India is everywhere: on magazine covers and cinema marquees, at the gym and in the kitchen, in corporate boardrooms and on Capitol Hill. Through incisive reportage and illuminating analysis, Mira Kamdar explores India's astonishing transformation from a developing country into a global powerhouse. She takes us inside India, reporting on the people, companies, and policies defining the new India and revealing how it will profoundly affect our future.

India is everywhere: in the news, in movie theaters, at the office, and on Capitol Hill.Through incisive reportage and illuminating analysis, Mira Kamdar tells the dramatic story of India's bid to transform itself from a developing country into a global powerhouse. She introduces us to America's new strategic vision for India, and to the increasingly influential Indian-American community. And she takes us inside India, reporting on the people, the companies, the policies, and the challenges that will profoundly affect our future.

With 600 million people under the age of twenty-five, a middle class as big as the population of the United States, and economic growth pushing double digits, India is potentially the world's hottest market and biggest labor force. But while India's recent boom has made thirty-six Indians billionaires, 800 million Indians still struggle to survive on less than two dollars per day. A vibrant democracy where the poor are more likely to vote than the rich,India is racing against time to invent an environmentally sustainable and socially equitable model adapted to the twenty-first century. India is the world in microcosm. Water, energy,extreme inequality, education, health care, globalization, terrorism, global warmingIndia's problems are universal. If India solves them, it will not only save itself, it may save us all. If it fails, we will all suffer. As goes India, so goes the world.

Provocative, timely, and essential, Planet India is the groundbreaking book that tells us just how high the stakes are--what there is to lose and what there is to gain from India's meteoric rise.

Author's Note

INTRODUCTION

Life on Planet India

CHAPTER ONE

Indians and Americans

CHAPTER TWO

India Imagines the Future

CHAPTER THREE

Retailing India

CHAPTER FOUR

600,000 Villages

CHAPTER FIVE

The Cities

CHAPTER SIX

The Other India

CHAPTER SEVEN

Power

CONCLUSION

As Goes India, So Goes the World

AFTERWORD

India's Dilemma

Acknowledgments

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index