Tinderbox

A devastating critique of India’s failure to fulfil its founding promises.

Since claiming independence from the British Empire in 1947, India has dramatically changed its nature and its place on the world stage. Today, it is common knowledge that the country glitters with formidable potential.

India is the largest democracy in the world and it has the third-most billionaires after the US and China. It is predicted it will have the world’s third-largest economy by 2030, the largest middle class by 2033 and the third biggest navy by 2035. India boasts a raft of savvy English-speaking academics and business-leaders, an army of talented software engineers and a youthful population buzzing with ideas and ambition.

But can all that India has promised – to itself and the wider world – come to fruition?

In Tinderbox, acclaimed Wall Street Journal columnist Sadanand Dhume takes a hard look at the country’s progress and potential, bringing together a view of politics, history, economic thinking and social attitudes. Dhume points to why the economic progress of India is stuttering, with a seemingly unbridgeable gap between the desires of its technocrats and its politicians; he shows how democracy is fraying, Hindu nationalism cutting away at the nation’s fabled pluralism; and he accounts for the country’s continuing paradox of astonishing contradictions, what with its record-numbers of billionaires and mass poverty, its technological advances but overall lack of access to electricity and clean water.

In short, it’s time to revisit the view that India’s growth and progress will continue at its prophesied pace. And it’s time to overturn the widespread assumption that a familiar India will remain familiar.

Sadanand Dhume writes a biweekly column on India and South Asia for the Wall Street Journal, focusing on the region’s politics, economics and foreign policy.

He is the author of My Friend the Fanatic: Travels with a Radical Islamist, which charts the rise of the radical Islamist movement in Indonesia. He holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology from the University of Delhi, a master’s degree in international relations from Princeton University and a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.