The Elephant, The Tiger, and the Cellphone: India, the Emerging 21st-Century Power - Softcover

Tharoor, Shashi

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1611452910 ISBN 13: 9781611452914

Publisher: Arcade, 2011

Synopsis

Interest in India has never been greater. Here Shashi Tharoor, one of the subcontinent’s most respected writers and diplomats, offers precious insights into this complex, multifaceted land, which despite its dazzling diversity of languages, customs, and cultures remains more than sixty years after its founding the world’s largest democracy. He describes the vast changes that have transformed this once sleeping giant into a world leader in science and technology, a nation once poverty-stricken that now boasts a middle class of over 300 million people as large as the entire population of the United States. Artfully combining hard facts and statistics with opinion and observation, Tharoor discusses the strengths and weaknesses of his rapidly evolving homeland in five areas politics, economics, culture, society, and sports and takes a fresh look at the world’s oldest civilizations and most populous countries.

About this title

About the Author

Shashi Tharoor was born in London and brought up in Bombay and Calcutta. He has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune, the Times of India, and Foreign Affairs. A human rights activist and winner of a Commonwealth Writers Prize, he is currently a member of the Indian Parliament and lives in New Dehli, India.

From Publishers Weekly

Bewildering diversity is the very essence of India, observes novelist and columnist Tharoor (The Great Indian Novel) in this engaging collection of essays, which tries to reconcile the country's clashing traditions with progress and liberalism. Hinduism's promiscuous openness to other beliefs and cultures makes it a model of secular tolerance, he argues, though Hindu fundamentalist bigotry is his favorite target. Tharoor also insists that ancient Indian science anticipated quantum mechanics, and praises his home state of Kerala for raising female literacy rates. (In a rare nostalgic note, he mourns the demise of the sari, then fences with a backlash of critical e-mail responses from pants-wearing women.) Most of all, he celebrates India's compatibility with the global economy, a stance that occasionally shades into business boosterism. Many pieces are drawn from Tharoor's columns and feature quick, sketchy takes on Indian cultural touchstones, from political corruption to Bollywood to cricket; his themes tend to be repeated rather than developed. But Tharoor's ready wit-an Indian without a horoscope is like an American without a credit card-and sympathetic insight combine in a fascinating portrait of Indian society. (Oct.)
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Edition details

• Publisher: Arcade
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1611452910
• ISBN 13: 9781611452914
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 512