The next day class start with the usual shuffle of feet and paper. Dr. Sen waited until the last student had settled before he spoke again, this time without the morning's theatrical flourish. His voice was quieter, almost conversational.
"So," he said, leaning against his desk, "we've established that India spent forty years teaching its entrepreneurs to be beggars. Now comes the harder question—what happens when you suddenly tell beggars they can be kings?"
He let the question hang in the air.
Ravi raised his hand tentatively. "Sir, you said after 1991 some companies ran fast. Infosys, Wipro. But weren't they already positioned to succeed? I mean, they were in software, which never had licensing restrictions anyway."
"Good," Dr. Sen said, his eyes lighting up. "You're thinking. Yes, the IT sector was India's beautiful accident. Nobody in Delhi understood computers well enough to regulate them. By the time they realized software could make money, Narayana Murthy and Azim Premji had already built empires. They succeeded precisely because the government ignored them."
He walked to the board and wrote a single word: *Selection*.
"Here's what happened after 1991. The economy opened, foreign competition arrived, and suddenly Indian companies had to actually compete. Some could. Most couldn't. The License Raj had created a peculiar kind of natural selection—it bred survivors, not winners. Survivors know how to endure. Winners know how to fight."
Priya interjected, "But sir, Reliance became huge after liberalization. They were from the old system."
"Exactly," Dr. Sen turned to face her. "And why do you think that was?"
She hesitated. "Because... they were good at business?"
"Partly. But think deeper. What advantage did Reliance have in 1991 that a new startup didn't?"
The class was silent for a moment. Then Soumyajit spoke up. "Connections? They already knew how the system worked."
Dr. Sen smiled. "Yes. They had something economists don't like to discuss openly—institutional memory. Reliance knew which doors to knock on, which officials mattered, how to structure deals so they were technically legal but strategically advantageous. When the rules changed, they didn't have to learn the game from scratch. They just adapted their playbook."
He pulled out another photograph, this one in color—Mukesh and Anil Ambani standing side by side at some corporate event, both smiling.
"The Ambani brothers," he said, placing it on the projector. "Their father, Dhirubhai, was perhaps the most brilliant student of License Raj India ever produced. He understood that in a system where everything needed approval, the real product wasn't polyester or petroleum—it was access. He built a company that was really a network, a web of relationships that touched every level of power."
Neha frowned. "That sounds like corruption, sir."
"Does it?" Dr. Sen's tone was genuinely curious, not defensive. "Here's the problem with that word. In a democracy, businesses are allowed to lobby, to petition, to advocate for policies that favor them. In America, they call it lobbying and hire lawyers. In India, we called it corruption and hired fixers. But is the outcome really so different?"
He paused, letting them wrestle with the discomfort.
"After 1991, Reliance didn't have to change much. The game shifted from getting licenses to getting contracts, from navigating restrictions to navigating opportunities. The infrastructure boom needed petroleum. Telecom expansion needed investment. Special Economic Zones needed developers. And at every turn, Reliance was there—not always because they were the best, but because they understood that in India, policy and profit were still intimate bedfellows."
Ravi looked troubled. "So liberalization didn't really change anything?"
"Oh, it changed everything," Dr. Sen said quickly. "But not the way the textbooks suggest. See, liberalization created two Indias. In one India—the India of IT parks and shopping malls, of Infosys campuses and startup incubators—capitalism worked almost like it was supposed to. Competition drove innovation. Merit mattered. A kid from a middle-class family could write code and become a millionaire."
He walked to the window, looking out at the university grounds.
"But in the other India—the India of mines and minerals, of land and licenses, of airports and highways—the old rules still applied. You needed permissions. You needed clearances. And most importantly, you needed friends in the right places. This India didn't become capitalist after 1991. It became something stranger—capitalist in vocabulary, feudal in practice."
A student in the back, Amit, raised his hand. "Sir, you're making it sound like Indian democracy failed."
"Did I?" Dr. Sen turned back to face the class. "Or am I saying that Indian democracy succeeded at something other than what we claim? Look, we hold elections. People vote. Governments change. All democratic, yes? But here's the thing—in the 1990s and 2000s, as companies grew bigger, they also grew more politically necessary. Not just economically necessary. Politically necessary."
He returned to the board and drew a simple diagram—a triangle with "Business" at one corner, "Politics" at another, and "Media" at the third.
"This," he said, tapping the triangle, "became the new structure. A company like Reliance or Tata or Adani wasn't just selling products. It was providing employment, generating tax revenue, building infrastructure that made governments look good. Which means politicians needed them as much as they needed politicians."
Priya spoke up again. "So businesses could influence policy?"
"Influence?" Dr. Sen smiled. "Beta, sometimes they could write it. The 2G spectrum allocation, the coal blocks distribution—these weren't just scandals about corruption. They were examples of a system where the line between public policy and private profit had become so blurred you couldn't tell where one ended and the other began."
He picked up a newspaper clipping from 2010, the headline reading: "India's Billionaire Boom—But at What Cost?"
"By 2008, India had more billionaires than ever before. Mukesh Ambani built a 27-story house in Mumbai while millions lived in slums nearby. The question isn't whether this was fair—fairness is philosophy. The question is whether this was democratic. Can you have a democracy where wealth concentrates so dramatically that entire sectors of the economy become the playground of three or four families?"
Soumyajit looked skeptical. "But sir, America has billionaires too. So does Europe."
"True," Dr. Sen acknowledged. "But there's a difference between wealth concentration that comes from building better products and wealth concentration that comes from capturing state resources. Jeff Bezos became rich by selling books online. Fair enough. But when an Indian industrialist becomes a billionaire by getting coal blocks allocated at below-market rates, or by getting environmental clearances that others don't, or by receiving loans that are never meant to be repaid—that's not the same game."
He let that sink in.
"Here's what the West called oligarchs when it happened in Russia—businessmen who became rich by capturing state assets during privatization, who maintained their wealth through political connections. Here's what China called Red Capitalism—a system where the Communist Party and big business worked hand-in-hand, where market economics operated within a framework of political control. And here's what we called it in India—liberalization."
The room had gone very quiet.
Neha asked softly, "So what were we supposed to do differently?"
Dr. Sen sat on the edge of his desk. "That's the right question, but it's harder than you think. See, India's problem was never just economics. It was trust. We didn't trust businessmen because we'd seen them collaborate with the British. We didn't trust markets because we'd seen famines and poverty. So we built a system of controls. Then we dismantled those controls without building the institutions that make markets work—strong courts, transparent regulations, genuinely independent regulators."
He stood up and began pacing again.
"Look at telecom. In the early 2000s, we auctioned spectrum. Good, right? Market-based allocation. But who decided the reserve price? Who decided the rules? Who decided which companies were qualified to bid? At every step, there was discretion. And where there's discretion without accountability, there's opportunity for the connected to profit."
Ravi interjected, "But sir, the Supreme Court canceled those licenses. The system corrected itself."
"After how many years?" Dr. Sen asked. "And at what cost? The telecom sector nearly collapsed. Banks lost billions. The government's reputation was shattered. Yes, the system eventually corrected—but that's like saying the patient survived even though the surgery was botched. Democracy isn't just about eventual accountability. It's about continuous legitimacy."
He returned to the board and wrote another phrase: *The Paradox of Indian Capitalism*.
"Here's the paradox," he said. "We have elections, but increasingly the funding for those elections comes from corporate donors. We have media, but increasingly that media is owned by business houses with interests to protect. We have regulators, but increasingly those regulators are former bureaucrats who will seek jobs in the industries they once supervised. We have democracy, but the space for genuine democratic choice keeps shrinking because all major parties need the same donors, rely on the same business networks, promise similar policies to the same corporate interests."
Amit looked genuinely disturbed. "Sir, that sounds hopeless."
Dr. Sen shook his head. "No, it's not hopeless. It's just incomplete. See, liberalization did create new opportunities. The IT sector proved that Indians could compete globally without government help. The startup ecosystem that emerged in the 2010s showed that young people could build businesses without waiting for inheritance or connections. These are real achievements."
He softened his tone.
"But we need to be honest about what didn't work. We need to ask why, thirty years after liberalization, Indian infrastructure is still mediocre. Why our public schools are failing while private coaching centers boom. Why our hospitals can't serve the poor while medical tourism serves the rich. These aren't failures of capitalism or socialism—they're failures of state capacity and political will."
Priya raised her hand again. "Sir, you mentioned China earlier. They grew faster than us. Should we have followed their model?"
Dr. Sen considered this carefully. "China made a bargain—economic freedom in exchange for political control. They built highways and ports at a speed we couldn't match because they didn't have to negotiate with landowners or consult with local communities or face media scrutiny. They just decided and did."
He paused.
"But what did they give up? The freedom to speak, to organize, to challenge the government. Is that a trade we should make? I would say no. Democracy is messy and slow and frustrating, but it's also the only system that treats citizens as ends in themselves, not as means to someone else's vision of national glory."
The afternoon sun had shifted, throwing long shadows across the lecture hall. Dr. Sen glanced at the clock.
"Let me end with this," he said. "The story of post-1991 India is not a story of villains and heroes. It's a story of choices made under constraints, of institutions that couldn't keep pace with change, of aspirations that outran capacity. We wanted to be a democracy and a superpower, to have welfare and efficiency, to protect the poor and reward the ambitious. These goals aren't necessarily contradictory, but they require something we haven't quite figured out—how to make the state capable without making it oppressive, how to make markets free without making them predatory, how to make democracy responsive without making it hostage to money."
He looked around the room.
"Your generation will have to figure this out. Not through ideology—we've had enough of that—but through experimentation, learning, adaptation. You'll need to build institutions that work in Indian conditions, not imported blueprints. You'll need to hold both business and government accountable, not pick sides. And most importantly, you'll need to remember that democracy isn't just about elections. It's about ensuring that ordinary people have a genuine say in the decisions that shape their lives."
The bell rang, but nobody moved immediately.
Dr. Sen smiled. "Next week, we'll talk about something lighter—the Emergency and how Indira Gandhi tried to kill democracy and almost succeeded. At least that story has a clear villain."
Laughter rippled through the hall as students began gathering their books. But the mood was different now—thoughtful, unsettled. Several students lingered, wanting to ask more questions, to argue, to understand.
Dr. Sen sat back down at his desk, pulling out his notes for the next lecture. As the last students filed out, Ravi paused at the door.
"Sir, one last question—do you think India will ever solve these problems?"
The professor looked up, his expression unreadable.
"Ask me in another thirty years," he said. "But I'll tell you this—the fact that you're asking means we might."