With the world's attention focused on China, less thought is spared for India, the other Asian giant--but one with a very different set of problems to overcome.
Although formidable, the challenges of corruption, bureaucracy, deep-seated divisions of caste and faith, AIDS and environmental degradation, are surmountable, according to journalist Edward Luce.
In his book, In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India (Doubleday, $26), Luce lays out a comprehensive political and economic analysis of India's present, problems and prospects.
Backed by facts and statistics, illuminating anecdotes and extensive travel, Luce concludes that, for all its chaos, India does indeed work.
As an example, he tells the story of his own marriage in New Delhi to an Indian woman to illustrate what economist and former US Ambassador to India John Kenneth Galbraith once called the country's ‘functional anarchy’. Chaos reigns, but in the end everything comes together.
India's system of liberal democracy, along with the talents of its people, ‘is the most precious asset India possesses’, he writes.
But that democracy faces formidable challenges, including the divisions between castes and faiths that can escalate to violence, corrupt, entrenched bureaucrats, and barriers to both existing and new businesses.
That said, Luce challenges the ‘insidious assumption’ that China is growing faster than India because it is authoritarian, arguing that a 19-month period of autocracy India experienced under Indira Gandhi beginning in 1975 damaged its social stability and economic prosperity.
Pakistan, with its ethnic and cultural similarities, offers a better comparison, he says. With more and longer periods of authoritarian rule and a stricter form of democracy than India, it has in the last two decades had an average growth rate of 3.5 percent compared with 6 per cent in India.
Another recurring theme: the striking contrasts that make up modern India: old vs. new, modern city vs. backward village, a growing, highly educated middle class vs. 300 million still living in poverty.
William Dalrymple, the award-winning author of several books on India, has high praise for Luce's book.
"I think it fills a big gap," Dalrymple said in an interview, saying it advances the story of the subcontinental country's rise told by Gurcharan Das in his 2002 book India Unbound.
In a chapter titled Hers to Lose, Luce sums up the challenges to India faces: AIDS, rapid environmental degradation that is poisoning the air and water supply, the huge number of people living in poverty, and the weaknesses in its democratic system.
Overcoming them would tax the powers and resources of an efficient and forward-thinking state, he writes. In the Indian state's present condition, there is a question mark over its ability to achieve these objectives.
"India is not on autopilot to greatness. But it would take an incompetent pilot to crash the plane," he writes.
Courtesy : Expressindia.com
Although formidable, the challenges of corruption, bureaucracy, deep-seated divisions of caste and faith, AIDS and environmental degradation, are surmountable, according to journalist Edward Luce.
In his book, In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India (Doubleday, $26), Luce lays out a comprehensive political and economic analysis of India's present, problems and prospects.
Backed by facts and statistics, illuminating anecdotes and extensive travel, Luce concludes that, for all its chaos, India does indeed work.
As an example, he tells the story of his own marriage in New Delhi to an Indian woman to illustrate what economist and former US Ambassador to India John Kenneth Galbraith once called the country's ‘functional anarchy’. Chaos reigns, but in the end everything comes together.
India's system of liberal democracy, along with the talents of its people, ‘is the most precious asset India possesses’, he writes.
But that democracy faces formidable challenges, including the divisions between castes and faiths that can escalate to violence, corrupt, entrenched bureaucrats, and barriers to both existing and new businesses.
That said, Luce challenges the ‘insidious assumption’ that China is growing faster than India because it is authoritarian, arguing that a 19-month period of autocracy India experienced under Indira Gandhi beginning in 1975 damaged its social stability and economic prosperity.
Pakistan, with its ethnic and cultural similarities, offers a better comparison, he says. With more and longer periods of authoritarian rule and a stricter form of democracy than India, it has in the last two decades had an average growth rate of 3.5 percent compared with 6 per cent in India.
Another recurring theme: the striking contrasts that make up modern India: old vs. new, modern city vs. backward village, a growing, highly educated middle class vs. 300 million still living in poverty.
William Dalrymple, the award-winning author of several books on India, has high praise for Luce's book.
"I think it fills a big gap," Dalrymple said in an interview, saying it advances the story of the subcontinental country's rise told by Gurcharan Das in his 2002 book India Unbound.
In a chapter titled Hers to Lose, Luce sums up the challenges to India faces: AIDS, rapid environmental degradation that is poisoning the air and water supply, the huge number of people living in poverty, and the weaknesses in its democratic system.
Overcoming them would tax the powers and resources of an efficient and forward-thinking state, he writes. In the Indian state's present condition, there is a question mark over its ability to achieve these objectives.
"India is not on autopilot to greatness. But it would take an incompetent pilot to crash the plane," he writes.
Courtesy : Expressindia.com