Abstract
The two books under review take very different approaches to explaining important aspects of contemporary India, but come to similar conclusions about its politics. The age of aspiration, by the veteran journalist and prolific author Dilip Hiro, is a collection of vignettes rather than a monograph in the classic sense; Why India is not a Great Power (yet), by the strategist Bharat Karnad, is a much more academic work, albeit a lively and often entertaining one, designed to try to change the minds of policy-makers in New Delhi. The cover of The age of aspiration features a photograph of Mukesh Ambani's extraordinary multistorey residence in Mumbai, Antilla. Built at a cost of 1 billion dollars, its 27 levels include a lap pool and large public entertainment areas, guest accommodation, luxurious family quarters and rooftop helipads. This monument to money and ambition, Hiro thinks, is emblematic of the ‘New India’ of growing but unevenly distributed wealth and inexorably spreading consumerism. This is an India quite distinct from the country he described in Inside India today 40 years ago, in 1976.
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