My interest in politics and globalization emerged in my adolescence during frequent visits to India. Time after time I saw that the immense scale of poverty and destitution remained the same. Life at home in the United States, on the other hand, seemingly held the promise of endless choices and opportunities for advancement. I was particularly struck by the stark contrast between the health care and resources available to my grandfather, a village doctor in one of the most remote and poorest “gramas” (villages) in West Bengal, and my father, an FRCS (Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons) surgeon practicing in Florida. I was astounded that two such diametrically opposed economies coexisted in the same world. From here, eventually, questions of distribution, international economics, politics, government choices, and policy design emerged. In my early years of graduate school I became particularly intrigued by the extent to which domestic policy choices seemed constrained by the global economy, and thus fascinated with issues in international political economy. It took some further study and field experience to begin to grasp the true complexity of the situation.

This book is my attempt to scratch the surface of how and why developing and developed countries face such different challenges in (and responses to) the current era of globalization. It is a product of my struggles with understanding the distributional consequences of globalization, and questions of if and how developing country governments can respond to it.