Indian Economics straining into Indian Literature

This paper argues that Indian literature provides a powerful lens through which to understand economic structures, distributions of power, and lived experiences of labor, caste, and class. Indian literary texts—spanning its classical, colonial, and postcolonial traditions—do not merely illustrate poverty or prosperity; they interrogate economic processes, expose the hidden architectures of wealth and deprivation, and reveal the complex intersection of caste, gender, and capitalism. By reading literature as economic discourse, we gain nuanced insight into India’s socio-economic realities beyond statistics and policy narratives