Why do Indians hoard gold but ignore mutual funds?
Why do we trust godmen more than governments and sales more than salaries?
Why does every Indian family believe a degree is destiny, and an EMI is success?
Desinomics: The Hidden Logic of Indian Life is a witty, insight-rich journey into the strange, smart, and sometimes irrational ways India thinks about money, status, success, and survival.
Inspired by the style of Freakonomics but rooted in Indian reality, this book uncovers the behavioral economics of everyday India, where emotion drives the economy, faith fuels finance, and aspiration outpaces income.
Across fifteen sharp, story-driven chapters, Desinomics explores everything from jugaad innovation and dowry economics to Bollywood consumerism, real estate obsession, the middle-class illusion, and the booming influencer economy.
It decodes why Indians love gold more than growth, how sales and discounts trigger dopamine, why the startup hustle became modern spirituality, and how love itself turned into a data-driven marketplace.
Each chapter blends real stories, psychology, and cultural humor to reveal the logic behind India’s apparent madness and the madness behind its economic miracle.
If you’ve ever wondered why Indians:
- Buy homes they can’t afford,
- Worship degrees like deities,
- Treat “free chai” as a national emotion,
- Or turn Instagram fame into a financial strategy

Then this book will show you the “why” behind the “wow.”
Smart, funny, and deeply relatable, Desinomics is for readers of Freakonomics, The Psychology of Money, Atomic Habits, and The Millionaire Next Door but written with a distinctly Indian heart, humor, and hustle.
It’s not just about economics, it’s about the emotional economy of a billion people learning to thrive between scarcity and superstition, ambition and adjustment.
Because in India, money follows emotion - not the other way around.