A few years ago, I predicted that the time would come when a person’s wages and standard of living would no longer be determined by the country they live in, but instead would be a result of the education they have had. Today we start to see this vision becoming a reality in India. The challenge is to extend progress and opportunity to every section of society and every corner of the nation. If government, business and non-profits continue to work together to bridge the digital divide and enable India to realise its potential to become a creator of intellectual capital. I believe you will truly become a nation where everyone has the opportunity to achieve their potential.” – Bill Gates, Outlook, 21 August 2006.
Both the above quotes show that India definitely has potential to make it to the top, but this depends largely on the quality of education.
The 8% growth-rate has become a way of life for Indians… Reforms have pulled millions out of poverty and misery… If we can achieve a 10% growth-rate in the near future, most of the poverty will vanish… How do we plug in the leakage of 2%??? It’s the crumbling infrastructure and the rotten education system, stupid…
We need to start somewhere… the first step would be to throw away the age-old books. If mid-day meals can do the wonder in rural areas, good books too can do the trick in our schools and colleges! This will surely attract students to read more and to enjoy what they are reading.
Look at our economics textbooks, there is no humour, no pictures, no colour… all you can find is tons and tons of boring statistics and meaningless sentences… How do you expect students to even read them, leave apart learn from them… Well, if anything they can surely work as a remedy for insomnia!!!
Besides they do nothing to satisfy the increased curiosity towards economics throughout the country. A curiosity aroused by the second fastest growing economy in the world suddenly having to face rising inflation and a global slowdown. The Indian economy has been growing at very impressive rates of 7 – 8 % in the last 4 – 5 years. However suddenly it looks like the rising prices would spoil the party. Many people want to read, understand and learn economics. In the classroom too it is always treated as a dry subject dealing with abstract theories. Once we change our old textbooks and the teachers get used to new tools of learning such as Internet and Multimedia, economics can become very interesting.
For Beginners…
Microeconomics by Michael Parkin – Addison-Wesley www.econ100.com
Economics – A Complete Course by Dan Moynihan and Brian Titley – Oxford Edition
Undergraduate Level…
(Indian editions are available for all the books given below)
Principles of Economics by N. Gregory Mankiw – Thomson South-Western
Principles of Economics by Robert Frank & Ben Bernanke – McGraw Hill
Economics by Lipsey and Crystal – Oxford Edition
Also the books Microeconomics and Macroeconomics by the same authors (McGraw Hill)
Principles of economics Karl E. Case and Ray C. Fair – Prentice Hall
Moving ahead let us look us some books on economics for general reading…
Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner
(This book has being used as a text-book at leading universities like Berkeley and Purdue!!!)
Undercover Economist by Tim Harford
The World is Flat: A brief history of the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Friedman
Happy reading !
