New Delhi, Sep 7 - Mahatma Gandhi's legacy of Hind Swaraj can be best understood while trying to find solutions to problems that confront the Indian market, says veteran columnist and Mumbai-based activist-author Rajni Bakshi.

Bakshi's book 'Bapu Kuti', which explores the lives of 12 people rooted in Gandhian principles who gave up lucrative jobs to discover practical ways of political and social transformation, inspired film director Ashutosh Gowariker to make the hit Shah Rukh Khan starrer, 'Swades'.

'In trying to find new solutions, you suddenly take recourse to the same Gandhian solutions that the Father of the Nation recommended in the early decades of the last century - self-sufficiency, freedom and swaraj - almost unconsciously,' Bakshi told IANS in a free-wheeling interview in the capital.

'It is more powerful than reading Gandhi.'

Bakshi's new book, 'Bazaars, Conversations and Freedom: For a Market Culture Beyond Greed and Fear', which she says 'is a tribute to the spirit of Hind Swaraj', was released at the India Habitat Centre in the capital last week.

It is a narrative about people forging solutions to the problems of unbridled markets and demonstrating that a more mindful market culture is possible.

The narrative takes the reader from the ancient Greek Agora, the Indian choupal and the native American gift culture to the present day Wall Street - to show that a free market can serve society rather than govern it.

'My book encourages people to rethink their assumption that the market is an overarching institution and goes back to the drawing board in trying to redefine how the market should work in the society we live in,' Bakshi said.

What is a market?

'The most obvious answer that comes to mind is the Sensex. But it is just a part of a larger mindset called the free market. So, what the stories in my book do is to distinguish the ancient bazaars from the modern markets that operate on the freedom to exchange, freedom of opportunities and the freedom to define purpose in ways to link commerce with the rest of life.'

According to Bakshi, the free market concept emerged in the 18th century on the idea that 'social and political dimensions should be kept separate from the economic dimension'.