In Spite of the Gods: The Rise of Modern India

"India remains a mystery to many Americans, even as it is poised to become the worldʼs 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 Indiaʼs 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 Indiaʼs 600,000 villages. Yet amid all these extremes exists the worldʼs largest experiment in representative democracy-and a largely successful one, despite bureaucracies riddled with horrifying corruption."--From source other than the Library of Congress.