The world’s economic elites lavished praise on India for jettisoning its quasi-socialist system in the 1990s and lurching into the global economy. But as Meera Subramanian reminds us in A River Runs Again, barely a fraction of Indians have found affluence in the new world order. Most citizens of the planet’s largest democracy struggle for subsistence; many even lack regular access to clean water.
The rush by India’s one percent to emulate Western economic models has also caused ecological problems. However, A River Runs Again isn’t all gloom. In her travels across the subcontinent, Subramanian finds hope and industrious people who are cleaning up their environment and returning agriculture to its organic roots.
