His presentation was a gist of a new book, "Politics of Markets: Political Economy of India's Financial Market Development in Comparative Perspective", he is currently working on.
Hearing his observations was author and political commentator Surjit S. Bhalla, who has authored books like "Devaluing to Prosperity: Misaligned Currencies and Their Growth Consequences" and "Imagine There's No Country: Poverty, Inequality, and Growth in the Era of Globalisation".
While Bhalla agreed with most of the visiting professor's arguments, he strongly felt the 2014 elections will be no lesser than a "mega election".
"Middle class has become sizable in India and hence they would come out and vote for parties with good economic governance. If you have observed, parties with good performance have been getting great response from people," said Bhalla.
"So, this will be an election fought on economic policies and not on social or political policies," he added, saying parties doing much on the economic front will win.
With the AAP announcing it will contest the Lok Sabha polls from 20 states, these political scientists felt the trend of "multi-party" and "fragmented system" will continue to cloud Indian political scene.
"It is hard to believe the AAP will roll out other political parties in a day and take over," said Bhalla.
While Echeverri-Gent felt the media was too obsessed with the AAP phenomena, he felt the trend of multi-fragmented-party system was here to stay in India for a longer time.
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