Overview

An incisive account of the moral beliefs that have guided foreign investment policy in India since the late colonial period, with an eye toward their implications for the twenty-first-century global economy. Is foreign capital an agent of economic growth in developing countries or a vehicle of extraction? Examining how Indian elites wrestled with this question in the late colonial and postcolonial periods, Jason Jackson argues that it reflects a false binary. Instead of simply choosing between domestic and foreign capital, Indian policymakers have long considered the business ethics of individual firms. Indian economic nationalism, in other words, has never been characterized by a straightforward preference for domestic over foreign capital. Jackson demonstrates that Indian policymakers have sought to favor firms that they believe are most likely to advance industrial development and societal progress at home. In particular, official policy and discourse have sought to confer a kind of moral legitimacy on businesses that invest their profits in local professional development and technological innovation-practices deemed synonymous with economic modernization. Meanwhile, firms seen as simply trading rather than producing, or as engaging in financial speculation and other allegedly regressive activities, have been viewed unfavorably. Jackson argues that these moral categories of capitalist legitimacy have shaped policymaking from the demise of the East India Company and rise of a new class of Indian industrialists in the late nineteenth century; to clashes between companies including Coca-Cola, Thums Up, Hero, and Honda in the twentieth; to more recent efforts to centralize political power through controversial market-governance projects. An incisive look at the contested terms of capitalist self-interest and business ethics, Traders, Speculators, and Captains of Industry sheds new light on debates over investment policy and state-market relations in a global economy.

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9780674293762

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Reviews

A masterful and absolutely unique analysis of how foreign investment policies in India have been powerfully shaped by economic ideas and moral beliefs. On one level, Jackson clearly traces how changing interpretations of 'legitimate' capitalist activity underwrote different policy paradigms. On another level, he uses the Indian case to generate new insights into classic developmental debates about how to morally evaluate economic behavior.--Patrick Heller, author of The Labor of Development This persuasively argued and conceptually innovative work will significantly reshape how scholars across disciplines understand the political economy of modern India. With theoretical sophistication and clarity, Jackson successfully explains the puzzle of the Indian state's changing attitudes to both foreign and domestic capital in a way that is sure to have wide applicability.--Mircea Raianu, author of Tata A revelatory examination of investment policy in India, shedding new light on how beliefs about morality inform a range of financial behaviors and influence the flow of capital. Jason Jackson has produced a superb work of social science, weaving together finance, political economy, sociology, and history with contemporary reporting. A reminder of how meanings make our markets.--Frederick F. Wherry, coauthor of Credit Where It's Due Erudite and original. Jason Jackson argues that economic policymaking in India is influenced by a moral economy favoring 'modern' capitalists--those seen as likely to grow industries and develop opportunities at home. This is a must-read for both students of Indian political economy and those interested in how ideas shape economic policymaking more broadly.--Atul Kohli, coauthor of Democracy and Inequality in India

A masterful and absolutely unique analysis of how foreign investment policies in India have been powerfully shaped by economic ideas and moral beliefs. On one level, Jackson clearly traces how changing interpretations of 'legitimate' capitalist activity underwrote different policy paradigms. On another level, however, he uses the Indian case to develop new insights into classic developmental debates about how to morally evaluate economic behavior.--Patrick Heller, author of The Labor of Development A revelatory examination of investment policy in India, shedding new light on how beliefs about morality inform a range of financial behaviors and influence the flow of capital. Jason Jackson has produced a superb work of social science, weaving together finance, political economy, sociology, and history with contemporary reporting. A reminder of how meanings make our markets.--Frederick F. Wherry, coauthor of Credit Where It's Due Erudite and original. Jason Jackson argues that economic policymaking in India is influenced by a moral economy favoring 'modern' capitalists--those seen as likely to grow industries and develop opportunities at home. This is a must-read for both students of Indian political economy and those interested in how ideas shape economic policymaking more broadly.--Atul Kohli, coauthor of Democracy and Inequality in India

Author Information

Jason Jackson is Associate Professor of Political Economy and Director of the Political Economy Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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