Abstract: This article argues that development economics, pioneered in the 1950s and early 1960s, provides a productive analytical framework for postcolonial scholars interested in understanding literary narratives of development in the moment of decolonisation. The article focuses on the work of Saint Lucian economist and Nobel Prize winner W. Arthur Lewis and former Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru to explore the period's optimistic belief in the benefits of economic development. Despite their different backgrounds and public roles, both Lewis and Nehru agreed that newly independent nations could achieve significant economic growth and alleviate chronic poverty and inequality through rapid industrialisation and agricultural modernisation. Their writings offer postcolonial scholars a richly detailed picture of post-war economic thought and enable a historicised analysis of fictional narratives of development. This article undertakes such an analysis by examining three Indian novels: Nayantara Sahgal's This Time of Morning (1965) and Storm In Chandigarh (1969) and Bhabani Bhattacharya's Shadow from Ladakh (1967). These novels interrogate the impact of Nehru's economic policies on people's daily lives, as well as the period's intense interest in development economics more generally.
Anne Wetherilt (Thu,) studied this question.
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