Why do people still hold on to neoclassical and New Keynesian ways of thinking in economics education? Why don’t we adopt alternative models even when they might be more realistic or efficient?
This was a question I asked in 2025. Sometimes the answers I received were so unsatisfying that I kept asking more and more people—searching, debating, probing—until finally, one detailed explanation from my professor left me genuinely contented. And yet, the question stayed with me.
A few days later, another conversation with him helped me dig deeper into that intellectual itch. I began to realise that this wasn’t just about economics—it was also about power, tradition, identity, and sometimes even gatekeeping. Just like democracy isn’t always democratic, academia isn’t always open to change.
In the middle of reflecting on this, I came across one of the most intriguing stories in modern mathematics: the story of Nicolas Bourbaki.
Nicholas Bourbaki wasn’t a real person at all. He was a collective pseudonym created by a group of brilliant French mathematicians in 1935, many of them alumni of the École Normale Supérieure. The idea took shape when André Weil grew frustrated watching his friend Henri Cartan teach a calculus course that focused more on physics applications than on pure mathematical rigour. At the same time, several mathematicians were unhappy with the scattered, inconsistent textbooks that dominated the field.
This shared dissatisfaction brought Weil, Cartan, Chevalley, Dieudonné, Mandelbrojt, de Possel, Coulomb, Ehresmann and others together. Their mission was simple but revolutionary: to rebuild mathematics from the ground up, using clear axioms, rigorous structures, and absolute precision. What began as a plan to write a single textbook on analysis soon expanded, and the project grew into the monumental Éléments de Mathématique, spanning nearly 7,000 pages of definitions, lemmas, corollaries and theorems.
What fascinated me most was not just the mathematics but the psychology of the group itself. A dozen scholars voluntarily hid their identities. They erased individual authorship and made anonymity their signature. Their meetings were private, their rituals secretive, their internal culture a strange yet beautiful mix of deep intellectual seriousness and playful pranks. They even built a myth around Bourbaki, publishing humorous notices—like “Bourbaki’s daughter is getting married”—as if he were a living eccentric mathematician.
It was an unusual and ambitious social experiment. Could knowledge be created without ego? Without personal recognition? Could a collective identity produce work as coherent and authoritative as that of a single mind? Bourbaki proved that it was possible, even radical. In a world where academic prestige depends on names, visibility, and citations, they showed that ideas could stand on their own.
This reflection brought me back to economics. Economics education and policy-making desperately need heterogeneity, but they also carry layers of politics, hierarchy, and inertia. Even with this awareness, I find myself increasingly curious. Sometimes I wonder when India will have its own “Bourbaki”—not a mathematician this time, but an economist. A collective of thinkers who work together, anonymously or otherwise, to produce rigorous textbooks and frameworks built for the Indian economy and written for Indian students, reflecting Indian realities.
When will that happen?
When will students of economics in India feel a direct connection between what they learn and what they observe around them?
When will our models finally reflect our markets, institutions, behaviours and diversity?
Unlike my other questions and blogs, I don’t end this one with an answer. I end it with curiosity—and a deep yearning to see things unfold positively, meaningfully, and in ways that finally resonate with who we are.
Sreya.
