Book Description
India remains a mystery to many Americans, even as it is poised to become the world’s 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 India’s 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 India’s 600,000 villages. Yet amid all these extremes exists the world’s largest experiment in representative democracy—and a largely successful one, despite bureaucracies riddled with horrifying corruption.
Luce 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 India’s rise, even welcoming it into the nuclear energy club, hoping to balance China’s 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 “hers to lose.”
Customer Reviews:
A Passage Through India .......2007-10-22
In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India
By Edward Luce
Edward Luce is a journalist who has spent time in India. His "In Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India" is a good introduction to modern India. His observations help dispel some of the contradictions within modern India: extreme poverty juxtaposed with newly developed technology; traditional agricultural economy contrasted with modern conveniences and communication; and India's relative stability within the South Asian community.
The British Partition of India in 1947 with predominantly Muslim concentration in the North and in Pakistan; and majority Hindus in the South, set the stage for religious and ethnic disputes that still continue.
Curiously, relatively few Indian Muslims have joined the Jihadist movements against the west that have rocked Pakistan.... Including the recent car bomb explosions that were aimed at exiled Pakistani leader Bhutto.
"But history turned out the way it did. And so India entered into independence with a large Muslim minority, many of whom went through the conundrum of watching close family members migrate to Pakistan forever. Though their decision to remain in India should have put Indian Muslims beyond suspicion, their loyalties were constantly called into question. It is a terrible Irony of partition that the Muslims who remained behind in India and those who left for Pakistan, should have as good a claim as any others to being true Indians and true Pakistanis respectively given the sacrifices they made. The contradiction of partition has yet to die out." (In Spite of The Gods, P. 227)
Luce examines the challenges to India, which he calls "Herculean", public health, the environment, external relations, and public confidence in the government. He says "the most coherent threat to India's liberal democracy is Hindu nationalism." He points to the "emergency" declared by former President Gandhi in the 1970's as an example of the failure of autocratic rule in India.
Beating the Odds.......2007-10-13
edward luce's journalistic writing style makes this book an easy read. it does a good job of putting into context the "hindu rate of growth" that existed for so long after india regained her independence. but just as a big ship takes longer to change direction than a smaller boat, so does a large, diverse country that has been steeped in tradition and religious constraints for so many centuries.
similarly, just as greed and selfishness are unfortunate bi-products of capitalism gone wild in the new world, so is "caste-ism" and corruption of an economic system based on social classes which has been the rule for thousands of years. yet, as the author points out, it is this very tradition and sense of history that will keep the balloon of prosperity which has been unleashed, to remain tethered to the ground as it finds it's way into the modern skies.
in summary, the book is a good bridge from the old to the new and a good primer for anyone interested in understanding the paradox of modern india.
A must read for anyone trying to understand modern India.......2007-09-18
This is an important book on modern India. Edward Luce has been a foreign correspondent in India for many years and knows the country well. He provides a comprehensive survey of the politics and economics of India going into the 21st century. I was initially disappointed by the opening pages dealing with a few new-age types living in luxury and marveling at the spirituality of India while completely ignoring the poverty. Reading on I was pleasantly surprised to discover that this was only an introduction to demonstrate what is wrong with many Westerner's perception of India. The book provides an unflinching look at India, warts and all. While some sections may seem overly critical, we live in an imperfect world and the same things are wrong in many other countries, to a greater or lesser extent. The rest of the world continues to function and even prosper and India does so too. The book also discusses the huge untapped potential of the country and the things that need to happen to assure future growth and development. I found the chapters on recent changes in religious practices and the rise of fundamentalism very eye-opening. The significance of attributing the domestication of the horse to the Indus Valley civilization is fascinating (I won't give this one away). In Spite of the Gods is a must read for anyone trying to understand modern India.
To spite the Gods?.......2007-09-15
I picked up this book when I was on a trip, mainly because of the intriguing title. I thought, well, here is someone who will tell us how our Gods hold us back economically. Especially, as many of us worship Lakshmi ji, the Goddess of prosperity, every day!
As it turns out, I was quite wrong. The title has absolutely no connection with the contents of the book, except perhaps to insinuate that India has progressed economically despite being religious. Or to help along sales. [Do note the rhyming with the original expression 'in spite of the odds'. Possibly Mr. Luce thinks that Hindu Gods were holding back India's progress, or that perhaps they are the real odds?]
The book is more or less a compilation of wisdom received from the author's Indian friends, and select social circle. I was unable to find any original insight or conclusion in the book. However, Mr. Luce does present the old and tired wisdom of assorted Indian intellectuals in a refreshingly witty way. In the end, the book is just a large collection of articles, such as you would find in any weekly or fortnightly newsmagazine or in any mainstream English language newspaper published in India. This is understandable, given the fact that Mr. Luce, after all is merely a journalist, used to regurgitating what others tell him. There is some useful information though, including tidbits about the high and mighty of Indian establishment.
Expectedly, Mr. Luce is most positive about and impressed with the economic side of Indian growth. He cites any number of examples of the growing economic strength and its implications. There may not be anything new in this, but the endorsement sounds nice, coming from a Western journalist.
However, his views on the cultural and religious aspects are a different thing altogether. He mostly holds the majority community as being directly responsible for India's perceived cultural backwardness, for the condition of the women and children, and for the distressing law and order situation. He also suggests that Bajrang Dal has been responsible for two out of three major riots in the last 25 years (the third being laid at the door of Congress). However, this is mere reductionism - he conveniently ignores hundreds of small riots which break out every year across India, on the slightest pretext.
This liberal confusion continues: when it comes to dealing with Muslims, he suddenly switches the canvas to South Asia, from just India! This serves two purposes: first it helps him cover the pre-1947 developments. Second, it allows him to include Kashmir in the discussion. Dealing with Kashmir within the framework of India would have perhaps been sacrilegious?
That said, it is therefore surprising to see an endorsement of the book by Mr. Mark Tully, whose work is as close to Mr. Luce's as North Pole is to South Pole. Perhaps Mr. Tully was merely helping along a fellow Briton. Or perhaps he was made to sign the endorsement using some frightfully sinister threat...
The book is very nicely bound, and the printing and paper is quite pleasing. So is Mr. Luce's writing style, humorous and engaging. However, sometimes it is a little tiring also, as you (as an Indian) sometimes feel that you are the [...]. of his jokes and gratuitous insinuations.
Buy this book if you quickly want to update yourself on the current perceptions of the fashionable and the intellectual. Skip it if you want to learn anything worthwhile.
Bad statistic.......2007-09-10
In discussing the low ratio of girls to boys, the author states that, in the West, there are 105 girls born for every 100 boys. That is not true. Even in the West, there are more boys born than girls. The numbers should be reversed.
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- Cultural Ecology and Human Agency in the Himalayas
- Understanding a culture in transition
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High Frontiers: Himalayan Pastoralists in a Changing World
Kenneth Michael Bauer
Manufacturer: Columbia University Press
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The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals
ASIN: 0231123906 |
Book Description
Dolpo is a culturally Tibetan enclave in one of Nepal's most remote regions. The Dolpo-pa, or people of Dolpo, share language, religious and cultural practices, history, and a way of life. Agro-pastoralists who live in some of the highest villages in the world, the Dolpo-pa wrest survival from this inhospitable landscape through a creative combination of farming, animal husbandry, and trade.
High Frontiers is an ethnography and ecological history of Dolpo tracing the dramatic transformations in the region's socioeconomic patterns. Once these traders passed freely between Tibet and Nepal with their caravans of yak to exchange salt and grains; they relied on winter pastures in Tibet to maintain their herds. After 1959, China assumed full control over Tibet and the border was closed, restricting livestock migrations and sharply curtailing trade. At the same time, increasing supplies of Indian salt reduced the value of Tibetan salt, undermining Dolpo's economic niche. Dolpo's agro-pastoralists were forced to reinvent their lives by changing their migration patterns, adopting new economic partnerships, and adapting to external agents of change. The region has been transformed as a result of the creation of Nepal's largest national park, the making of Himalaya, a major motion picture filmed on location, the increasing presence of nongovernmental organizations, and a booming trade in medicinal products. High Frontiers examines these transformations at the local level and speculates on the future of pastoralism in this region and across the Himalayas.
Customer Reviews:
Cultural Ecology and Human Agency in the Himalayas.......2004-08-13
Bauer presents an excellent ethnographic and historical analysis of the changes the people of Dolpo have encountered since 1959, and he demonstrates to us that cultural survival and cultural change are not antithetical to one another. His examination of the resilience and adaptability of Dolpo-pa brings to life the practical importance of local environmental knowledge, human agency, and cultural innovation. As founder of the grass-roots organization DROKPA (meaning "nomad" in Tibetan), Bauer also directs his excellent analytic understanding of pastoralism toward working along with pastoralist populations to respond to the many political, economic, and environmental challenges they face in the 21st century. Very fine research and writing.
Understanding a culture in transition.......2004-07-14
High Frontiers makes the landscape and the people of Dolpo come alive. Kenneth Bauer's descriptions are vivid, accurate and heartfelt. His observations in the chapter A Tsampa Western about the filming of Caravan/Himalaya and its impacts on the villagers is timely and thought provoking. One does not need to have an academic background to absorb and enjoy this timely book.
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Democratic Politics and Economic Reform in India (Contemporary South Asia)
Rob Jenkins
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0521659876 |
Book Description
Successive Indian governments have remained committed to market-oriented reform since its introduction in 1991. In a well-argued and controversial examination of the political dynamics that underlie that commitment, Jenkins challenges existing theories of the relationship between democracy and economic liberalization. He contends that while democracy and liberalization are no longer considered incompatible, the new thinking emphasizes the wholesome aspects of democracy, downplaying the temptations of populism and its reliance on obfuscatory tactics in defusing political resistance. In fact, the author argues, it is through such political maneuvering that democracy survives.
Book Description
The revised edition of Southeast Asia provides a grounded account of how people in the area are responding to - and being affected by - the changes sweeping through the region. The 'growth' or 'miracle' economies of Southeast Asia, after having achieved one of the most remarkable transformations in recent history, suffered a sharp downturn in fortunes with the Asian economic crisis of 1997. At the same time, the transitional economies of Indochina have undergone a deep process of market reform. This book unpicks the 'miracle' and the 'crisis' and elaborates on the process of reform.
The first section of the book provides the conceptual and empirical background to the later chapters, by examining the various explanations for Asia's rapid growth, the implications of fast-track industrialisation, the causes and interpretations of the economic crisis, and indigenous and alternative visions of development in the region including Buddhist and Islamic economics and the Asian Way. The second section focuses on poverty and social exclusion in the region from standard income-poverty studies to participatory methods that focus on more nuanced notions of deprivation. The third section of the book takes these trajectories down to the level of the padi field and the factory floor and asks a series of questions, including: How do people construct their livelihoods? What processes of marginalisation are evident? What are the emerging relations between rural and urban areas, and between farm and non-farm work? The final section reviews the Southeast Asian growth experience in the light of the many critiques of modernisation.
Southeast Asia blends conceptual interpretations of the regions growth (and fall from growth) with case study material drawn from across the region. It uses a wide range of social science literature and presents the complex arguments deployed in an accessible manner. The book challenges our understanding of patterns of change in rural and urban areas of the region, and unpicks themyriad ways in which individuals and households construct their livelihoods. Chapter summaries and annotated further reading are included.
Book Description
A significant contribution to political ecology, Conservation Is Our Government Now is an ethnographic examination of the history and social effects of conservation and development efforts in Papua New Guinea. Drawing on extensive fieldwork conducted over a period of seven years, Paige West focuses on the Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area, the site of a biodiversity conservation project implemented between 1994 and 1999. She describes the interactions between those who ran the program—mostly ngo workers—and the Gimi people who live in the forests surrounding Crater Mountain. West shows that throughout the project there was a profound disconnect between the goals of the two groups. The ngo workers thought that they would encourage conservation and cultivate development by teaching Gimi to value biodiversity as an economic resource. The villagers expected that in exchange for the land, labor, food, and friendship they offered the conservation workers, they would receive benefits, such as medicine and technology. In the end, the divergent nature of each group’s expectations led to disappointment for both.
West reveals how every aspect of the Crater Mountain Wildlife Management Area—including ideas of space, place, environment, and society—was socially produced, created by changing configurations of ideas, actions, and material relations not only in Papua New Guinea but also in other locations around the world. Complicating many of the assumptions about nature, culture, and development underlying contemporary conservation efforts, Conservation Is Our Government Now demonstrates the unique capacity of ethnography to illuminate the relationship between the global and the local, between transnational processes and individual lives.
Book Description
Why were some countries able to build "developmental states" in the decades after World War II while others were not? Through a richly detailed examination of India's experience, Locked in Place argues that the critical factor was the reaction of domestic capitalists to the state-building project. During the 1950s and 1960s, India launched an extremely ambitious and highly regarded program of state-led development. But it soon became clear that the Indian state lacked the institutional capacity to carry out rapid industrialization. Drawing on newly available archival sources, Vivek Chibber mounts a forceful challenge to conventional arguments by showing that the insufficient state capacity stemmed mainly from Indian industrialists' massive campaign, in the years after Independence, against a strong developmental state.
Chibber contrasts India's experience with the success of a similar program of state-building in South Korea, where political elites managed to harness domestic capitalists to their agenda. He then develops a theory of the structural conditions that can account for the different reactions of Indian and Korean capitalists as rational responses to the distinct development models adopted in each country.
Provocative and marked by clarity of prose, this book is also the first historical study of India's post-colonial industrial strategy. Emphasizing the central role of capital in the state-building process, and restoring class analysis to the core of the political economy of development, Locked in Place is an innovative work of theoretical power that will interest development specialists, political scientists, and historians of the subcontinent.
Customer Reviews:
superb.......2005-02-22
The best book on the political economy of India to come out in a generation. LOCKED IN PLACE will become the standard that all other books on industrialization and state building in India.
It may look dull, but it is important.......2004-02-05
Vivek Chibber's book on the failures of industrialization is not one that most people are likely to read, even in the unlikely occurrence that they ever encountered it. Filled with such unenthralling topics as "nodal agencies", "the developmental state," "the developmental bourgeoisie," "state capacity," and with how to create more efficient and effective bureaucracies, it is not a book that is likely to attract most people's interest. And it is true that Chibber does not have a style that would bring these topics to life. Nevertheless this is a book that should not be ignored, because it deals with a very important topic. As everyone knows, many third world countries sought to industrialize in the post war period with the help of state intervention. India under the Congress Party was a particularly prominent example of the developmental state. As time went on this path was ultimately unsuccessful, and for the past two or three decades, the IMF and the World Bank have been encouraging private enterprise and free trade. According to the advocates of globalization, state encouraged industrialization is a failure. But there is a striking exception to the narrative of failure: South Korea. It is the value of Chibber's book that it explains why India was so much less successful than Korea.
One might think that the reason South Korea was so much more successful than its rivals was because it had a streamlined and efficient bureaucracy. But this is not necessarily the case: in the mid-eighties it required as many as 310 approvals and 312 documents before permission was granted to form a new industrial plant. One might think that the difference was the result of the strategy of industrialization. India, like many other countries, followed an import substitution industrialization (ISI), while South Korea followed an export-led industrialization (ELI). The difference here is not simply one between protectionism and free-trade: for a long time South Korea had its own system of tariffs to protect domestic industries. But an ELI path insured that Korean companies faced the pressures of foreign competitors, while an ISI path often resulted in domestic companies smugly idling in the fleshpots of assured markets. But Chibber shows that this is not the result of the cleverness of South Korean bureaucrats and the ideological blindness of Indian ones.
There were reasons why countries preferred ISI to ELI. For a start, industrial countries placed tariffs on industrial goods from developing countries in the fifties. American foreign aid put restrictions on exports during the fifties. So did many foreign companies. One Indian committee found in 1969 that 65% of the collaboration agreements it surveyed had export restrictions imposed by the foreign partner. Moreover, since export markets were competitive and risky and domestic markets safe and assured it was only rational for businesses to resist their governments' push for export drives, which in India and elsewhere they successfully did. Korea was different. It had the luck to be the place where Japan needed to outsource its light manufacturing, and this gave it the contacts and places for its own export drive in the sixties to be successful. Moreover this led to a crucial difference with India. Because the export markets were both competitive and profitable, companies would support the disciplinary measures the South Korean state imposed to assure that its aid worked. After all, if one company failed to do what it was supposed to, there would be another to do a better job of it. By contrast, in India under ISI, there was no such incentive. There was considerable support for getting state incentives, but there was stringent opposition to enforcing any disciplinary measures. And so Chibber details how Indian business' call for state planning in the forties was in fact a way to pre-empt more radical measures, that it was call for not socialism, but for capitalist planning. He discusses how they worked vigorously to take out any teeth in Indian planning legislation, and he also shows how the Congress party demobilized the labour movement, which could have served as a counterweight to Indian business. And he goes on to discuss how Indian business was able to thwart possible reforms in the fifties and sixties, and how Indira Gandhi's erratic patronage system undermined it once and for all. He also notes how Korean business eventually became powerful enough that they did not need the developmental state's restrictions, and so started to dismantle it. The result is a complex, well documented account, which should be read by all shallow advocates of globalization.
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Fertility Transition in South Asia (International Studies in Demography)
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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ASIN: 0199241856 |
Book Description
This compendium of nineteen chapters, written by South Asia scholars and international authorities in the field of population, provides an overview of a range of issues surrounding fertility change in South Asia over the past decade.
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Rents, Rent-Seeking and Economic Development: Theory and Evidence in Asia
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Institutions and the Path to the Modern Economy: Lessons from Medieval Trade (Political Economy of Institutions and Decisions)
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Economic Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy
ASIN: 052178302X |
Book Description
Rent-seeking is about buying influence, which can range from lobbying to corruption. The concepts of rents and rent-seeking are central to any discussion of the processes of economic development. Yet conventional models of rent-seeking are unable to explain how it can drive decades of rapid growth in some countries, and at other times be associated with spectacular economic crises. This book argues that the rent-seeking framework has to be radically extended if it is to explain the anomalous role played by rent-seeking in Asian countries.
Book Description
The extraordinary growth enjoyed over the last several decades by many East Asian countries has amounted to nothing less than an economic miracle. Employing unorthodox policies, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Thailand have all produced dramatic results with far-reaching improvements in human welfare and income distribution, leading many to ask whether a similar achievement can be duplicated elsewhere. Written for the nonspecialist, this World Bank Policy Research Report--the first in an important new series--discusses in detail the means by which these high-performing Asian economies (HPAEs) realized their staggering success between 1965 and 1990. Examining how these countries stabilized their economies with sound development programs that led to fast growth, the book also shows how they shared the new prosperity by making income distribution more equitable. The book makes clear how the HPAEs promoted rapid capital accumulation by making banks more reliable and encouraging high levels of domestic savings, while universal primary schooling and better primary and secondary education quickly increased their skilled labor forces. Also included are illustrative examples of productive agricultural programs, modest tax policies, the modification of price distortions, foreign technology and investment, and the cooperation of government and private enterprise. Exposing to a broad audience the revolutionary process that transformed East Asia into the collection of economic juggernauts that it is today, this provocative World Bank report offers wisdom for today's up-and-coming markets, highlighting the policies that will make a difference as well as those that, despite their effectiveness in the Orient, could prove disastrous elsewhere.
Customer Reviews:
Good overview explaining why asia has been so successful.......2007-09-06
Good overview explaining the policies behind East Asia's phenominal economic success. Should be read by all students of economic development. However, the book is very weak when it comes to discussing the area's merchantalist policies. Reading this one would think they did not exist and have played no role (good or bad) in these nation's development.
Good pre1997 crisis book, interesting contradictions.......2003-02-17
This book explores the causes for the extraordinary growth experienced by a few Asian countries in the pre-1997 crisis era. It describes, in great detail, the policies adopted in each country that are believed to have spurred such development; to its credit (being a World Bank book), it even suggests that some unorthodox policies may have been beneficial, even though it does suggest that these benefits are not there to be reaped again by a country trying to emulate them. One of the main arguments is also that income distribution improvements have been a common experience across these countries, which is a topic not often discussed in development economics.
There are, however, some obvious fallacies in this book. Having been written pre-1997 crisis, it does highlight the strenght of the banking system in many of these countries; these banking systems were later to be blamed for much of the pain in the 1997 crisis.
I find this book fascinating, not as a source of development ideas (those can be found elsewhere), but due to the historical context in which it was written (praising economies that were about to collapse). Of course, these economies are still better off that most developing countries, so I do not believe that they are mistaken in many points, but there are certain contradictions that arose with the crisis that make it worth reading this book to determine what is good advice and what is hot air.
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