Randian India?

No, I think that it'd be dreadful. There really must be a better source to introduce and promote a more sensible, credible form of 'libertarianism'.

When I was at college I knew many Indian grad students who were passionate Rand devotees. They mentioned she was very popular back home.

That number is somewhat silly. Here's why-- a lot of the books that are actually sold in India are cheap copies--fake, if you will-- that are essentially photocopied of the Penguin edition.

Besides, Ayn Rand's popularity in India is old. You'll remember that India was a socialist country until a decade or so ago, and individuals looking to escape the tyranny of the socialist governments often took refuge in the ideas of Rand and Hayek. Of course, I'm talking about the middle-class literate populace.

Finally, the Indian family structure-- many families per dwelling-- means that each book sold is potentially read by more people than when you compare it against countries where there are, on average, between two and four adults per household.

But that you have finally noted our deep free market thinking makes this Indian very pleased.

Um... not particularly.

Last time I checked, India's communist party had 10 million members.

India's politics are pretty much the definition of corruption and special interests.

A Randian India is a myth.

To talk of Rand's popularity in India as a whole is absurd. I'm not claiming a Randian India, and Goel's statement of corruption and special interestization is irrelevant here.

India's communist party received only 7% of the total votes cast in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections. That is about 27 million votes, but that's not the populace I'm talking about. Consider literate middle-income Indians who have been to college or university, and you'll find that a substantial number have read work by Ayn Rand or heard about her ideas.

Rand has enjoyed a captive audience in India for a very long time, and my claim is simply that those numbers in the FP severely underestimate the size of that audience.

Now you may want to test the validity of my claim by conducting an experiment as to how many college graduates have read of Rand.

I don't mind her policy conclusions, but her philosophy is fairly insane. Not sure if this is a good thing or not frankly.

Indians love the melodramatic predictable works produced by Bollywood. Makes sense they'd like Ayn Rand's fiction too.

The western philosophy text I saw most often for sale in India was Mein Kampf.

Makes you think.

A bit of everything.

Ayn Rand is a romantic. We Indians love that bit. Happy Endings are a must, both fountainhead and atlas shrugged had them.

Also, India being relatively poor, has a disproportionate number of people in higher studies that involve actual results. A lot if us would love to do arts/ humanities if there were jobs in those fields. There are very few, hence a majority of middle class Indians, irrespective of what their personal interests are, go into engineering/accountancy. A huge number of people would have gone into medicine as well, but the regulatory regime didn't liberalise enough for that.

Humans love to read about "people like us" as heroes. You can literally count on your fingers the number of popular authors who have engineers as heroes. AFAIK Ayn Rand, Arthur Hailey, Eric Segal(doctors), etc. are more popular in India than they are elsewhere.

Countering my hypothesis, Sci-Fi is not very popular in India(coming from a sci-fi buff). I'm not sure why that is, though...