The Caged Phoenix: Can India Fly?

Dipankar Gupta, one of India's foremost thinkers on social and economic issues, takes a criticaland controversiallook at the limits of the Indian success story inThe Caged Phoenix. Through a fine blend of theory and new evidence on small scale industries, farming, and more, Gupta argues that, despite the promise of Independence and liberalization, India continues to remain caged in backwardness. In short, the country's phenomenal growth story has not translated into development. Questioning prevailing culture-based theoriesand the academics who perpetuate themthat are used to explain India's poverty and its hampered development, Gupta attempts to "normalize" India, advocating a rigorous rejection of justifications that rely upon cultural otherness and exoticization. He critically examines the reluctance to acknowledge that structural impediments, not cultural factors, deny growth benefits to the majority of Indians, and explores the close link between growth in high technology sectors of the Indian economy on one side and sweat shops and rural stagnation on the other. Making a comparison with the developed West, Gupta underscores the point that affluence can be achieved only after living conditions improve across all social classes. Combining original scholarship with a lively narrative, Gupta debunks widespread myths about why India's democracy has yet to deliver and offers compelling explanations for the paradoxes that exist.

Dipankar Gupta retired in 2009 from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, where he worked as a professor of sociology for more than two decades. He has held several visiting professorships and fellowships in Europe, the UK, and the United States. Most recently, in 2007, he was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center, where he completed a draft of this book, The Caged Phoenix. He has written or edited fifteen books on subjects ranging from ethnicity to caste to agrarian mobilization. He was co-editor of Contributions to Indian Sociology for about fifteen years and now writes regular columns in several national dailies. In 1998 he started and led the Business Ethics and Integrity Services practice for the consulting firm KPMG, India, for more than five years.