Over 2500 years ago, Siddharth Gautam, a 29 year old man from India undertook a spiritual quest. His 6-year-old journey took him from Kapilvastu, then in India, to Bodh Gaya in Bihar. The event marking the end of his journey is known as enlightenment. Gautam, who was now called Buddha, defined enlightenment as "The End of all Sufferings". India of the 21st Century stands at the cusp of a great economic transformation. Whether this change leads to a trickle-down utopian prosperity or catastrophic social inequality will depend on how India defines its future economic philosophy. The term Buddhist Economics was first coined in 1973 by the legendary English economist EF Schumacher in his book "Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered". A chance visit to Burma in the 1950s had Schumacher inspired by the Buddhist concept of "right livelihood".

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