The internationally recognised Freedom Caravan, organised by the Centre for Civil Society in partnership with Atlas Economic Research Foundation travelled to 14 colleges in 8 cities bringing together over 2000 students to explore ideas about individual liberty and economic prosperity.

Why is India poor? We asked this pertinent question to students all across the country. Among the typical responses we received were overpopulation, colonial exploitation, pervasive corruption, lack of education and resources, culture and attitudes, political instability, to name a few. Through Freedom Caravan our goal was twofold:

1. To debunk perennial myths about the causes for India’s poverty through data and evidence, and offer our audience a plausible answer that lack of economic freedom explains India’s poverty, and;

2. More fundamentally, convince them about an approach to analysing this type of question and gain a pattern of thinking that will help them assess different possible answers to these kinds of questions until they get down to the root causes.