The Price of Aid: The Economic Cold War in IndiaAuthor :
Paperback
Published : Friday 31 January 2020
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Paperback
31 Jan 2020
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Description
Looking back to the evolution of foreign aid during the Cold War, David C. Engerman invites us to recognize the strategic thinking at the heart of development assistance-along with the political costs. India's history provides an instructive model, as China spends freely in Africa and the political stakes of foreign aid start to rise again.
Debates over foreign aid are often strangely ahistorical. Economists argue about effectiveness-how to make aid work-while critics bemoan money wasted on corruption, ignoring the fundamentally political character of aid. The Price of Aid exposes the geopolitical calculus underpinning development assistance-and its costs. India stood at the center of American and Soviet aid competition throughout the Cold War, as both superpowers saw developmental aid as a way of pursuing their geopolitical goals by economic means. Drawing on recently declassified files from seven countries, David Engerman shows how Indian leaders used Cold War competition to win battles at home, eroding the Indian state in the process. As China spends freely in Africa, the political stakes of foreign aid are rising once again. A magnificent book. Anyone who seeks to understand contemporary India and its development struggles will have to start here. Engerman's work is not only enlightening, it turns much of what we thought we knew about India, foreign aid, and the Cold War in South Asia upside down. -O. A. Westad, author of The Cold War: A World History This is a superb, field-changing book. -Sunil Amrith, author of Unruly Waters
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