Behold the Leviathan

In defiance of the stereotypes trotted out by yesterday’s pundits, modern India’s rise is both unusual and unexpected. It is unusual because some of the sharpest economic improvements are being observed in those sections of Indian society which were thought to be the most disadvantaged: women, oppressed castes and rural India. It is unexpected because of the widespread view. Until a couple of years ago, India’s democratic construct was inferior to China’s single-party state.

In Behold the Leviathan: The Unusual Rise of Modern India, Saurabh Mukherjea and Nandita Rajhansa provide a gripping picture of how 1.5 billion Indians are combining to spectacular effect to create a range of social and economic outcomes which have no precedent in any emerging economy. For example, India now has as many chess grandmasters as the United States, and the expertise of its scientists has guided India’s space modules to the dark side of the moon, a feat no other country has achieved.

In this zeitgeist-defining book, the authors have also explored, through pathbreaking research, why the vast majority of India’s companies are struggling to grow their profits even as a small minority of these companies have gone on to build globe-girdling franchises worth tens of billions of dollars.

Written over two years, during which the authors crisscrossed India hundreds of times and interviewed over fifty of the country’s leading thinkers in business, policymaking, media, and academia, Behold the Leviathan has been hailed by the cognoscenti as ''a firecracker of a read,'' challenging decision-makers, policymakers, and opinion leaders to reevaluate their long-standing perceptions of India''s development.