Book Review > In Spite Of The Gods

There are two kinds of people who could profit from reading Edward Luce’s ‘In Spite Of The Gods’. Those who don't know the first thing about India. And those who think they know pretty much every thing they need to know about the country. Those of us who fall somewhere in between, and possess a penchant for readable and reliable non-fiction would also find it a rivetting read.

Edward Luce worked in Delhi as the South-Asia bureau chief for the reputed Financial Times between 2001 and 2005. Apart from the nature of his job, Luce has an Indian wife and this allowed him a unique perspective into the culture of the country. The book in question, is a comprehensive account of India - its people, its economy, its failings and its way into the future. Think of it as a Wikipedia entry on drugs.
There are times when you find Luce's style a bit too dry and matter-of-fact but you need to constantly remind yourself that Luce is a trained financial correspondent and not a travel writer or a columnist. He's played to his strengths. When he states a fact, it seems to come with unquestionable authority. His telling observations and opinions lend an essential humanity without leaving us wondering whether we're just weighing someone's snap-judgements against truth. His affection and exasperation for the country is evident and within a few pages we know we’re not dealing with arrogant dismissal like Naipaul or cynical diatribes like Patrick French’s portraits of India.
Luce begins with an armchair conversation on the Indian economy. From the Nehruvian Socialist-Secular model to modern day dollar economics.

"Hindsight makes it easy to dismiss as hopelessly optimistic Nehru's belief that devoting most of India's scarce financial resources to grand projects would propel the country to industrial status within a generation. Yet even at the time there were sceptical voices who questioned whether higher education should receive the same budgetary allocation as elementary education in a country where 84 percent of the people were illiterate?" Within a few pages he paints an accurate picture of the swadeshi model, its spin-offs (we wouldn't perhaps be the cerebral knowledge economy we were today if Nehru hadn't had the vision to set up the IIT's), the ruthless stupidity of his daughter Indira, the downward spiral that lead to the devaluation of the rupee in 1967 and later in 1991 after the Gulf War.

He then launches into the stranglehold the Civil Service has on the country illustrating it with examples ranging from the success of the ISRO to the failures of the several poverty alleviation programmes. Like pouring water into a can with a hole in it, the Indian government puts in billions into these programmes which end up almost inevitably in the wrong hands. “Hypocrisy is too mild a word to describe those who defend this system in the name of the poor. It has been described by some as ‘friendly fire’ when soldiers accidentally shoot their own men. Under this policy, the government buys wheat and rice from farmers at a higher price than the market would pay in order to increase their incomes. This ‘minimum support system’ sounds reasonable in theory. But in practise, it is a ‘maximum support system’. A small proportion of wealthy farmers in well-irrigated states like Punjab and Haryana collect almost all the subsidy, because they produce much higher surpluses of grain than those in other states and because they operate a ruthlessly effective lobbying system in New Delhi. The government’s intervention sharply raises the purchasing price of food, which inflates its selling price. Higher food prices hit everybody, but they hit the poorest hardest, since they spend almost all their incomes on food.”

The next glimpse offers us an overview of caste-politics. A razor’s-edge piece of reporting on the Mayawatis, Laloos, Mulayam Singhs and their constituents. It is a subject that naturally moves into an understanding of the two main religions in India – Hinduism and Islam and its nation-shaping influence. Nehru and Gandhi had a key role to play in establishing India as a secular democracy. But I was pleasantly surprised to learn of Ambedkar’s contribution. If Luce is to be believed, Ambedkar is quite possibly the most forward-thinking of them all. It was he who advised Nehru, even before independence that the most important decision he would have to make is the one that turns the village around from being a failed economic model into a profitable enterprise. It is the one question that has dogged every government since independence. Ambedkar’s solution was to invest heavily in rapid urbanization. He said this was the only solution and the sooner we went about doing it, the better. We still haven’t begun a whole-scale programme along these lines. Successive governments have tried and failed to bring prosperity to the villages. And this is the reason why scores of people prefer living in squalor in desperate shantytowns in Mumbai, Calcutta and Delhi rather than return to destitution in the village.

The threat posed by rabid Hindu nationalists is frightening, to say the least. What is especially scary is the fact that had Vajpayee not committed a few far-reaching politic blunders (like reaching out for the Muslim vote) our country would be in the hands of Hindu fascists. Luce has an engaging interview with the head of the RSS in Ahmedabad, followed by a visit to a factory that makes cancer-curing medicines made of cow piss. He also shows the other side – the challenges faced by Muslims and their own Talibanisation of working class Islam. Luce uses this knowledge as a base to sketch a model of the intricacies of the US-China-India relationship and its impact on the shaping of the modern world. Praise for the Luce’s efforts come from many quarters, most notably from Amartya Sen who calls the book ‘a deeply insightful account of modern India’. It would be difficult to disagree.