Why does India find it impossible to relate with avant-garde economic doctrines and only revels in handed down pulp? The near miss to Oliver Williamson's Nobel is an illustration. It is interesting that when Joseph Stiglitz in his last book talked of counterfactuals that succeeded, and the theories that go with them, he discussed Poland and China, while in the early '90s the references were also to India.

India's transition to a market economy in the late '80s and early '90s was commented upon in the writings of gurus like Wade, Taylor and the literature on strategic policy models like in Stopford's Carnegie Mellon paper. In the second half of the '90s and the early part of this decade, Indian economists are well represented in global journals, but there was no perspective on India's experience from an analytical point of view. This is definitely unfortunate from a knowledge point of view, since knowledge is a source of growth and has practical consequences also.

The world seems again to be at another interesting turning point. Just like at the beginning of the decade of the '90s before Rio, there seems to be an air of questioning. The East Asian meltdown, the 2008 perfect storm, the new millennium and with other developments, there is an atmosphere of expectation from ideas. In 2009, Stiglitz and George Akerlof now talk of 'Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom'.

They argue, "Just as the crisis has reinvigorated thinking about the need for regulation, so it has given new impetus to the exploration of alternative strands of thought that would provide better insights into how our complex economic system functions." I once asked my then boss the late Sukhomoy Chakravarti why his monetary economics was so conservative, while his economics was radical. His eyebrows furrowed when he was under pressure. He told me that those who didn't do their sums right were never to really help the poor or design growth. Economics at one level is about power, but at another is about understanding. For example, I may disagree with Shankar Acharya on his values, but admire his insights. Edmund Phelps, also ignored in India, was right there at the point Chakravarti was focusing on in the early '80s and richly deserved his Nobel. His work on institutions which must work if non inflationary growth is to be achieved was classic.

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