Good karma.

• Author: Fittipaldi, Santiago
• Position: Edward Luce - Rese

In Spite of the Gods by Edward Luce Doubleday US$26.00

While China's voracious economy has grabbed global headlines and sparked red-hot demand for the world's raw materials, India too has begun turning into an economic giant, perhaps in a subtler fashion but one that is no less dynamic. U.K. journalist Edward Luce, the former Financial Times bureau chief for southern Asia based in New Delhi, offers a slew of political, economic and religious factors that could solidify that growth.

In Spite of the Gods analyzes the forces that have transformed India from one of the world's poorest countries into a major emerging-market economy. Yet Luce casts a nevertheless critical and objective eye on the issues, pointing out that even though there has been progress, it has been slow and spotty. For example, he illustrates the contradictions of modern skyscrapers full of companies moving millions of dollars a day cheek-and-jowl with some of the poorest slums on the planet, the inhabitants of which survive on less than a dollar a day.

Luce takes the reader through the gamut of lives in modern India, from humble workers to the showiest of millionaires. He shows how ironic it is that a country with nuclear reactors, a large population of technical professionals and a middle class thirsty to spend nevertheless still carries the burden of a culture globally synonymous with extreme poverty and suffers high illiteracy rates and frequent epidemics.

According to Luce, South Korea and India in 1950 had the same standard of living. A half-century later, per-capita income in South Korea is 10 times more than in India. In China, where orthodox Maoist ideology reigned and widespread socio-economic problems were commonplace at the time, per-capita income is now double that of India.

The problem is India itself, Luce...