Book Review: "Planet India" by Mira Kamdar (2007)

I picked up this book a little while ago for a couple of reasons: first, a buddy of mine had been in India since January and was returning at the end of June, and I wanted to be able to have an informed discussion with him about his experience; and secondly, I wanted to know a little more about the emerging Indian economy that we are hearing a lot about these days. Plus, there were a whole lot of stats on the back cover that I found fascinating. For instance:

- India is the world's fourth largest economy.

- It is also expected to be the most populous country on Earth by the year 2034.

- India's middle class is already larger than the entire population of the United States.

- One out of three of the world's malnourished children live in India.

- India is home to the biggest youth population on earth: 600 million people are under the age of 25.

- 72,000,000 cell phones will be sold in India in 2007.

- India just edged past the United States to become the second-most-preferred destination for foreign direct investment after China.

- In 1991, Indians purchased 150,000 automobiles; in 2007, they are expected to purchase 10 million.

- By 2008, India's total pool of qualified graduates will be more than twice as large as China's.

- By 2015, an estimated 3.5 million white-collar U.S. jobs will be offshored.

- India is the largest arms importer in the developing world.

- American corporations expect to earn $20 to $40 billion from the civilian nuclear agreement with India.

- In 2007, there are 2.2 million Indian Americans, a number expected to double every decade.

- Twenty-nine percent of India's population speaks English -- that's 350 million people.

Having read a very interesting book recently about that other bogeyman of the West, China (which, despite recent issues of defectivity with tires and toothpaste, is often compared with India as the next potentially great competitor to American-style capitalism), I was hopeful that the author of "Planet India", an Indian-American woman by the name of Mira Kushnar, would deliver a rigourous analysis of the state of play in that country these days. Instead, she by and large eschews the statistics outlined on the book's jacket, and instead provides a rosy, romanticized view of India's socioeconomic and cultural milieu interspersed with her own personal history.

It wouldn't be a stretch to say that the author writes from a hopeful perspective, one which wishes that India's rise will eventually put the United States in its place, and that's fine, but it just wasn't what I was looking for from this read. Perhaps she's just too attached to the subject at hand to be clinical. Kushnar also doesn't discuss the colonial legacy or the remaining vestiges of the alliance between India and the former Soviet Union during the Cold War and how that still influences the worldview of the average Indian (if there is such a thing).

While she embraces globalization on a cultural level, she is very suspicious of profit, which I personally found troubling. I would argue that a clear-headed look at the burgeoning Indian economy needs to be written by someone who considers globalization to be generally positive for that market.

Overall, this wasn't a bad introduction for me, but I would just wait for the next time The Economist does a special report on India instead of spending your dollars and/or hours with "Planet India".

Overall rating: 6.25/10