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There had been times when a GDP growth of 3.5 or 4% per annum in India was thought to be remarkable. Nowadays, people feel miffed if the growth rate registers 7.5% rather than 8%. There had been times when inflation had been over 25% in a year (and the people have had to live with it). Presently, even a 10% inflation rate is popularly unacceptable. Gone are the times, when one had to wait for days to get a cement permit sanctioned for building construction or even to make an outstation call to a relative. Eco-Yatra: Traversing the Path of India's Economic Change for the Last Six Decades tells the story of how this change took place over the last 60 years or so, when in 1952 Jawaharlal Nehru presented the nation with the First Five Year Plan with an investment plan of just Rs 2,070 crore (in comparison, the Tenth Plan 2002-2007 had an outlay of Rs 1,484,131 crore). It sifts through hard economic data, while bringing out the broad trend lines, without losing sight that economic development also has an underlying human dimension. Thus, at one level, the book traces the changes that impacted the people at a human level; at another, it takes the reader past the major milestones on the road to economic change over the last 60 years; not in a bookish way, but as a chronicle of national and individual aspirations and achievements.

Eco-Yatra