Planet India
The Turbulent Rise of the World’s Largest Democracy and the Future of our World
India is everywhere: on magazine covers and cinema marquees, at the gym and in the kitchen, in corporate boardrooms and on Capitol Hill. Through incisive reportage and illuminating analysis, Mira Kamdar explores India’s astonishing transformation from a developing country into a global powerhouse. She takes us inside India, reporting on the people, companies, and policies defining the new India and revealing how it will profoundly affect our future – financially, culturally, politically.
The world’s fastest-growing democracy, India has the youngest population on the planet, and a middle class as big as the population of the entire United States. Its market has the potential to become the world’s largest. As one film producer told Kamdar when they met in New York, “Who needs the American audience? There are only 300 million people here.” Not only is India the ideal market for the next new thing, but with a highly skilled English-speaking workforce, elite educational institutions, and growing foreign investment, India is emerging as an innovator of the technology that is driving the next phase of the global economy.
While India is celebrating its meteoric rise, it is also racing against time to bring the benefits of the twenty-first century to the 800 million Indians who live on less than two dollars per day, to find the sustainable energy to fuel its explosive economic growth, and to navigate international and domestic politics to ensure India’s security and its status as a global power. India is the world in microcosm: the challenges it faces are universal – from combating terrorism, poverty, and disease to protecting the environment and creating jobs. The urgency of these challenges for India is spurring innovative solutions, which will catapult it to the top of the new world order. If India succeeds, it will not only save itself, it will save us all. If it fails, we will all suffer. As goes India, so goes the world.
Mira Kamdar tells the dramatic story of a nation in the midst of redefining itself and our world. Provocative, timely, and essential, Planet India is the groundbreaking book that will convince Americans just how high the stakes are – what there is to lose, and what there is to gain from India’s meteoric rise.
– REVIEWS –
“A brisk and conversation-filled ride through India’s corporate offices, film studios, farms and slums. Kamdar is an engaging writer.” Ramachandra Guha, The Financial Times
“Planet India is a worthy addition to the burgeoning shelf of serious books about 21st-century India. Despite seeing all the tragedies and limitations, Kamdar comes down firmly on the side of the optimists about India.” Shashi Tharoor, The Times of India
“America’s obsessive focus on China tends sometimes to obscure how amazingly fast India is transforming itself into an economic superpower. This briskly written, vivid account shows how that subcontinental country’s films, technology, and service industries have made India an ever-growing presence on the American scene. Time to recognize yet another awakening giant snapping at our heels.” The Atlantic Monthly
“Mira Kamdar takes the seemingly endless historical and cultural cross currents of India and weaves them together into a story that bears on the whole world. She combines her admiration and affection for India and its people with a keen eye for its contradictory impulses, taking readers deep inside an India that is fighting for modernity on its own terms, but also changing, for good and ill, in response to dynamics beyond its control. Indians, both within and outside their country, are changing the fates of people everywhere. Planet India is our planet.” Ted Fishman, author of China Inc
“Planet India could become one of the most discussed books of the year. Kamdar’s book is different from other similar themed books–it throws a challenge to the government, business leaders, voluntary organizations and ordinary citizens, and non-resident Indians, to make the Indian success story meaningful even to the poorest of its citizens.” India Abroad
“This book is an absolute MUST read. It’s by far the best book on India and globalization to date and on top of that it’s a fun read.” Clyde Prestowitz, author of Rogue Nation and Three Billion New Capitalists