India’s vast and complex economy can be most productively analyzed through a range of interdisciplinary methodologies. Roy and Swamy identify themselves as “economists, not legal scholars” (108). Yet, all the major topics about India’s post-independence economy examined in this thoughtful and informative volume are linked to the law codes inherited in 1947 from the British colonial government and then slowly adapted by India’s policymakers, judges, bureaucrats, and businesspeople during the subsequent seven decades (to June 2020). Although not titled as such, this is the second volume in a series; each thematic chapter begins where the co-authors’ highly regarded earlier volume, Law and the Economy in Colonial India (Chicago, 2016), concluded.The book comprises a succession of impressive analytical narratives about selected major aspects of India’s economy on the basis of three broadly defined phases: (1) “developmental socialism” from roughly 1950 to 1985 (11); (2) the strengthening of hitherto excluded sectors of the population through political democratization within a “protectionist” regime that sheltered domestic businesses against foreign competition, c. 1980s (138); and (3) liberalization and (partial) globalization from 1991/2 onward). Rather than highlighting their own primary research, the authors critically synthesize a wide range of significant scholarly, official, and journalistic studies and reports.During the period of British colonialism, agriculture emerged as the dominant sector within India’s economy (it still is, though not as much). Hence, the first two of Roy and Swamy’s chapters after the introduction concentrate on its important features—Chapter 2 about agricultural land rights and Chapter 3 about rural credit (including non-profit, self-help groups and for-profit, micro-credit corporations). In both cases, the authors conclude that long-established large landowners and village moneylenders gradually lost ground; that the lower, landless classes gained modestly; and that the middle-sized landholders gained the most. Chapter 4 emphasizes how each provincial government, as well as the center, pushed the conversion of small-scale agricultural holdings into more economically productive “modern” industrial sites, especially through imposing eminent domain (70).The authors also examine the more recent judicial and practical limits on such governmentally and commercially driven “structural change” (70). Chapter 5 parallels these developments for forested areas, when the Supreme Court became the primary protector (although often unsuccessful one in the face of powerful industrialists and mining companies) of forest-dwellers and the environment. Especially in the post-1991/2 phase, labor law (Chapter 6) and company law (Chapter 7) have shifted significantly, although unevenly, as growing industrialization began to favor urban-based entrepreneurs. At the same time, India’s expanding (but as yet incomplete) integration into the global economy raised new issues about international mergers and acquisitions and Indian national ownership of intellectual property (Chapter 8); again, the middle and rising business-owning classes gained the most.Finally, Chapter 9 sees Indian society remaining conflicted about whether to perpetuate the still-distinct religious legal codes (particularly Hindu versus Muslim), which also involved matters of gender and inheritance, or to impose a secular legal code that treats all citizens equally, regardless of their religious community. Roy and Swamy regularly test all these shifting laws and policies, as well as actual practices, against their consistent goal of unconstrained free “market mechanisms” that avoid “rent-seeking” and tend toward development and equity.While Roy and Swamy highlight politically generated policies, and occasionally mention a particularly influential policymaker, they choose not to discuss individual political parties. Hence, the periods of national electoral dominance of the Congress Party, before the rise of regionally based parties, and the post-2014 electoral supremacy of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party remain implicitly in the background of their economic-centered analyses. The authors also recognize that “the Indian economy will have to develop in spite of its legal system” while individuals and companies continue to work around official law and policies (14, emphasis in the original). Readers knowledgeable about the larger context of India’s post-independence history will find that Roy and Swamy provide many valuable scholarly and interdisciplinary insights into major developments within these selected areas of its economy.
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Oct 4, 2022
Rizqyansyah Fitramadhana 
Open Access
