Alternately engaging and exasperating dispatches from a conflicted nation.
A report from India at a point of enormous transition—and the news is never really good.
As the Economist’s former South Asia correspondent, now based in Paris, British journalist Roberts (The Wonga Coup: Guns, Thugs and a Ruthless Determination to Create Mayhem in an Oil-Rich Corner of Africa, 2006) offers a kind of resigned love letter to his adopted country of five years, taking India’s fondness for hyperbole literally with an ironic focus on the four terms it often uses to regard itself: “superfast, primetime, ultimate nation.” Breaking these down, the author equates “superfast” with the economy; “primetime” with politics; “ultimate” is its relations with others countries like China, Pakistan, and America; and “nation” means how the country sees itself. The diversity of the world’s largest democracy is both a boon and a drawback, and the economic enrichment since the 1990s is scattershot. Roberts explores both the poorest area, the rural northeast (“landlocked on the wrong side of Bangladesh”), where tea-pickers make less than $1 per day, and the most affluent, Gujarat, home to the highly motivated nationalist Hindu prime minister Narendra Modi. Despite the progressive steps the nation has taken toward its citizens’ well-being and national health, the author must drop caveats at every milestone: while the youthfulness of the country points to a dynamic future workforce, one-third of India’s population is stunted and underweight; family dynasties like the "Sonia-and-Singh Show” clog avenues toward liberal promise; tech dreams are derailed by corruption and faulty infrastructure; 120 male babies are being born for every 100 females, pointing to the most alarming demographics in South Asia; the egregious treatment of the environment and dearth of basic health services (in 2016, “130 million Indian households lacked toilets”), electricity, and education; and Modi’s government’s abysmal sectarian relations. Ultimately, there is no comparison to China, already eons ahead, and India’s need for political will is crying out. So what next for the Asian juggernaut that has not quite delivered?
Alternately engaging and exasperating dispatches from a conflicted nation.Pub Date: April 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-61039-669-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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