India Grows at Night: A Liberal Case for a Strong State. By Gurcharan Das. Penguin Global; 320 pages; $25. To be published in Britain in January by Allen Lane; £19.99. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

THE hoary old question for China is whether, as it gets richer and more capitalist, liberal democracy will inevitably follow. In India it is the obverse: after 65 years of liberal democracy, is a richer, more capitalist economy now bound to emerge? Gurcharan Das, once chief executive of Procter & Gamble in India and now a columnist and author, argues that it must, but it will need a political movement to drive it on. His country's progress is stalling after two decades of rapid change. India desperately needs a fiercer push for liberal capitalism. Mr Das calls his new book "India Grows at Night", a clarion call for such ideas. He wants a pro-market political party to be founded (like the Swatantra centre-right movement of the 1960s—see article) and for the dysfunctional, "flailing" state to be shrunk and improved. The author is likely to be ignored, even if his case is broadly convincing.

India enjoys a rich liberal heritage. For every story about feudalism, caste repression and the ongoing backwardness of a largely rural country, Mr Das counters with optimism about a bright, fast-rising, urban middle class. Indian society, he says, is by nature strong, free and tolerant. Its best leaders have promoted liberal thought in various guises, ever since Emperor Ashoka pushed acceptance of different religions more than 2,000 years ago. Rule by kings was usually tempered by respect for the learning of Brahmins. British colonial masters, for all their ills, left behind liberal institutions, such as courts and a nascent electoral system. And some of the nawabs and maharajahs were progressives, notably the 19th-century rulers of Travancore (now Kerala) who promoted public education, including for girls.

All that led up to a modern constitution, drafted by a brilliant Dalit leader, B.R. Ambedkar, that ensures Indians have many of the same freedoms that exist in the West. Power may ebb and flow—Mr Das is keen that much more decision-making gets quickly devolved to the lowest possible levels, to states or even villages—but no one seriously expects India to fracture.

Yet despite having built all that, India's rulers, and many voters, are still far from convinced by full-fledged liberal ideas, least of all free-market ones. The ruling Congress party is secular-minded but has slowly, at times stealthily (and often only under immense pressure) pushed liberal economic reforms. Political leaders, most obviously the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty that dominates Congress, are keener on making populist promises and building a bigger welfare state. Mr Das offers a sharp anecdote on this, recalling how a Chinese friend, a high-ranking Communist-Party figure, was horrified by an official Indian scheme that guarantees 100 days of annual paid work to rural families. He warned it would bankrupt India's government and produce neither useful jobs nor decent infrastructure. Private, productive jobs, he insisted, could instead rise on the back of good roads. Yet Indian politicians pushed on and today plan more welfare; they remain far more suspicious than China's rulers of the idea that capitalism is the best way to tackle poverty and hunger.

Mr Das insists that liberal ideas offer the clearest answer to many of India's woes. Corruption, for example, will not be beaten with a big, new authoritarian bureaucracy, as anti-graft protesters want. Instead discretionary powers must be wrested from dodgy bureaucrats and politicians, the state made smaller, and markets allowed, openly and freely, to allocate resources. That means making the state more efficient. Every Indian factory-owner must, Mr Das writes, on average, confront 17 different inspectors, each with the power to close his business. (In other words, they must be bribed.) His solutions to the slowdown in economic growth would include making it easier for companies to hire and fire and to make the buying and selling of land more transparent.

Mr Das's celebration of liberalism is admirable. But he is surely misty-eyed when he asserts that ordinary Indians are ready to embrace it. By his over-optimistic reckoning there are almost 300m people in the middle class, a figure which will rise above 650m a decade from now. (Most estimates put the current figure at 160m.) Such voters, he says, might propel an Indian equivalent to Ronald Reagan or Margaret Thatcher into office. That looks naive. Even among the urban middle class who bother to vote, politicians' promises of welfare and subsidies remain popular. They dish out free televisions or laptops to voters because that is what the middle classes want. Local populists notch up ever more support.

The book raises some excellent questions. But what is missing, perhaps surprisingly given Mr Das's connections, is a real insider's account of why the sort of ideas he is promoting so often fail to get implemented. Relatively few Indians claim to be avowed classic liberals, yet a clutch of powerful people, including the current prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and others in cabinet, would agree with much of Mr Das's argument.

Weak political leadership may be the reason why more has not been done. Or perhaps it is the fault of the wealthy figures inside the ruling Congress movement (and other parties), who rely on a bloated state and graft to keep political and private funds flowing. Mr Das hints now and then that self-serving bureaucrats are far more powerful political actors than is widely assumed. A more liberal, open India may eventually come, but not before a brighter light is shone into its murkier corners.

Source: http://www.economist.com/news/books-and-arts/21565916-india-open-tolerant-country-so-why-does-liberalism-not-flourish-there-liberal