Kaushik Basu. Beyond the Invisible Hand: Groundwork for a New Economics. Princeton, USA: Princeton University Press. 2010. 312 pages. US$ 39.95.

Kaushik Basu’s “Beyond Invisible Hand” is an illustration of critique on perceived complexities and muddled outcome of Smith’s free market ideology and mainstream economics. The book starts by comparing rules, rights and regulations in early times with the present one, where innovation has changed the dynamics of living standards but market and economic atrocities are more and less the same. Markets remain in function to provide goods and services but “market tactics” have created a divide between people so much that it was never thought of in ancient times. The economic and social status of the poor remains stagnant while the rich collect every penny from the market system. Those who have taken advantage of the system, support to keep the system well-oiled and humming. Opponents of the market system have little to present and have not been able to design a mechanism to replace the market system, nonetheless rampages and marching mobs are the anecdotal evidence of those getting nothing or a meagre portion from current world economic order. Today’s economic and social process is not what it ought to be; it is more venal then what is being suggested in the economics textbooks.