India is a country of deep contradictions, where shiny Westernized optimism and sleek technology office parks stand in sharp contrast to the traditional values and structures of its villages. When Akash Kapur moves back to his homeland after more than a decade in the U.S., he is both exhilarated and disgusted by the incongruities he sees everywhere.
As Kapur interviews young technology workers, village elders and women struggling to balance work and family life, he puzzles over the contrasts of the new India and the old. India has enjoyed rapid economic growth in recent years, but behind the glossy veneer of shopping malls and a booming technology sector is a tangle of political unrest, reeking slums and a shrinking agricultural industry.
Reported with a keen journalistic eye, India Becoming is a nuanced, if ambivalent, portrait of a country caught in transition. As Kapur tries to reconcile the different portraits of the new India that emerge from his interivews, he and his wife debate their decision to move back: they want to participate in the country's progress, but are unnerved by the air pollution, gang crime and poverty lurking around so many corners.
The conclusion that India is changing rapidly--and not always for the better--is somewhat inevitable. But the insider-outsider perspective Kapur brings to his observations forms the basis of a fascinating glimpse into a complex country, tied to its roots even as it transforms itself into something utterly new. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams