came under the rule of the Soviets, and West Germany remained part of the Western powers. When economic conditions in occupied West Germany failed to improve, Ludwig Erhard completely destroyed price controls in 1948 without consulting the occupying powers. Western Germany underwent a fast massive economic recovery, but such free-market reforms were largely confined to that country for many years. By the time of German reunification in 1989, West Germany was an economic power, and East Germany faced many problems because of the collapse of the central planning authority. India Unlike Mahatma Gandhi, who supported a village-centric economy, after India's independence in 1947, its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, promoted industrialization. However, he supported government-controlled development and the bureaucracy that developed stifled innovation (the authors of The Commanding Heights sarcastically claim that the British Raj was replaced by a permit Raj). Bribery and delays became common in the Indian economy while many prominent economists studied the country and attempted to finetune its central planning. By the 1990s, the Indian government began to relax these stringent regulations mainly under the influence of Finance Minister and later Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The Indian economy bloomed under the effects of exports and outsourcing, and political parties since then have continued to promote those changes. The free-marketer Singh was appointed prime minister when his party won the elections in 2004 although he was not the victorious United Progressive Alliance's stated candidate, and the general expectation was that Sonia Gandhi would take the seat. South America Under the influence of dependency theory, a Marxist approach to international economics, many Latin American countries attempted to industrialize by limiting imports of manufactured goods and subsidizing their own industries. However, companies had little incentive to become efficient or innovative in the absence of competition and because of government subsidies. By the 1980s, the economic problems of the countries became obvious, and much of the West's investment was lost. Chile unwittingly became an experiment in free markets when Augusto Pinochet called in followers of Friedman to evaluate the economy, the so-called Chicago boys. The authors argue that the economic reforms proved successful, but since Pinochet was a dictator who came to power in a coup and had many political opponents murdered, the whole idea of free-market reform became linked to fascism. The authors and Friedman claim that the reforms eventually promoted democracy, they acknowledge that the issue and their