India stands at a crossroads. With a population of 1.4 billion, the world’s fifth-largest economy, and a geopolitical moment that creates the potential for it to be a preferred destination for investment flowing away from China, the country has rarely faced such a confluence of opportunity and peril. A generation after liberalization transformed its economy, India is again confronting a turning point shaped by artificial intelligence, fractured globalization, climate risk, youth unemployment, rising inequality, and a changing world order. This ambitious collection offers an assessment of where India stands and what it must do next and examines India’s development journey from the early decades of planning and the commanding role of the state, through the liberalization of the 1990s, to the unresolved dilemmas of today’s lower-middle-income market economy.

Threading through contributions from leading economists, business leaders, and policy thinkers is a single pressing question: can India convert its demographic scale, technological capabilities, entrepreneurial energy, and geopolitical opening into a model of development that creates good jobs, expands human capabilities, strengthens institutions, and shares the gains of globalization and technology more widely?

Neither triumphalist nor despairing, The Indian Economy: Navigating a Global Turning Point delivers the rigorous, evidence-based analysis this pivotal moment demands. It is essential reading for students, scholars, policymakers, business leaders, and anyone who believes that understanding India’s economy is inseparable from understanding the future of the world.