Ashok Sanjay Guha - Economics Without Tears: A New Approach to an Old Discipline

Forty years ago, I was assigned the task of introducing economics to the students pursuing their masters in international relations at JNU. These students were some of the best and the brightest in the university, as their subsequent contributions towards the growth of the nation were to prove. However, they were primarily students of history, political science and sociology, with a sparse sprinkling of those pursuing literature and science. Hardly any had prior acquaintance with economics; and to a man (or woman), they were terrified of mathematics.

As someone trained in mainstream economics, with its mathematical rigour and uncompromising logical structure, I was thus confronted with two problems. First, how could I create and sustain in my students an enthusiasm for the subject I was supposed to teach? Could I somehow link it up with their primary interests, which were definitely not those of textbook economics? Second, how could I clarify the basic concepts of a discipline that had become increasingly mathematical without enmeshing them in mathematical methods and jargon that was sure to induce a state of uncomprehending somnolent boredom if not intellectual paralysis in my students?

This book provides an attempted solution, devised after many decades of interaction with students, to these twin problems.

In the process of working out my ideas, I made two important discoveries. First, while mathematics is a wonderful tool for explaining things to anyone whose mind works better with numbers and symbols than with words, it is by no means as indispensable to an understanding of economics as it is generally made out to be. Given an apt choice of words, the basic concepts of the discipline can be explained to the intelligent reader without any math whatsoever. This includes some, though not all, of the most advanced and contemporary ideas as well. Mathematics contributes chiefly in the generalization of results from two to many dimensions, but relatively few economic insights are gained in the process. Otherwise math adds more to esoteric quality than to intellectual clarity.

Second, economics is fun. It has serious implications, no doubt. But like all voyages of intellectual discovery, the process of learning economics is driven by a sense of wonder and amusement at the surprises, paradoxes and puzzles that confront us at every turn of the road and by the unsuspected answers that the journey provides to the questions that haunt us. If I succeed in communicating some of this to my readers, I will consider the writing of this book an enterprise that has been well worth its while.