This book considers how the idea of development in India took shape in the 1930s and the 1940s, drawing on a variety of intellectual resources, driven by immediate political battles, yet inspired by a vision of the future that incorporated notions of freedom and fairness. The argument is that an Indian notion of development, consciously different from the western one based on free trade and industrialization, could emerge in the inter-war period, when the future of capitalism in the west did not appear as assured as it did in the nineteenth century. The author identifies three interlocking themes around which development was conceptualized during this period the importance of science, technology, the need for the government to express certain social concerns, and the need of for national discipline. The book opens up a new field of historiography of South Asia, that of an intellectual history of late colonialism in India, and of the nationalism that succeeded it.