Ronald Coase, a famous British economist once quoted Ely Devos, another British economist, “If economists wished to study the horse, they wouldn’t go to look at the horses. They’d sit in their studies and say to themselves, ‘What would I do if I were a horse?’” Coase further characterized mainstream economics as “blackboard economics” with hardly a relation to reality. In 1991, the US Commission on Graduate Education in Economics said that “the weakness of (graduate economics) is not an excessive use of mathematics.” The Commission added that “there is considerable scope for improvement in ensuring that students’ knowledge of economic problems and institutions enables them to use their tools and techniques on important problems.” There have been considerable changes and developments within mainstream economics over the years (game theory, experimental economics, and new institutional economics), but there was also an emphasis on connecting the economics curriculum to other social sciences to bring about a multidisciplinary as well as an interdisciplinary approach. Coase himself remarked that “economists do need the help of lawyers, political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists and other social scientists.” The idea is that an interdisciplinary approach will enable us to understand better how the economic system works.

Alex Thomas’ book “Macroeconomics An Introduction” (published by Cambridge University Press)is important in this context. Thomas mentions in the preface of his book that he, initially, did not intend to write a textbook as economics textbooks, for barring a few, they essentially the same. There is hardly any recognition of pluralism in theoretical approaches (pp. xv). The book promises to be an alternative approach to mainstream economics inspired by Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and Piero Sraffa and discusses both the neoclassical and the pluralistic approach within the context of macroeconomics. Using the classical political economy approach, the book attempts to understand economies and the dynamics of economic development. With a focus on methodological holism, classical political economy is both historical and political which is different from neoclassical economics, which focuses on methodological individualism and is ahistorical and apolitical.

The book is divided into nine chapters with the first chapter talking about what economics is and provides a brief history of economics. By quoting Abhay Xaxa’s powerful poem “I Am Not Your Data”, the chapter reminds the reader that studying economics is not just to understand our economic surroundings, but to make it better for all amidst all graphs and equations. The second chapter titled “Conceptualising the Macroeconomy” gives a preliminary introduction to national income accounting but ends with a cautionary note that economic policies must acknowledge and incorporate the wishes of the concerned communities in terms of their vision of economic progress. It is further pointed out that a simple translation of theory into policy is not possible and must be resisted (pp. 37). The third chapter “Money and Interest Rates” gives an overview of the Indian financial architecture and an introduction to both exogenous as well as endogenous theories of money, the latter of which is still largely missing in mainstream economics textbooks. The fourth chapter introduces the reader to theories of output and employment, both marginalist and Keynesian. The fifth chapter on economic growth gives an introduction to both supply-side as well as demand-led growth theories. The chapter also mentions the nature of economic growth in India by looking at its connections to historical inequalities. The sixth chapter starts by highlighting the significance of theorizing in economics. The next two chapters deal with the nature of unemployment and high inflation and their subsequent implications.

What makes Thomas’ book an interesting read is how “Indianized” it is. Studying economics at the undergraduate level, we were always taught to understand the importance of reading textbooks by “good” authors, most of which weren’t textbooks written by Indian authors. North American authors dominate our curriculum. Literature can broaden the reader’s imagination but can also make us appreciate the time and context of the piece. Thomas makes excellent use of this in the book with examples and references to Indian literature to explain caste, gender, farm work, sharecropping, etc. Economics textbooks by non-Indian authors include examples that might seem alien to an Indian reader. Moreover, almost all economic theories taught at an undergrad level have non-Indian origins. Thomas’ selection of Indian literature (including examples from SK Yusuf Baba to Shrilal Shukla) to explain economic theories is a very novel one. How do you explain to young readers that while economic growth itself is important, it is also equally important to ask who the growth benefit and at whose expanse? Thomas brings home this point by citing a reference from the short story Baso-jhi by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar in his book The Adivasi Will Not Dance (pp. 109). This is only one of the instances of how the book attempts to explain economic theories that originated elsewhere in the Indian context, taking help from Indian literature.

Thomas’ book is a great introduction to macroeconomics for beginners but can also be a useful book for anyone willing to critically look at economics, the discipline. The book has an extensive list of references and materials for further reading which can be helpful for anyone interested in doing economics. Economics as a discipline has been called out to have a race, gender, or a caste problem and also has a problem of under-representation of certain groups of people within the discipline. There is a call for a radical restructuring of teaching methods, practice, and epistemic approach to creating progressively inclusive institutional architecture of the economics profession. The book offers an alternative way of teaching economics and gives readers an idea of how certain groups of people can be affected by economic growth in different ways, which mainstream economics textbooks often do not. The book is inclusive in the way that it does talk about the problems of caste and gender, and paves the way for critical thinking and that human beings are not just “numbers”.

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Ritwika Patgiri is a doctoral student in the Faculty of Economics of the South Asian University (SAU), New Delhi.