Book Review
In Spite of the Gods By EDWARD LUCE
Reviewed by PEGGY BARNETT
India has been much in the news recently. It seems to be about to become the world's third largest economy. "Although the West has produced many balanced and scholarly assessments of India over the past 250 years, the views of most ordinary Westerners have been tinged with either the dismissive or the romantic (as many still are.")

Edward Luce is the Washington bureau chief for the Financial Times, has worked in India, and married into an Indian family. He wants to provide an unsentimental evaluation of contemporary India. He explains the country's "booming but peculiarly lopsided economy," and some of the complex history of her main political movements. He also looks at religious values and how "modernity" is affecting the people.

"Gandhi, whose success in maintaining a mostly nonviolent struggle against the British was an extraordinary feat of personal magnetism, continues both to divide Indians and to haunt their dreams." We think, of course, of the Mahatma when we think of India. However, Luce tells about the work of Nehru and his daughter, Indira Gandhi, as well.

The book opens with a description of the Grand Trunk Road, made famous for us by Rudyard Kipling, but begun by the late Medieval Mughal dynasty, and still a single lane.

Even on the more modern highways, traffic includes scooters, bicycles, camel-drawn carts, "whose drivers appear blissfully unfazed by the fact that they are breaking all known rules of traffic and common sense."

Luce calls the Indian market the most lucrative final frontier for America's retail companies, in spite of restrictions imposed by India's government. We hear a lot about "outsourcing" and have experienced service from overseas assistants. However, less than one per cent of India's workforce is employed in information technology.

India has a strong university system, but its literacy rate is only 65 per cent, compared to China's 90 per cent. India's labor laws are filled with idiosyncrasies, making it difficultfor small company operators. Complex steel plants threaten Western counterparts, private hospitals do brain surgery and hip replacements for wealthy foreigners, call center employees can accept or reject insurance claims, but many farmers still subsist at African standards of living.

Adding to the burdens of businessmen is widespread corruption. There is a saying: M + D = C

Monopoly plus Discretion equals corruption.) Beyond the manicured lawns of middle-class India, there are 500,000 people who operate bicycle rickshaws, more than 400,000 of whom operate illegally because of license restrictions. They have to pay bribes out of their meager earnings to police to stay in business at all.

A land of contradictions, India has acquired a military arsenal, yet it has more than a third of the world's chronically malnourished children. It has a colorful history dating back to at least the sixth century B.C. The government is a democracy, but is deeply fragmented and often incoherent.

This insightful and interesting book is available at the Mary Willis Library.

Reader Comments

No comments have been posted. Be the first!

Other Stories With Comments:
Article	Comments
The Office Cat	2
Neighborhood vandalism is out of control	1
The Office Cat	1
Drug problem growing; little is being done	1
The Office Cat	1
Family escapes death in semi hit-and-run	1
Feed a family of four for $10 a week	1