This is Sriram Balasubramanian’s second book. He is an economist based in the US. The first book was called, quite catchily, Kautilyanomics. It re-examined the ideas of Kautilya or Chanakya who was the eminence grise of Indian kings about 1,800 years ago.

This book, too, has a catchy title. It deals with the economic systems of those kings. Balasubramaniam says these arrangements were excellent and resulted in great prosperity.

But what sort of economic models and structures did they work with? After all it takes a lot of economic organisation to build enormous temples like the Brihadeeswarar in Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu or the Angkor Vat in Cambodia.

Collective groups

And where does dharma fit into economics? It means different things in different contexts. In the context of economics, says Balasubramanian, it is about the srenis. He says these were “collective groups that were engaged in commercial activities”. Or, loosely, guilds.

He then goes on to say that these srenis existed for “thousands of years and many inscriptions and incidents validate this” and talks, with admirable eloquence, about their governance structures. He goes on to provide the evidence.

He says that these srenis were entirely democratic and pre-dated the French Revolution by a very, very long time. The key to this democracy lay in the expression of free will by election. He also says that srenis operated independently of the State but took full advantage of its expansion.

On the natural question regarding these srenis if they were caste and jati groups, the author says they may well have been that but they were quite fluid. In support of this he mentions a sreni in what is now Karnataka that was started by Brahmins. “This shows that the Vaishya community alone did not participate in trade but that participation was far wider…”.

But one is entitled to ask if this constitutes conclusive proof because just a sentence or two earlier he says that this is a theory. He may well be right. But he could be wrong, too.

Just as an aside it’s appropriate to mention the seminal work of DD Kosambi on the subject of India’s ancient civilisations. He held the opposite view. He said that it was this precise system that divided north Indian society by occupations and that it was the rigidity in the movement between them that made India weak after the eighth century by limiting the scale of production and reach of trade.

Economic model

Be that as it may, it’s useful to go back to the idea behind the title of the book, that dharma somehow underpinned economic activity those days. He says the main argument of the book is that “there has been an economic model for the last 5,000 years based on the idea of Dharma and its related ecosystems”. 5,000 years? That’s rather a lot but we can read that as 2,000 and it would not change the argument.

And the argument is that there exists a model which shows that we can go beyond the usual understanding of the “market and state binary” to sustainable growth. One must say, however, that it is not a very convincing argument. It is at best a point of view and we can take it or leave it, depending on our predisposition and preference.

Author: Sriram Balasubramanian

Publisher: Bloomsbury

Pages: 266

Price: ₹609