In the northern state of Bihar, Luce writes, more than 80 percent of subsidized government food is stolen. Most ration cards are obtained through bribery, by Indians who are not poor. It's the same story in nearly every area of an economy touched by the groping tentacles of a government that "is never absent from your life, except when you actually need it."
As a former Cabinet official tells Luce, corruption is not simply a nuisance or an added burden on the system. Rather, he says, "in many respects and in many parts of India it is the system."
Luce, traveling the country's rickety rail system, covers an enormous amount of ground. He inquires into the Kashmir dispute while dissecting India's fraught relationship with Pakistan; marvels over New Delhi's spanking-new subway system; describes the middle class rage for mega-
weddings; pays a visit to Bolly-wood and, in some of his most absorbing chapters, analyzes the changing caste system, the status of India's Muslims and the alarming rise of Hindu nationalism.
All this and a visit to C2W.com, a Mumbai company that markets brands through the Internet, mobile phones and interactive television shows. Its founder, Alok Kejriwal, is still in his 30s, and to Luce represents the new India.
"I am greedy," he tells the author. "I have no trouble admitting to that."
At one point, Luce ponders India's constant state of chaos and compares it to a swarm of bees. From inside the swarm, things look random, but from the outside, the bees hold formation and move forward coherently.
Sometime in the 2020s, at current growth rates, India will overtake Japan to become the world's third-largest economy. Greatness lies within its grasp, Luce argues, if it can figure out a way to restructure its inefficient agriculture, put millions of desperately poor people in jobs that pay more than a pittance, wake up to a potential HIV-AIDS crisis and root out government corruption.
Luce takes a cautiously optimistic view. "India is not on an autopilot to greatness," he writes. "But it would take an incompetent pilot to crash the plane."
RSS