'Asian Drama: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations' was written by

The correct answer is B, Adam Smith. The Scottish thinker Adam Smith published this book in 1776, and it is treated as the starting point of economics as a separate subject, which is why he is called the father of economics; its most quoted idea is the invisible hand, by which the self-interest of individuals is said to serve the wider good. Option A is wrong because David Ricardo wrote Principles of Political Economy and Taxation in 1817 and is remembered for comparative advantage and the theory of rent. Option C is wrong because Thomas Robert Malthus wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population in 1798 on the race between population and food. Option D is wrong because John Stuart Mill wrote Principles of Political Economy and the essay On Liberty, both later works of a different character.

The correct answer is C, Kautilya. Kautilya, also known as Chanakya and as Vishnugupta, was the minister and guide of Chandragupta Maurya, and his Arthashastra is a manual of statecraft that deals with the duties of a king, the organisation of the treasury, taxation, trade, spying, law and war; it is the earliest Indian work usually placed under economics and politics together. Option A is wrong because Chandragupta Maurya was the ruler served by Kautilya and not the author. Option B is wrong because Kalidasa was the Sanskrit poet and dramatist of works such as Abhijnanasakuntalam and Meghadutam. Option D is wrong because Megasthenes was the Greek ambassador at the Mauryan court whose own account of India was called Indica, a different book altogether. The Arthashastra was rediscovered in 1905 by R. Shamasastry, who found a manuscript of it in Mysore and published it.

The correct answer is B, Dadabhai Naoroji. Dadabhai Naoroji, honoured as the Grand Old Man of India and the first Indian to be elected to the British House of Commons, brought together his writings in this book and showed with figures that a large part of India's wealth was being carried away to Britain every year through salaries, pensions, interest and the cost of the army, a case known as the drain theory. Option A is wrong because Gopal Krishna Gokhale is remembered for his budget speeches and for founding the Servants of India Society, not for this book. Option C is wrong because Romesh Chunder Dutt wrote The Economic History of India, a separate work along the same lines. Option D is wrong because Ranade wrote Essays on Indian Economics and is called a pioneer of Indian economic thought.

The correct answer is B, Karl Marx. Karl Marx published the first volume of Das Kapital in 1867 as his full critique of the capitalist mode of production, built around surplus value and the exploitation of labour; the later volumes were edited and brought out by Friedrich Engels after Marx died. Option A is wrong because Engels was Marx's lifelong collaborator and co-author of The Communist Manifesto of 1848, but Das Kapital is credited to Marx himself. Option C is wrong because Lenin's own writings, such as Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism and The State and Revolution, came half a century later. Option D is wrong because Friedrich Hayek argued on the opposite side in The Road to Serfdom, warning that central planning leads to the loss of liberty.

The correct answer is B, John Maynard Keynes. Written during the Great Depression and published in 1936, this book argued that an economy can settle at a level of high unemployment on its own, and that the remedy is to raise effective demand through government spending; it created macroeconomics as we know it and the whole school called Keynesian economics. Option A is wrong because Alfred Marshall wrote Principles of Economics in 1890 and shaped the earlier neo-classical approach to demand and supply. Option C is wrong because Paul Samuelson wrote the famous textbook Economics and was the first American to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. Option D is wrong because Milton Friedman, author of Capitalism and Freedom, led the monetarist reply to Keynes rather than writing this book.