Policymaker’s Journal: From New Delhi to Washington, D.C.

The art of political speech is to say things that sound meaningful but are impossible to pin down. You hear such speech from master politicians in not just India but the United States, the United Kingdom, China (if we knew what they were saying) and just about everywhere. Irreverent and hilarious, wise and introspective, Kaushik Basu’s journal records the course of his career over seven years, first in India as the chief economic adviser to the Indian Government and after that as the chief economist at the World Bank in Washington. Encounters with expected and unexpected world leaders and influencers—Manmohan Singh, Narendra Modi, Barack Obama, Sheikh Hasina, Deepika Padukone and many, many others—pepper and liven this charming page-turner of a journal.