'Running Behind Lakshmi': Sharpening the wealth instinct

Few books capture India’s long and complicated relationship with money as steadily as Adil Rustomjee’s Running Behind Lakshmi. Deliberately paced and just under 800 pages, it is a carefully documented history of how the country’s financial markets evolved into mirrors of its society — layered, adaptive, and endlessly inventive in their pursuit of the goddess of prosperity.

Most accounts of money in India are preoccupied with the dramatic — the bull run, the scam, the recovery. Rustomjee’s account, in contrast, is closer to a period drama. It begins in the early 19th century, when informal trades under banyan trees in Bombay’s Fort area served as a proto-exchange, and unfolds through colonial regulation, the licence-permit raj, liberalisation, and the digital age.

Drawing on archival material, company records, government correspondence, and the recollections of early brokers, Rustomjee examines how stock exchanges and their participants shaped systems and processes. Community, that ever-present glue, was central to trading, settlement and the first efforts at regulation. These interactions laid the foundation for a formal exchange in a country traditionally inclined towards tangible assets, such as land and bullion.

The early exchanges, propelled by 19th-century opportunity and 20th-century upheaval, appeared to lie idle for decades before exploding into the world’s largest derivatives exchange. The early chapters can feel heavy, but the deliberate tempo helps the reader grasp the later significance of minor events. By the 1980s and 1990s, each reform and crisis emerged as part of a longer continuity. The shift from manual transactions to electronic terminals, and from paper certificates to demat accounts, becomes a story not only of technology but of changing trust — from people to paper to machines.

At its core, the book explores the spiritually sanctioned pursuit of opportunity in India, where wealth has always carried sacred as well as economic meaning. Rustomjee shows how participants often frame this pursuit of Lakshmi not as greed but as belief: faith in one’s ability, timing, and knowledge — often mistaking chance for skill. The market, in his view, has been both a financial mechanism and a collective act of misplaced optimism.

Equally engaging is his treatment of how institutions and credibility took shape. From informal brokers’ clubs to the creation of SEBI and the NSE, confidence was gradually formalised. In an age of conformity, Rustomjee’s candour about the roles of regulators, the RBI, bureaucrats, and their influence on development stands out. His portrayal of the behaviour of diverse players —brokers, advisors, bankers, FIIs, “fundies,” “Hedgies,” and the “Aam aadmi” investor — adds texture to this pursuit of prosperity. The work deftly connects regulation, psychology, and policy, illustrating that markets are as much about temperament as they are about trading, distorted in no small measure by government ownership through mega PSUs and LIC’s market presence.

Among his sharper observations is the rise of the unprofessional intermediary — the business, advisor, or manager who, while navigating India’s labyrinthine regulation, has helped create a one-way, SIP-driven investing culture, often without any understanding or management of risk. It is an uncomfortable but accurate reflection of today’s landscape, peppered with business channels, broadsheets and 24/7 market coverage feeding the mania. More information has somehow led to less coherence.

The timing of the book is apt. With a record number of demat accounts and a mobile phone-fuelled trading boom signalling a retail wave, Rustomjee reminds readers that this enthusiasm has deep roots. The investment clubs of the 1950s and the IPO surges of the 2000s expressed the same instinct: to seek wealth and inclusion through finance. 

If the book has a limitation, it is its editorial sprawl, which at times tests readability but never weakens the argument. A leaner version might have been easier to navigate, but would have lost the archival quality that distinguishes it. For both participants and researchers, it is less a one-time read and more a second-order reference, a guide to understanding Indian financial market regulation, behaviour, and rhythm over time.

Running Behind Lakshmi does not offer portfolio guidance or formulas for navigating complexity. What it offers instead is perspective: an appreciation of how the market’s behaviour is shaped by history, culture, and the habits of its partakers. It explains why Indian investors, despite periodic shocks, continue to see speculation as a legitimate path to progress — and how, after giving FIIs a free run, they still manage to turn a profit. Observations like these are invaluable for anyone attempting to understand or participate in the markets. The conclusion Rustomjee arrives at is quietly compelling. Having traced two centuries of speculation and reform, he sees India’s markets as both an instrument and a reflection of human progress. The democratisation of investing, enabled by SEBI’s framework and the digitisation of finance, has broadened participation in ways earlier generations could not have imagined. What began as the domain of wealthy families in the metros is now accessible to millions of small investors through SIPs and low-cost entry points.

He argues that this widening base is not accidental. It stems from the same instinct that propels all progress: the need to advance and translate aspiration into enterprise.

That, perhaps, is Rustomjee’s message — that markets, for all their noise, reflect man’s desire to advance. Through every cycle of excess and correction, they embody the compounding nature of progress. Running Behind Lakshmi is not only a chronicle of India’s financial evolution but also a meditation on why societies continue to chase prosperity.

(The reviewer is the Managing Partner at a SEBI-registered investment advisory firm. He writes on markets, investor behaviour and the intersection of finance and policy.)