For all the brouhaha about reform and the avowed benefits of free-market policies in the 1990s, the quick-fix solution for underdevelopment continues to elude us. Through an incisive narrative of the misconceptions and misconstrued notions that have blinkered economic judgment for decades, Piya Mahtaney argues that the underpinnings of economic terrorism are embodied in the stark contrasts between unbridled affluence ensconced in minuscule enclaves and unrelenting endemic poverty. We may finally have arrived at the crux of contemporary economics which impinges not so much on evaluating the commercial profitability of globalisation as it does on examining two distinct possibilities that will decide the economic destiny for a long time to come.
Either 'globalism' can result in development or it cannot. If it can-although so far it hasn't-then its limitations have to be surmounted, and if its purview does not extend beyond tactical commercialism then the immense hype about it in recent years is meaningless. Is there a crisis of imagination or are there deeper issues at stake? In answering this crucial question, Mahtaney looks at the dilemmas and paradoxes that befuddle strategic thinking on the subject and in so doing reveals a sinister fact: there exists a crisis of implementation that is perpetrated by a medley of vested interests which deliberately flout the rulebook of sound economics to make decisions that benefit the superstructure and adversely impact the majority of us.