Sanjeev Sanyal - India in the Age of Ideas: Select Writings: 2006-2018

A Complex Adaptive System (CAS) is just thatit is complex, it is adaptive and it is a system. You cant quite model it and if you are going to analyse it, you have to be inter-disciplinary in approach. In plain language, a CAS is difficult to pin down and figure out. I am aware of a CAS-type lens being used to examine diverse phenomena. But all the ones I am aware of are inanimate entities. To the best of my knowledge, CAS approaches havent been used to vivisect animate creatures, such as human beings. A certain type of Bengali is fertile ground for CAS scrutiny. That kind of Bengali is increasingly rare, having been far more common in the nineteenth century. Though a dying breed, such a Bengali isnt completely extinct yet. Everything in the world provides intellectual stimuli to such a Bengali and you cant straitjacket the person, pin him down. Who, or why, or which, or what, is Sanjeev Sanyal? I have no idea. He is like the Akond of Swat.

He is Principal Economic Advisor in Ministry of Finance. Therefore, he shapes Indias economic policy formulation and writes columns on economic developments, for general and business papers. He has written extensively on urban affairs and urban planning (including for books I have edited). He has also occasionally written (I think it is occasional) on environmental matters. He has dabbled in financial markets. He has spent several years of his life in the well-organised and less chaotic environment of Singapore, where the streets are lined with trees, but no birds chirp from those trees (outside Jurong Bird Park). He has written excellent books (more than one) on Indias history and geography. More recently, he has also produced a collection of short stories. There is a reading interest for fiction (mentioned in an interview in this collection) straddling Ernest Hemingway and Amish Tripathi. Hence, Sanjeev is a member of that extinct tribe, the nineteenth century babu of Bengal renaissance vintage with an insatiable intellectual curiosity that cant be straitjacketed and hemmed in with labels. (The Bengali babu would have drawn a line at Taekwondo though, also mentioned in that interview.)

This is a collection of that Bengali babus articles and columns. As is only to be expected, the pieces are written well and form an eclectic mix of economics, history (in Sanjeevs writings, geography is woven into history), culture and urban issues. More specifically, they have been segregated under three heads of History & Culture, Urban Dynamics and Economics. Why does one write a column? There can be multiple responses to that question. I have a point of view and I want that to be communicated to the rest of the world, perhaps so as to influence policy (or defend it), or engage in a debate. With that motive, columns are often triggered by a news event. Once that event has passed into oblivion, the column is no longer topical and loses relevance. The utility of compiling and publishing such columns in book form is questionable, apart of course from the questionable motive of pandering to the ego. The loss of topicality is understandably a function of the time lag between the column and the book being published and I have read compilations where that time lag has been as much as three decades. Sanjeevs columns on economics, included in this volume, are responses to immediate events. Thankfully, the time lag isnt much and readers will form an understanding about how the Principal Economic Advisor views such matters. An insider view is being communicated outside. Personally, I found the articles under the Urban Dynamics head more absorbing. Yet another reason for writing a column is a desire to learn. Every column-writer, if the person takes the job seriously, spends time on research and thinking. Urban dynamics is an issue on which Sanjeev has thought, and written, for a long time. His thoughts have crystallised and there is originality in what he says. He has that USP. (On economics there will be four, though not forty, others who will say similar things.) Consequently, the CAS argument is much more convincing for this head. For History & Culture, where there is some repetition with his earlier books, I think Sanjeev Sanyal is still thinking, reflecting and pondering. The CAS idea is still a glimmer, in the distance. It will eventually crystallise, but in a subsequent book.

I suspect most readers dont know Sanjeev Sanyal also writes poetry. Unfortunately, there are no poems in this collection. Therefore,

I read this book with pleasure

The particulars are not the true measure.

Whether you beg, buy or steal,

This book is a good deal

There is much in it to treasure.

Bibek Debroy

24 October 2018