A Still Sleeping Giant
Book Review: 'An Uncertain Glory' by Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen | 'Transforming India' by Sumantra Bose
Indian reformers did not sell their liberal reforms to the people, who concluded the free market helps the rich alone.
Book Review: 'An Uncertain Glory' by Jean Drèze and Amartya Sen | 'Transforming India' by Sumantra Bose
Indian reformers did not sell their liberal reforms to the people, who concluded the free market helps the rich alone.
Indian reformers did not sell their liberal reforms to the people, who concluded the free market helps the rich alone.
A year ago, no one in India could have imagined that cabinet ministers, powerful politicians, senior officials and CEOs would be in jail now, awaiting trial for corruption.
Book review for The Wall Street Journal, Saturday Oct 16, 2010
by Gurcharan Das
Robert D. Kaplan, Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power, Hardcover, price $28, 384 pages, Random House, 2010
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
OPINION ASI A
MARCH 8, 2010, 2:06 P.M. ET
Entrepreneurs and Eggplant
New Delhi
The most damaging fallout from this economic crisis may well be a loss of trust in the democratic capitalist system, especially if those who are unemployed and suffering begin to believe that "anything goes" in an unfair world. In the rush to rewrite the rules of the game, policy makers might consider the message of dharma from Indian philosophy and literature, which offers a more nuanced answer to moral failure and the ethics of capitalism.
It has been called the greatest show on earth, and not without reason, as the world's largest electorate of 670 million voters goes to the polls. Although Indians have been voting uninterruptedly for more than 50 years, elections are still festive affairs. They may be cynical about their politicians, but they remain addicted to democracy. Between April 20 and May 10 sixty percent of the India's electorate is expected to vote in 700,000 polling booths via 1.1 million voting machines, supervised by 5.5 million state officials (many of them school teachers).
NEW DELHI -- Next Monday, India's general elections -- which began on April 20 -- will finally conclude. In an exercise that was both staggered and staggering, 670 million Indians will have had the opportunity to vote at 700,000 polling booths via 1.1 million voting machines -- with all this, the greatest democratic show on earth, supervised by 5.5 million state officials.
INDIA UNBOUND, By Gurcharan Das, (Knopf, 406 pages, $27.50)
modest place, now grown impressive, that produces home furnishings for export – hers was the first instance in the history of my family when someone, anyone, went into business.