India: Another Millennium?

Author: Romila ThaparPublisher: Penguin/VikingYear: 2000Language: EnglishPages: 317ISBN/UPC (if available): 0670896454 DescriptionThought provoking and incisive, this work compels us to look at the hard choices before India in the early decades of this millennium.The concept of the millennium encompasses a sense of progress and the hope for a better future. Pursuing this notion, the present collection of essays with an introduction by Romila Thapar explores the challenges before twenty-first-century India in its quest for a democratic and just society. Globalization and the revolution in information technology provide a new context to the problems faced in contemporary times by Indians. But will globalization ensure rapid economic growth and development in the face of low literacy, rising population, the gradual withdrawal of the State from social commitments and the hesitant formation of a responsible civil society? Will imitation westernization and the consumerism that comes it,