India: Forty Years of Independence - Hardcover

Indiathe world's largest democracy and the eighth-largest industrial nationis faced with the task of bringing 300 million people (some 40% of its population) out of dire poverty. In a balanced, illuminating report, Tully, chief of the BBC's Delhi bureau, and Masani, current affairs producer for BBC Radio, assess the strengths and weaknesses of a society saddled with a colonial legacy of backwardness, poverty and entrenched corruption. Topics discussed include bloody struggles pitting landlords against landless farmers, the all-pervasive influence of Hinduism, Indira Gandhi's enormous popularity and India's ambivalent attitude toward women, who are variously treated as goddesses, chattels and workers enjoying a status equal to that of men. The authors analyze Rajiv Gandhi's clash with powerful vested interests who profit from the abuses he is trying to correct. This intelligent, punchy, opinionated report offers a corrective to the negative image of India purveyed in the U.S. media.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In this work, whose strength rests in its explanation of the Nehru period as the best years of Indian independence, Tully and Masani provide a 40-year snapshot of the political, social, and economic development of the country since independence. In Nehru's era, communal violence subsided, and Nehru's Fabian socialism threaded its way throughout India's economic plans. Nehru also constructed a position of Indian leadership in the Third World. The authors view the subsequent administration of Indira Gandhi as weak, allowing politicians and bureaucrats to make inroads as India's power brokers and providing the climate for communal violence and growing regional separatism. John F. Riddick, Central Michigan Univ., Mt. Pleasant
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.