In Spite of the Gods: The Rise of Modern India | 
| Author: Edward Luce
Publisher: Anchor
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  53 reviews
Sales Rank: 5759
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 416
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.8
ISBN: 1400079772
Dewey Decimal Number: 954.053
EAN: 9781400079773
ASIN: 1400079772
Publication Date: March 11, 2008
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Product Description
As the world's largest democracy and a rising international economic power, India has long been heralded for its great strides in technology and trade. Yet it is also plagued by poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, and a vast array of other social and economic issues.
Here, noted journalist and former Financial Times South Asia bureau chief Edward Luce travels throughout India's many regions, cultures, and religious circles, investigating its fragile balance between tradition and modernity. From meetings with key political figures to fascinating encounters with religious pundits, economic gurus, and village laborers, In Spite of the Gods is a fascinating blend of analysis and reportage that comprehensively depicts the nuances of India's complex situation and its place in the world.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 48 more reviews...
Great book, good research effort May 7, 2008
This is a good book to read on India's progress in the last 60 years. Ed Luce has conducted a considerable amount of research and interviews.
In the political section Ed does tend to be favorable to Sonia Gandhi, is sympathetic to Muslims in India and is critical of the BJP. Sonia seems to have been critical of the communal violence in Gujarat and that such a thing could not have happened if the Congress was in power. Ed fails to point out that the Punjab riots in the early 80s were created by the Congress.
Personally I would read this book and draw my own conclusions.
Good read, but a curious retitling from the hardback edition May 1, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The subtitle of the hardback edition of Edward Luce's work was "The Strange Rise of Modern India." In the paperback, the 'Strange' modifier has been omitted, and I think it was a curious decision by the marketers of this fine effort. Luce takes pains in the introduction to explain the title, dropping terms like "strengths not necessarily located in its religious traditions, " "confounding expectations," the "unusual character of its rise," and the observation that India is succeeding in "expanding rapidly without having undergone a broad-based industrial revolution." But with the 'Strange' modifier left out of the title, there's really nothing for Luce to explain. The original title perfectly captured the spirit and tone of Luce's work. The re-done title is a cop-out or perhaps a bow to some aggrieved constituency.
Indeed, the entire book is dedicated to spotlighting the contradictory and "against the odds" (or, "in spite of the gods") nature of India's rise over the past decades. Luce doesn't introduce the term until the book's conclusion, but he notes there that John Kenneth Galbraith referred to India as "functioning anarchy." Luce places it somewhere between there and a very complex democracy, one with serious, pause-inducing structural shortcomings in, among other things, its labor markets, civil service and political party infrastructure.
Those looking for deep insights into off-shoring, IT, IIT, Bollywood (an included picture of Bollywood superstar Aishwarya Rai is, unfortunately, gratuitous - she's nowhere to be found on these pages), the rise of mega-companies like Mittal and Reliance and various other economic successes should look elsewhere. Luce's beat is mostly political, and he spends the great majority of the time dissecting the various parties and their machinations.
Still, all in all, this is a very good read from this first-rate journalist from the FT. I learned quite a lot.
 A 5-star read about the global economy April 12, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
While most have remained captivated by China's race to be recognized as the next world power, Edward Luce suggests shifting focus to another eastern country: India. In Spite of the Gods substantiates this suggestion.
Qualified to offer this survey after reporting from New Delhi for the Financial Times, Luce draws from both his professional and personal experiences in India to analyze its glaring contradictions, the most striking being India's rise to the world stage as a powerful economic and political force, while the population of India remains deeply religious, spiritual, and often impoverished.
To account for India's current position on the world stage, and likely candidacy for the next world power, Luce stunningly explains for the layperson the history and nature of India's economy. The Indian economy is fueled not by industry but by service. These service sectors combined in recent decades with a growing information technology sector, which immediately placed India within the ranks of the world powers.
Luce does not limit himself to economic analyses, nor to the middle and upper classes. Weaving together history, facts, anecdotes, and interviews from the entire subcontinent, Luce provides such shocking details such as that in Bihar, in northern India, roughly 80 percent of government-subsidized food is stolen. How? Most ration cards must be obtained through bribery, and Indians capable of bribing, are not poor.
Luce's seamless shifting between economics, politics, religion, tradition, and the world stage is useful. By providing various ways through which to interpret modern India, Luce not only allows his reader a breezy catch-up on exactly how India got from there to here, but also demonstrates to his reader how to pull from multiple perspectives when considering India.
Luce's modern history of India avoids romanticizing the country, a trap into which many historians of India have fallen. And his book loses no excitement in this wise aversion; instead, the picture Luce weaves of India is so hopeful that one is inclined to agree not only with his assertion that India is a viable candidate for the next world power, but furthermore that India's rise to world power will add to, rather than threaten, global stability.
Armchair Interviews says: Important message for all interested in our ever-changing global economy.
A thought-provoking introduction to India February 8, 2008
I read this book in preparation for a book club meeting for the Milwaukee World Trade Association. I found it somewhat challenging to read, having not known much about India before picking up this book.
The author looks at India from a variety of perspectives: historical, political, religious, etc., and successfully helps the reader understand the complexities and contradictions that are India.
I hope I can visit India some day.
 Portrait of an Emerging Superpower January 25, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I was largely ignorant of Indian history, politics and culture when I opened Edward Luce's "In Spite of the Gods", a journalistic account of early twenty first century India. I can't vouch for any of Luce's facts or interpretations; the best I can offer is a newbie's take on the book, and on the India that it reveals.
Luce's book is journalistic, which means it frequently describes his travels and meetings with various Indian politicians, businesspersons, mobsters, and regular folks. That is not my cop of tea - or ball of curry, or whatever - but Luce offers enough historical, cultural and political insight to make up for it, and his descriptions should make the book livelier to those who, unlike me, find more academic work as dull or lifeless.
I approve of Luce's organizational scheme - he devotes a chapter each for most of the most interesting aspects of India: It's fast growing economy, it's libertine and corrupt bureaucracy, it's politics, Muslim and Hindu conflicts, its international position, and of course, the infamous caste system. He also sneaks in observations about Bollywood melodramas and Hindu philosophy, although he pretty much leaves Sikhs alone.
On economics and globalization: In 1991, India has abandoned the so called - License Raj - a system of governmental control on imports, prices and production. With the deregulation, India has entered the world economy, growing an average of 6 percent over the last decade. Luce argues that India is following a strange path: unlike Western countries, the Asian tigers and China, India has not grown through low tech manufacturing sector, but through the efforts of a relatively small but highly skilled and English speaking workforce, the legacy of Nehru's setting up high level technical universities and promotion of English.
I know very little comparative economic history, but I still suspect Luce may be overstating his case somewhat. The "traditional" path may not be the only one, and I would suggest both Israel and Ireland as possible precursors to India's. Be that as it may, India's economic growth is both impressive and important - it transforms India, reduces poverty, and is bound to make India a superpower.
While India's economy is flourishing, so is its government, but in all the wrong ways. India's government seems to have emerged from a Libertarian apocalyptic nightmare. It's not merely corrupt; India's government is more or less an extortion racket, which requires bribes for the most basic services and, behind a socialist-lite rhetoric functions as a massive redistributor of wealth from the people to the bureaucrats. And yet, while the people loath and bemoan the corruption, their views are greatly ambivalent; virtually every Indian Luce meets dreams of getting a "government job" - not for the pension and steady pay, but for the endless opportunities for plunder. I don't know how one instills some well earned distrust of governments to a foreign culture, but one hopes that India's increasing success in the global economy would make it increasingly skeptical of statist nirvanas.
Surprisingly, Luce ends his otherwise critical account of government inefficiencies and corruption with a cornucopia of goals for Indian future: His agenda for the government includes road constructing, water supplying, agriculture reforming, and tax rationalizing; this seems far too ambitious India's dysfunctional government.
India faces challenges other then globalization and misgovernment; As an Israeli, I am naturally interested in the relations between the Hindu majority and the Muslim minority; For an Israeli, the relationship seems paradoxical; Hindu nationalism is responsible for unbelievable crimes - the Gujarat riots of 2002, following a Muslim terrorist attack that claimed fifty seven lives, included mass murder, rape and destruction of Muslim with tacit and not so tacit approval of the state Hindu government, and with little response from New Delhi. And yet Muslims seems a part of the Indian nation in a way unimaginable for Israel and its Arab citizens. Indian Muslims hold major positions in India's Civil and military establishment, and even India's right wing Bharatiya Janata Party caters to the Muslim vote occasionally. Luce's theme is that the religious divide between Muslim and Hindu is merely one among many religious and caste divisions in Indian society.
India, which has a tradition of coping with its various minorities and with foreign empires would doubtless manage to deal with the challenges of its Muslim population and with the threats and opportunities offered by Globalization and India's increased world power. But in the last chapters, Luce raises the specters of two dangers which may not be so easily avoided: environmental degradation and AIDS.
As a poor country, and one that with all its economic growth is likely to remain poor for a long time, India is naturally vulnerable to environmental catastrophe. As one of the greatest powers of the twenty first century, India must take a leading role in the struggle for environmental sanity.
AIDS may also pose a serious threat. Luce claims that India's rate of AIDS is equivalent to that of South Africa in 1991. If AIDS is indeed a serious threat to India, Indian politicians do not seem to take it seriously. Awareness would be a good start: I was shocked to find out that Homosexuality is still illegal in the world's largest democracy. How can one expect to combat sexually transmitted diseases without rational treatment of sex? If AIDS is as a major a threat on South Africa's future as it seems, and if there is even a small chance of a similar epidemic in India, Indian and World leaders have reasons to be concerned.
Beyond these threats, India's future looks promising, and Luce offers an insightful - if necessarily partial and journalistic - guide to it.
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