The End of Karma; Hope and Fury Among India's Young

Nicole Bengivena (Author photograph) and Martin Ad New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2016. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. [12], 244 pages. Map. Illustrations. Notes. Some DJ wear. Inscribed by the author on the title page. Inscription reads For Mahmoud Somini Sengupta. A penetrating, personal look at contemporary India the world’s largest democracy at a moment of transition. Somini Sengupta emigrated from Calcutta to California as a young child in 1975. Returning thirty years later as the bureau chief for The New York Times, she found a vastly different country: one defined as much by aspiration and possibility at least by the illusion of possibility as it is by the structures of sex and caste. The End of Karma is an exploration of this new India through the lens of young people from different worlds: a woman who becomes a Maoist rebel; a brother charged for the murder of his sister, who had married the “wrong” man; a woman who opposes her family and hopes to become a police officer. Driven by aspiration and thwarted at every step by state and society they are making new demands on India’s democracy for equality of opportunity, dignity for girls, and civil liberties. Sengupta spotlights these stories of ordinary men and women, weaving together a groundbreaking portrait of a country in turmoil. Somini Sengupta, the international climate reporter for The New York Times, tells the stories of people most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. A George Polk Award-winning international correspondent, she has reported from a Congo River ferry, a Himalayan glacier, the streets of Baghdad and Mumbai and many places in between. She has served as The Times’s bureau chief in West Africa and South Asia. Derived from a Kirkus review: India’s young population is growing dramatically—and it’s growing impatient with the roadblocks its elders have erected. “Strictly by the numbers,” writes the author, who covers the U.N. for the New York Times, “inequality in India doesn’t look as bad as the imbalance between the rich and poor in the United States”—and though the numbers don’t tell everything, the economic reforms that India has been putting into place since 1991 seem to have helped some. As her sketches of young Indians reveal, there are numerous social and economic constraints to a growth that will satisfy this cohort, which aspires to mobility and opportunity along with wealth. One hindrance is India’s caste system. One case study involves a budding, brilliant entrepreneur who, in the end, settled for the safety of a government job—not the worst thing that can happen but a terrible loss of possibility. Another depicts a rural Maoist guerrilla, for India is one of the few countries in the world where Maoism still gets an airing—thanks, Sengupta writes, to its having been able to “tap into the well of anger” that young Indians feel for having so few avenues out of poverty and predefined roles short of dropping out of society altogether, emigrating, or being swallowed up by Facebook. A compelling portrait of what will soon be the world’s most populous nation, one on the verge of great change—for better or worse. Condition: Very good / Good.

Keywords: India, Social Conditions, Aspirations, Caste System, Guerrilla, Facebook, Democracy, Apostates, Politics, Equality, Dignity, Civil Liberties

ISBN: 9780393071009

[Book #85594]

Price: $125.00

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