In the 1970s, everyday discussions about the Indian economy would presume a few things as given: the state should manage and lead economic change, industrialization was the ultimate end of policy, capital and labor were class enemies, labor needed protection, and openness posed risks. People shared these beliefs across ideological divides. There were critics who rejected one or more of these beliefs, but they were exceptions. These ideas neatly connected the past, the present, and the future. British colonial rule with its small state, open economy, and unbridled capitalism, the theory of the past said, had damaged and deindustrialized the Indian economy. The rule for the future was the balanced pursuit of industrialization and social justice. The state would do the balancing as a regulator and a participant in the process.

Thirty years on, an economic miracle has undermined all of these fundamentals. The recent economic growth has taken place despite the state's failure to deliver industrialization. Many types of state industrial enterprises were in ruins in the 1990s. India is not significantly more industrial now than it was in 1960. Instead, the service sector has taken off and led economic growth. Small firms dominate the services. Globalization, and with it a faith in cosmopolitanism, is back. Inside the more successful global firms, the workers possess capital—knowledge capital. Rather than using technology developed by others, workers in information services mold and create the technology that others use. Class difference and older notions of inequality are, if not gone, certainly weaker than before. Some of the same entrepreneurs advise the state, leading to a broad convergence in the language of practical economics, again across ideological divides.

Toward what new idea is this language converging? Chasing Innovation answers that question. Gathering information from fieldwork, interviews, and participation, the author identifies a set of motifs in everyday discourses on India's ongoing transformation and gathers these motifs under the heading “entrepreneurial citizenship.” Citizenship connotes rights, responsibilities, equality, and the sense of a shared future. Entrepreneurship connotes innovation that ends up making money and, more broadly, a propensity to engage in innovation. Lilly Irani observes that Indian entrepreneurs, or at least those with whom she conversed, make sense of their role in Indian development with reference to citizenship. She calls this an “ethos” (p. 14). The book explores where the ethos comes from, what it contains, and why it exists.

The ethos says that innovation or creativity and not money shapes the future and that “society must invest in innovators” (p. 14). It is an inclusive ideal in several senses. Narratives of entrepreneurship stress creativity in the workplace more than farsighted investment. Creativity involves working with others and entails empathy in the workplace. The ethos accepts difference between people instead of insisting that all must fall in line with an ideology. The kind of ingenuity and improvised solutions that the word jugaad made mainstream involves seeing innovation in a variety of everyday practices in agriculture, in artisanal pursuits, and in small businesses, as much as in the technology hubs.

Entrepreneurial citizenship is inclusive also because it sees entrepreneurship as a tool for nation-building. “The promise of entrepreneurship . . . is not only that one makes one's own future but that one can generate progressive futures for others” (p. 7, emphasis in original). This is not a new idea. The Indian nationalist leader M. K. Gandhi urged his industrialist followers to practice trusteeship, meaning that the wealthy should spend their wealth on welfare. But “whereas the Gandhian trustee treated the poor as objects of responsibility, the entrepreneurial citizen treated them as opportunities—markets in the making” (p. 51). This vision is inclusive in yet a third sense. It is cosmopolitan as well as nationalist. The ideal citizen is a globally connected nationalist.

The history of the making of entrepreneurial citizenship is interesting. Although it made a massive investment of time, money, and intellectual energy in central planning, the government of India did not plan almost any part of the ongoing miracle. No economist in 1980 had an inkling that India would become a successful exporter of highly skilled services thirty years on. The state did not take entrepreneurs as seriously as it took its own capacity to innovate. Advocates of globalization at that time pointed at the weaknesses of the economy, not its strengths, in making a case for openness. Therefore, when the promise of a miracle began (in the 1980s with a surge in textile exports), it was a humbling experience for the state. As Irani points out, “The central government began quietly looking to entrepreneurship as an engine of development in the 1980s” (p. 30). There began a conversation between politicians and entrepreneurs that had no precedence in postcolonial India. The significance of entrepreneurial citizenship as an agent in India's ongoing change rests here. It is not just an idea but an idea with political effect.

Irani has asked a great question about contemporary India: What set of beliefs motivates those who are making India's development? Those interested in the more global and counterpart question—How is modern capitalism changing the idea of capitalism?—will find this book useful and interesting. Critics will be unsure of the scope of the book. In India, many economists believe that overregulation of industrial jobs has depressed employment growth, whereas lack of regulation in the service sector has led to a proliferation of low-paid, insecure, and brutally exploitative jobs in semiskilled lines of work. Against this gloomy backdrop, entrepreneurial citizenship may look like an elitist ideal removed from reality. I do not share that anticipated criticism. Irani's question remains a relevant and interesting one.

Although most of the book is readable, parts of it are jargon heavy, dense, and written in an unfriendly style that North American writers of books in the humanities have embraced. This is a pity, for the argument of the book is both original and insightful.