The other day in a dinner conversation the topic was on how India has a nation has
grown in spite of everything - Corruption, Inefficient bureaucracy and all the differences.
That's when this book came up "In
Spite of the Gods: The Strange Rise of Modern India by Edward Luce". I bought
the book immediately and I finished reading it during my travel now.
The book is an excellent work done by Mr.Edward Luce, who is a journalist with Financial
Times. During his various assignments he had worked in London, New Delhi and now in
Washington. Mr.Luce is best suited to do this book because of his long stay
in India, his wife being an Indian and finally he being a Britisher (lot of things
in India are still colonial hangovers). Without these background he couldn't have
done such a wonderful job.
Mr.Luce finely balances a westerner viewpoint and Indian insight in a lucid manner
- you don't see contradictions anywhere. Many things about India is puzzling to understand
even for Indians, and many times you have to go back to long gone history to truly
understand. For doing this Mr.Luce start with detail of larger than life figure of
3 modern day Indians - Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and BR Ambedkar. People who
know India know that North India is very different from South India and so on., so
Mr.Luce seems to have done extensive travel to report both sides.
I was happy to read about the good things he talks about the work of my state (Tamilnadu)
government. I learned many things from the book about India that I didn't know before
or haven't seen it that way. One observation I really liked is Mr.Luce's case on how
several welfare programs in India like anti-poor program, literacy programs, free
power, labour laws which are all created with good intentions are not effective because
of the very bureaucracy that is created to run it. Mr.Luce talks with ease of
both India's strength and weakness.
If you are an Indian or someone interested about India, this is a must read book.
Thank you Mr.Luce.
Read the complete post at http://www.venkatarangan.com/blog/2008/07/12/In+Spite+Of+The+Gods+By+Edward+Luce.aspx