In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India

by Edward Luce

Hardcover, 2006

Status

Available

Publication

London : Little, Brown, 2006.

Description

"India remains a mystery to many Americans, even as it is poised to become the worldʾs third largest economy within a generation, outstripping Japan. It will surpass China in population by 2032 and will have more English speakers than the United States by 2050. In In Spite of the Gods, Edward Luce, a journalist who covered India for many years, makes brilliant sense of India and its rise to global power. Already a number-one bestseller in India, his book is sure to be acknowledged for years as the definitive introduction to modern India. In Spite of the Gods illuminates a land of many contradictions. The booming tech sector we read so much about in the West, Luce points out, employs no more than one million of Indiaʾs 1.1 billion people. Only 35 million people, in fact, have formal enough jobs to pay taxes, while three-quarters of the country lives in extreme deprivation in Indiaʾs 600,000 villages. Yet amid all these extremes exists the worldʾs largest experiment in representative democracy-and a largely successful one, despite bureaucracies riddled with horrifying corruption."--From source other than the Library of CongressLuce shows that India is an economic rival to the U.S. in an entirely different sense than China is. There is nothing in India like the manufacturing capacity of China, despite the huge potential labor force. An inept system of public education leaves most Indians illiterate and unskilled. Yet at the other extreme, the middle class produces ten times as many engineering students a year as the United States. Notwithstanding its future as a major competitor in a globalized economy, American. leaders have been encouraging Indiaʾs rise, even welcoming it into the nuclear energy club, hoping to balance Chinaʾs influence in Asia. Above all, In Spite of the Gods is an enlightening study of the forces shaping India as it tries to balance the stubborn traditions of the past with an unevenly modernizing present. Deeply informed by scholarship and history, leavened by humor and rich in anecdote, it shows that India has huge opportunities as well as tremendous challenges that make the future ʺhers to lose.ʺIncludes information on Afghanistan, agriculture, Bhimrao Ambedkar, Ayodhya, Bangalore, Bangladesh, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Brahmins, Buddhism, bureaucracy, George Bush, caste system, cattle, China, Christians, British colonialism, Congress Party, corruption, Dalits, democracy, economy, education, elections, electricity, equality, Indira Gandhi, Mohandas Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, Great Britain, Gujarat, health care, Hindu nationalism, Hindus, Hinduism, industrialization, information technology, Japan, jobs, Kashmir, Kerala, literacy, lower castes, marriage, military, modernity, Narendra Modi, Mumbai (Bombay), Muslims, Jawaharlal Nehru, New Delhi, nuclear weapons, Pakistan, police, politics, poverty, Punjab, riots, roads, science, secularism, separatist insurgencies, Sikhs, Manmohan Singh, Soviet Union, taxes, television, terrorists, United States, upper castes, urbanization, Uttar Pradesh, Atal Behari Vajpayee, villages, water, etc.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member pc_cambridge
I'm not an expert by any means on India, so this was a great introduction to its recent history and offered a lot of insight into the current psychology of India's leadership, its economic successes and challenges, and the rapid changes its social world is going through. The biggest weakness, I
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thought, was an incomplete investigation of caste. A lot of his explanation for India's political and social movements is based on caste, but I never felt like he fully explained what a caste really was.
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LibraryThing member Gary10
Well written informative account of modern India; how it got to this point in history and what the future is likely to hold. Excellent source for sorting out the complexities of the largest democracy on the planet.
LibraryThing member Adrianburke1
I really enjoyed its opening chapters and then stumbled on the formula. Some generalised contextualising and background and then drop in a dusted-down article written previously for a newspaper. I did not finish it.
LibraryThing member tmannix
My limited view of India was of a country of Bollywood movies, curry, Indian customer service call centers, poverty, hundreds of millions of people, slums and more poverty. This pretty readable book gave me a, well, broader view of India. It's a crazy place--incredible diversity with a democracy
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that seems to work. Some facts just stuck with me: less than 10% of India's 1.1 billion people work in the formal work force and 80% of them work for the government. The bureaucracy is monumentally corrupt--most workers don't even show up for work but still get paid. There are more than 600,000 Indian villages--most without electricity or running water. There is only a 65% literacy rate. Most do not go to school (the teachers don't show up)but the tech universities churn out thousands of brilliant engineers. The caste system is alive and well, mostly as an economic classifier. We think our Christian fundamentalists are a threat to US civil liberties? The Hindu nationalist movement makes them look like pussycats.In Spite of the Gods gives you an idea of the forces that have shaped India--religious, historic, economic, cultural. There are some good anecdotes, interviews and enough data to satisfy anyone. And, since India will surpass China in population this century, and it's a nuclear power, and its economy will become the 3rd largest pretty soon, maybe we should take a look at it a bit more closely. "Remember, India always wins," as the author says.
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LibraryThing member xenchu
One of the tags I used for this book was 'current events'. That will change soon as the book was written in 2006 and published in 2007. If you want to read it I would advise you to read it soon otherwise it will just be a short history, although a rather good one.

India is a democracy with a 24
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party system. The political system and bureaucracy are corrupt and bribery is rampant. It is almost impossible to fire a government worker or indeed any worker. The poor everywhere get the short end of the stick.

Nevertheless the system does work in its fashion. And corruption and bribery can be gotten rid of like they have in this country (snicker). But the Indian economy is improving and gradually expanding albeit slowly.

The author is a financial journalist. This shows in the amount of economic information included in the book. The book is well-written and worth your time.
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LibraryThing member anyotherbizniz
Really enjoyed this. Good intro to India for the uninitiated, even better guide to India for those that already have the basics. Fasdcinating and well written buy someone that has spent plenty of time ther, is warm to the country but is inherently a westerner and iunconvined by the Indian spedisal
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cse.
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LibraryThing member danoomistmatiste
A commentary on India thought the eyes of a foreigner. This guy is married to an Indian. He has travelled extensively to all parts of India and rubbed shoulders with a wide strata of people. The rich and not so rich movers and shakers as well as the true sons of the soil. He dwells extensively on
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the Caste System and Politics but does touch upon other aspects such as the Economy and it's primary constituents such as the IT industry, Agriculture, Manufacturing and entertainment/bollywood.

Though a lot of his observations are old hat to us folks who have lived in India for a while, some of his observations are indeed very interesting. A lot of it is arrived at after a lot of clinical analysis and will not be apparent or brought out by merely reading your daily newspaper.

The book is peppered with a lot of interesting titbits and statistics. Some of them are controversial and probably should be taken with a pinch of salt. Here is one such that I want to mention. The skewed female to male population ratio in Gujarat at around 850:1000. The reason for this, the very high rate of abortion for female fetuses esp among the very wealthy Jain community. The Jains he oberves go to extremes to protect life, vegeratians, don't eat root vegetables, wear masks over their mouths etc. to protect even invisible organisms but don't bat an eyelid when it comes to these abortions. Quite paradoxical indeed.

The book begins with the author's visit to Auroville in Pondicherry and his interviews with some of the residents there. That alone in my opinion will make this a worthwhile read.
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Language

Barcode

8332
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