"When George Bernard Shaw famously wrote that 'if all the economists in the world were laid end to end, they would never reach a conclusion,' he clearly didn't have Das' book in mind. Das weaves accessibly written history, thumbnail biographies of legendary Indian industrialists and entrepreneurs, his own experiences as a young executive building up the Vicks brand in the Indian heartland and accounts of Kafkaesque encounters with bureaucracy, into a book that traces 'the struggle of one-sixth of humanity for dignity and prosperity' and comes to pretty clear conclusions. Das is, in tempered and measured prose, scathing…Having constructed a comprehensive indictment of India's economic failures, Das is optimistic about the liberalization that has opened the economy in the 1990s. He sees India on the brink of a great transformation, fueled by the Internet that will rival Japan's after the Meiji Restoration…Das writes in an engaging style, sprinkling his text with a well-chosen array of quotations. There are layman-friendly discussions of economic theories of poverty, and his arguments are leavened with a close reading of economic texts, both classic and contemporary. But what shines through is the telling anecdote, the personal example, the remembered conversation."

- Shashi Tharoor, author, former undersecretary, United Nations. Extract of review of India Unbound, Los Angeles Times, March 22, 2001