The Hindu : New Delhi News : Capturing the dynamics of India

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Friday, Nov 02, 2007
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New Delhi

New Delhi

Capturing the dynamics of India

Kunal Diwan

New Delhi: Eminent columnist Shashi Tharoor’s latest book, ‘The Elephant, The Tiger and The Cellphone’, was released by Penguin Books India in the Capital earlier this week.

The novel deals with the paradox that is India, with the highest number of billionaires in Asia and also the largest number of people living in poverty, misery and neglect.

Mr. Tharoor’s work brings to the fore the strange situation that India finds itself in at the beginning of the 21st Century - coming to terms with dizzying successes and depressing depravity that coexist within the same space and time frame.

The globetrotting author says that for more than four decades after gaining independence the country was like a somnolent elephant, staggering under the weight of an ever-increasing population and a slow growth rate, comfortably resting on its achievements in the centuries gone by.

Then in the early 1990s the elephant seemed to have woken up from its slumber and began to change and gradually morphed into an aggressive tiger with an open economy and a global outlook. Indianness in a pluralistic society to the evolution of the once sleeping giant into a world leader in the realms of science and technology.

The book is leavened with whimsical and witty pieces on cricket, Bollywood and the national penchant for holidays.

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