Is India losing its way? That was the question that The Economist magazine posed to Shashi Tharoor and me to debate.

After two rounds of sparring, this is how I concluded.

For every cheery statistic that Tharoor invokes, there are at least as many gloomy ones to be counter-invoked.

For every irresistible force of optimism that insightful observers such as Pratap Mehta see in the churn that is India today, there is an immovable object of doubt and despondency.

No wonder Joan Robinson famously said: "Whatever you can rightly say about India, the opposite is also true."

So, instead of rehearsing the arguments, I want to make some claims about the state versus market debate in India, offer some observations on Indian politics and propose a way of judging the winner of this debate.

Text: Arvind Subramanian, Business Standard

Associated Press

The writer is a senior fellow at Peterson institute for International Economics and at the Center for Global Development. This article is an elaboration of his concluding statement in an Economist online debate between Shashi Tharoor and him. The debate can be found at: http://www.economist.com/debate/debates/overview/238.