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    My book, India Becoming, will be published on March 15th, 2012. Read an excerpt in The New Yorker.

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  • Highlights

    I write a lot about development and change in modern India--how new wealth is changing the country, for better and for worse. See these reports from the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times. (1, 2).

    I'm particularly interested in (and concerned by) the environmental destruction being wrought by development. See this report on coastal erosion from Granta, and this report on India's garbage crisis.

    I've also written on development for The Atlantic (an essay review on Amartya Sen ) and The Economist (on the digital divide).

    I've written several literary essays and reviews over the years. See this one on VS Naipaul, from Transition, and this one on Indian literature, from The New Statesman.

    Two articles on the five-year anniversary of the tsunami (1, 2), from The International Herald Tribune and The New York Times. These follow-up from my two original reports on the tsunami, published in The New Yorker (1, 2).

An Indian Says Farewell to Poverty, With Jitters

A version of my first column from the International Herald Tribune was reprinted in this week’s New York Times.

People sometimes ask me how I feel about India’s economic development. I tell them the truth. I say I don’t know. I say I feel ambivalent about the passing of a world I knew as a child, a transition that I know is inevitable and probably even desirable. But I haven’t reconciled myself to it yet.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 9th, 2009 at 3:58 am and is filed under writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “An Indian Says Farewell to Poverty, With Jitters”

  1. Nadine B. Hack says:
    August 9, 2009 at 11:16 am

    To Akash Kapur: After reading your article “Farewell to Poverty, with Jitters” carried in today’s New York Times, I just posted an entry on http:/blog.beCause.net encouraging others to check it out and to comment on the ups and downs of sustainable development. I would very much welcome a comment from you on my blog. – Nadine B. Hack, President, beCause Global Consulting

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