Poverty amid Plenty in the New India

This thoughtful and challenging book affords an alternative vision of India's rise in the world.

Atul Kohli (Author)

9780521513876, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 20 February 2012

264 pages, 12 b/w illus. 7 tables
23.5 x 15.5 x 1.5 cm, 0.6 kg

'As the title indicates this book by Atul Kohli sets out to explain both the remarkable economic growth in India during the last three decades and the disappointing lack of success in combating poverty … India's political economy is notoriously difficult to summarise and predict but irrespective of this, Kohli's book will be a standard reference work on India's political economy at the beginning of the twenty-first century.' Jørgen Dige Pedersen, Commonwealth and Comparative Politics

India has one of the fastest growing economies on earth. Over the past three decades, socialism has been replaced by pro-business policies as the way forward. And yet, in this 'new' India, grinding poverty is still a feature of everyday life. Some 450 million people subsist on less than $1.25 per day and nearly half of India's children are malnourished. In his latest book, Atul Kohli, a seasoned scholar of Indian politics and economics, blames this discrepancy on the narrow nature of the ruling alliance in India that, in its new-found relationship with business, has prioritized economic growth above all other social and political considerations. This thoughtful and challenging book affords an alternative vision of India's rise in the world that its democratic rulers will be forced to come to grips with in the years ahead.

Introduction
1. Political change: illusions of inclusion
2. State and economy: want amid plenty
3. Regional diversity: to him who hath
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Political economy [KCP]