The Making and Breaking of a War Economy: India, 1939-45
3600 Market Street, Suite 560 (5th floor)
University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104
About the Speaker:
Srinath Raghavan is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. He is the author of War and Peace in Modern India: A Strategic History of the Nehru Years (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh (Harvard University Press, 2013). Most recently, he has co-edited The Oxford Handbook on Indian Foreign Policy (Oxford University Press, 2015). His next book, India’s War: The Second World War and South Asia will be published by Basic Books in spring 2016. He is currently writing a history of American involvement in South Asia from the early twentieth century to the present.
About the Lecture:
This lecture examines the economic impact of the Second World War on India. It argues that the mobilization of the Indian economy for the war effort was shaped and limited by a set of inter-related and mutually reinforcing “supply side” constraints. Looking at the longer-term consequences of the war, it suggests that the economic and financial policies adopted during these years not only had an immediate and profound impact on Indian society, but also left a deep genetic imprint on the post-colonial Indian state and its approach to the management of the economy.