Reviews for The Concise Oxford History of Indian Business

The average rating for The Concise Oxford History of Indian Business based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-04-21 00:00:00 Nicolas Van Tomme This is a gem of a book by an author (now deceased) who during his lifetime was the numero uno authority on the history of Indian business. While this book represents an abridged version of "The Oxford History of Indian Business" at two-thirds the length (and one-tenth the price), the content is nonetheless pretty extensive to digest. One learns of how Indians transitioned from commerce (i.e. pure trading and moneylending) to industry and services. The book covers the period from the beginning of the 18th century in the sunset period of Aurangzeb era to about 2005-06. In that sense one may find it a bit outdated, what with Sahara boss behind bars, Vijay Mallya absconding, rise of Gautam Adani, the e-commerce boom taking off, the telecom space consolidating and what not since that time. However, for somebody with deeper interest in how most of the storied and dominant Indian business groups and communities of today came to be, there cannot be a better source to learn from. One might recoil at how some of the big businessmen and traders actively colluded with the British and caused the downfall of their fellow countrymen but it has to be understood that it was purely a matter of commercial interests. There was no idea of India at the time and the region had a continuous history of foreigners conquering parts of what is today India. The Tatas made their initial money trading in opium among other things which was exported in shiploads to China from India by the British. They cannot have been unaware of the addictive effects of the drug on the Chinese population and yet nobody speaks about it today. There was no stigma attached to opium back then and for businessmen it was just another profitable commodity to trade in. Some of the biggest groups of today, especially the Birlas, actively got issued and hoarded licenses during the license-permit era with the intention of denying competitors the opportunity of breaking into their market. DCM and Escorts got the government to force Swaraj Paul to back off from hostile acquisition attempts. All such practices would be decried as blatant crony capitalism today but were treated as par for the course back then. Other authors such as Gita Piramal and Harish Damodaran and publishers such as Penguin India have added to the scholarship of Indian business history but the Concise Oxford History remains the text one should begin with for the others don't sweep as wide a canvas.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-12-05 00:00:00 John Cameron Interesting nuggets from this slim, informative, and highly readable volume: The Gujarati and Maharashtrian mercantile community's financial dealings with British trading interests in India in the early Eighteenth century, like making them guarantors for credit extended to ill managed regional kingdoms, played an instrumental role in creating the conditions for a political takeover. During Nehru's avowed socialist tenure more companies were floated in the chemicals, textiles, and steel industries than in his daughter Indira's. The infamous 'license permit raj,' notable for placing onerous restrictions on product category, capacity expansion and contraction decisions, and price setting by firms and the market mechanism, actually came to be during the reign of Indira Gandhi. Fewer firms were floated during her regime, and the worst bureaucratic excesses carried on under the banner of the planned economy attributed to Nehru are actually his daughter's policies in action.