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India: The Next decade
The contributors are eminent people from diverse walks of life and they give their take on the respective area of specialisation. If you have Manmohan Singh, Montek S Ahluwalia, Yogendra Yadav, T.N Ninan, Brahma Chellaney, Dipankar Gupta, Zoya Hasan and Sanjoy Hazarika on politics and economy, there are Sudhir Kakar, Shyam Benegal, Mrinal Sen, Revathy Menon, Kapila Vatsyayan, Aruna Vasudev and Ranjit Hoskote to set out how the changes impact society and the arts. Business and industry is represented by Naina Lal Kidwai and Sunil Munjal. Most of the papers are thought-provoking and lucid exposition that build up challenging arguments. There is an effort to deal with the disconnect between a growing knowledge economy and social inequities at the ground level. Another area of concern is the neglect of agriculture and its vast untapped potential. The contributors look at the problems faced by India, analyse them and offer possible solutions. What is refreshing and stimulating is the thoughts expressed by thinking individuals from culture, cinema and arts, which we rarely come across in such detail, unlike politics. Under the heads of democracy (challenges and prospects), economy (growth and equity), society (changing values), India and the world, most issues relevant to the development of India are dealt with and discussed threadbare. Divergent viewpoints and contradictions add sparkle to the discussions. Since the discussions, along with the replies, interventions and the rebuttals have been published as it is, there is bound to be an informality and looseness of structure. Usually such books have footnotes, bibliography and notes which do make them scholarly but tend to put off the non-specialist reader. The absence of these, along with the galaxy of star contributors makes this volume eminently readable since it is not pedantic. — A.N.
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other democracy, it is said, has achieved levels of sustained economic
growth comparable to India’s over the last two decades. What happens
to the largest democracy is bound to impact the world at large. The book
comprises the papers and discussions presented in the 2004 Indira Gandhi
Conference that chose to focus specifically on India in the coming
decade, through the prism of politics, economy, culture and the external
world.