is divided into three parts: the first is about the different foundations of the political economy in China and India; the second explores enterprises that are shaping the current economic growth in the two nations; it ends with a speculation on how businesses in China and India might redefine the geopolitics of the world.
The book is aimed at western businessmen who want to know whether they can make money in China and India, and should be hugely successful in educating generations of Americans and Europeans who have had no reason, until recently, to pay attention to the two Asian giants.

Khanna’s thesis on the inevitable rise of China and India will ring familiar to the nationalists in the two countries. They might, however, turn rather profitably to Khanna’s volume to find some supporting evidence to what until now has been simply a matter of faith. One of the main arguments of Billions of Entrepreneurs is about the extraordinary prospect for cooperation between China and India. The idea that China and India will together transform the world has been articulated before, most notably by Tagore, Nehru and Deng. The dramatic expansion of Sino-Indian trade — which has risen from a billion dollars a year to nearly $38 billion in 2007 — seems to prove those convictions right. Khanna is right in suggesting that this is just the beginning of an expansive economic Sino-Indian engagement.

... contd.