On 9 August 2009, Kaushik Basu – then chairman of the Economics Department at Cornell University – got an unexpected phone call from Vini Mahajan, a joint secretary in the office of the Prime Minister of India. Quickly coming to the point, she informed Basu that Dr Manmohan Singh wanted him to become the chief economic adviser to the Government of India, a position that the prime minister himself had once served. As the professor was leaving for the USA the following evening, a meeting was hastily arranged at 7 Race Course Road the following afternoon while Basu was on way to the airport.
The conversations Kaushik Basu had with PM Manmohan Singh the following day changed the course of his career over the following seven years, first as India’s CEA and after three years, as ‘s Chief Economist. The day he began his new job in his grand office in the North Block, he began keeping a diary because he had decided beforehand to write a book on his experience as a policymaker. This book is a modified version of the author’s diary entries.
Basu’s impressions of his Delhi years ( 2009-2012) are as evocative as it can get. The stint as CEA was marked with high Inflation and its management, Growth challenges, exchange rate fluctuations as well as some remarkable growth recovery (with India moving past China’s GDP growth rate) and designing a pioneering food distribution system. There were Corruption scandals too during the period causing widespread street protests. Basu narrates these momentous events most candidly and in a manner making them readable by anyone, including someone like me having no background in economics.