Long plagued by poverty, India's recent economic growth has vaulted it into the ranks of the world's emerging powers, but what kind of power it wants to be remains a mystery. Our Time Has Come explains why India behaves the way it does, and the role it is likely to play globally as its prominence grows.

Twenty years ago India was still generally thought of as an archetypal developing country, home to the largest number of poor people of any country in the world, and beset by problems of low economic growth, casteism and violent religious conflict. Now India is being feted as an economic power-house which might well become the second largest economy in the world before the middle of this century. Its democratic traditions, moreover, remain broadly intact. How and why has this historic transformation come about? And what are its implications for the people of India, for Indian society and politics? These are the big questions addressed in this book by three scholars who have lived and researched in different parts of India during the period of this great transformation. Each of the 13 chapters seeks to answer a particular question: When and why did India take off? How did a weak state promote audacious reform? Is government in India becoming more responsive (and to whom)? Does India have a civil society? Does caste still matter? Why is India threatened by a Maoist insurgency? In addressing these and other pressing questions, the authors take full account of vibrant new scholarship that has emerged over the past decade or so, both from Indian writers and India specialists, and from social scientists who have studied India in a comparative context. India Today is a comprehensive and compelling text for students of South Asia, political economy, development and comparative politics as well as anyone interested in the future of the world's largest democracy.

India today is a vibrant free-market democracy, a nation well on its way to overcoming decades of widespread poverty. The nation’s rise is one of the great international stories of the late twentieth century, and in India Unbound the acclaimed columnist Gurcharan Das offers a sweeping economic history of India from independence to the new millennium. Das shows how India’s policies after 1947 condemned the nation to a hobbled economy until 1991, when the government instituted sweeping reforms that paved the way for extraordinary growth. Das traces these developments and tells the stories of the major players from Nehru through today. As the former CEO of Proctor & Gamble India, Das offers a unique insider’s perspective and he deftly interweaves memoir with history, creating a book that is at once vigorously analytical and vividly written. Impassioned, erudite, and eminently readable, India Unbound is a must for anyone interested in the global economy and its future.

Explores globalization, its opportunities for individual empowerment, its achievements at lifting millions out of poverty, and its drawbacks--environmental, social, and political.

Douglas Bullis goes beyond the usual superficial accounts found in the usual import/export books and provides something truly unique: an in-depth analysis of what India needs from the rest of the world, not what the world can get out of India. What most businesspeople don't know, and what is crucial if they are to succeed in their transactions with India, is what India needs from them—and not always is this mere capital. Bullis describes the rise of India's middle class and consumer economy since 1991, and provides readers with what very few outsiders know: how India really works. The result is an essential resource for corporate management in marketing, sales, strategic planning and investment, and important collateral reading for students and teachers of international business. Bullis argues that India has long been misunderstood by the West. Now, as the business climate goes global, India looms as the largest country in the world to embrace the market economy. As India emerges as a mass consumer market and a major low-cost manufacturing center, not only the Indian economy, but the world economy is likely to be changed. If overseas businesspeople are to enter India and compete successfully, they need a clear, broad, up-to-the-minute and useful view of the country, its markets, its resources, and its people. In this book, Bullis provides just that.