The Decade of Optimism: Development Economics and the Postcolonial Indian Novel

Abstract

This article argues that development economics, pioneered in the 1950s and early 1960s, provides a productive analytical framework for postcolonial scholars interested in understanding literary narratives of development in the moment of decolonisation. Focusing on the St Lucian economist and Nobel Prize winner W. Arthur Lewis and the Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, the article foregrounds the period’s optimistic belief in the benefits of economic development. Notwithstanding their different backgrounds and public roles, both Lewis and Nehru agreed that newly independent nations could achieve significant economic growth through rapid industrialisation and agricultural modernisation, thereby alleviating chronic poverty and inequality. Their writings offer postcolonial scholars a richly detailed picture of post-war economic thought and enable a historicised analysis of fictional narratives of development. The validity of this approach is illustrated by examining three Indian novels: This Time of Morning (1965) and Storm In Chandigarh (1969) by Nayantara Sahgal (1927- ) and Shadow from Ladakh (1967) by Bhabani Bhattacharya (1906-88). These novels interrogate the impact of Nehru’s economic policies on people’s daily lives, as well as the period’s intense interest in the ideas of development economics more generally.