Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Mr. Joshi is a fortune teller in South Delhi who depends on a green parrot to predict the future by picking out cards. When Adam Roberts visited him in 2012, Joshi declared that India was about to become the world's number one country, the most powerful nation, and that Narendra Modi would become prime minister. He also insisted that the Indian soccer team would win the 2014 World Cup.
Roberts takes Joshi's predictions and travels the length and breadth of the country from Kerala to the Himalayas, Bengal to Goa, to put them to the test. Is India about to realize its potential and become the world's greatest nation, as well as its most populous and its largest democracy? Or will the multitude of contradictions and internal rivalries thwart its moment? Filled with memorable encounters and offering a vivid sweep across the vast landscape and people-scape that India has become, Roberts shows what is perhaps the world's most vibrant nation in the full throes of its reinvention: it is a young, garrulous, confident, exuberant country that has successfully launched an orbiter to Mars but which can make the trains neither run on time nor at a speed that exceeds a modest amble.
With the flattening of China's growth, India is the world economy's most dynamic large player. India is betting that its future prosperity will cover up the fault lines of the present, and that the drive forward will allow the nation to forget the tribal and religious divisions that have brought such violence in the past, including the very recent past. Superfast Ultimate Primetime Nation is a portrait of a nation reaching for the destiny it has determined it's due.
Synopsis
Who can foretell India's future? Mr. Joshi is a fortune teller in a slum in south Delhi who uses a soothsaying green parrot to make predictions. When Adam Roberts visited him in 2012, Joshi's parrot declared that India was destined to become the most powerful nation under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The parrot also foretold that India would win the soccer World Cup.
Parrots may not be the preeminent political authority, but many Indians were just as confident. So Adam Roberts spent five years traveling the length and breadth of the country from Kerala to the Himalayas, Bengal to Gujarat. As he encountered the power brokers, gate keepers, and elaborate social dynamics of the world's largest democracy, he asked if -- and how -- India can become a truly great economic power, more influential abroad and stable at home. He met prime ministers, multimillionaires, traveling salesmen, pilgrims, eco-warriors, farmers, and tech innovators, each wrestling with the trials posed by the world's most conspicuously nearly great power. He experienced an immense country that, despite daunting challenges, is entering the most optimistic period in its modern history.
Through vivid storytelling and insight, Superfast Primetime Ultimate Nation examines the problems and promises of fast-growing India to reveal how it might reach its full potential and become, as Mr. Joshi's parrot predicted, a truly powerful nation.