Socialism and the Indian Constitution

The next book in the acclaimed, accessible series on the Indian Constitution’s central ideas, this is a concise, forceful argument tracing how the Constitution’s ‘socialist’ commitments collided with majoritarian politics, and what a credible path ‘towards socialism’ could look like today.
What does ‘socialist’ in the Indian Constitution really mean, and how far has policy moved the country towards—or away from—that promise? In this crisp volume, economist Prabhat Patnaik revisits the anti-colonial imagination of a democratic, secular, egalitarian order; examines the post-Independence dirigiste settlement (planning, public sector, bank nationalization); tracks the neoliberal turn and its consequences for employment, welfare, and popular sovereignty; and maps the political economy of our present. Arguing that equality of opportunity is impossible under persistent unemployment, inherited wealth, and privatized social goods, Patnaik sketches concrete prerequisites—universal high-quality public education and healthcare, curbs on inheritance, and a state oriented to social ownership—to move ‘towards socialism’.