The End of Karma: Hope and Fury Among India's Young

by Somini Sengupta

Overview

A penetrating, personal look at contemporary India—the world’s largest democracy at a moment of transition.

Somini Sengupta emigrated from Calcutta to California as a young child in 1975. Returning thirty years later as the bureau chief for The New York Times, she found a vastly different country: one defined as much by aspiration and possibility—at least by the illusion of possibility—as it is by the structures of sex and caste. The End of Karma is an exploration of this new India through the lens of young people from different worlds: a woman who becomes a Maoist rebel; a brother charged for the murder of his sister, who had married the “wrong” man; a woman who opposes her family and hopes to become a police officer. Driven by aspiration—and thwarted at every step by state and society—they are making new demands on India’s democracy for equality of opportunity, dignity for girls, and civil liberties. Sengupta spotlights these stories of ordinary men and women, weaving together a groundbreaking portrait of a country in turmoil.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393071009
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	03/07/2016
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Somini Sengupta, a George Polk Award–winning journalist, covers the United Nations for The New York Times, for which she was previously the bureau chief in Dakar and New Delhi. She was born in Calcutta and lives in New York.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Aspiration, Like Water 1

"Hi-Fi": How to Outrun Fate 25

Gates: Keeping Out the Lives of Others 57

Guerrilla: Paying for Broken Promises 89

Strongman: Aspiration Gets into Politics 113

Facebook Girls: Speaking Up, Testing Democracy's Conscience 143

Apostates: When They Dared to Love 163

Curse: A Father's Fears, a Daughter's Dreams 185

Epilogue 213

Acknowledgments 223

Notes 227

Editorial Reviews

In the book's most vibrant sections, Sengupta profiles seven young Indians, shadowing some of them over years. All grew up in poor or lower-middle-class homes—the socioeconomic brackets that hold a majority of India's populace—and their lives illustrate the ways in which the state is failing its youth.

The New York Times Book Review - Samanth Subramanian

"The End of Karma is the essential beginning for any reader who wants to understand the future of the world’s biggest democracy. With meticulously researched, grippingly told stories about youth in today’s India, Sengupta’s quest to understand her daughter’s birthplace seized me like no other book coming from the country today."

Suketu Mehta

"[A] sharply observed study...richly detailed portraits....What separates the book from the musings of so many other foreign correspondents is the lens through which Sengupta sees the country: that of a mother."

Economist

"Portentous...Returning to a transformed nation—its economies in bloom, its cities abuzz—[Sengupta] sensed a fresh impatience of aspiration....Vibrant."

New York Times Book Review

"Anyone who imagines that India today is simply a land of IT companies and call centers should read this book. Somini Sengupta sees the new India in all its complexity—its gated towers and remote villages; its kidnapped maids and chief ministers; those who want to remake it into a Hindu nation and those who care only about getting ahead. India is home to nearly a fifth of the world’s people—few places will be more important to the shape of the twenty-first century. The End of Karma, with its vivid storytelling and intimate portraits of India’s younger generation, is a riveting vision of the future."

Larissa MacFarquhar

"Thoughtful and timely...Sengupta balances strong impartial analysis with emotional investment."

Wall Street Journal

"[A] sharply observed study...richly detailed portraits....What separates the book from the musings of so many other foreign correspondents is the lens through which Sengupta sees the country: that of a mother."

Economist

★ 03/01/2016
In this story of India's younger generation, New York Times writer Sengupta does a wonderful job of detailing the distinct lives of seven young individuals (one could argue that the author is the eighth, as she folds her experiences into the work) struggling to fulfill their educational and economic dreams. These aspirations, which are deemed a right among the country's youth, come into conflict with an older generation and a nation that cannot provide for its citizens basic services such as water, electricity, education, and jobs. While Sengupta sees change and hope for the younger set, she doesn't provide any easy answers to what will happen in the future. VERDICT Beginning in 2011 and continuing until 2030, around ten million Indians will turn 18 each year and start their search for a college education, a job, and personal independence. This volume looks at a few individuals simultaneously succeeding and failing to find their way in modern India. Highly recommended for anyone interested in India past and present as well as women's issues. [See Prepub Alert, 9/28/15.]—Melissa Aho, Univ. of Minnesota Bio-Medical Lib., Minneapolis

Library Journal

2016-01-28
India's young population is growing dramatically, writes Indian-American journalist Sengupta—and it's growing impatient with the roadblocks its elders have erected. "Strictly by the numbers," writes the author, who covers the U.N. for the New York Times, "inequality in India doesn't look as bad as the imbalance between the rich and poor in the United States"—and though the numbers don't tell everything, the economic reforms that India has been putting into place since 1991 seem to have helped some. Even so, as her sketches of young Indians reveal, there are numerous social and economic constraints to a growth that will satisfy this cohort, which aspires to mobility and opportunity along with wealth. One appalling hindrance is India's useless caste system, which works to put the lie to Sengupta's note that "ordinary citizens up and down the social ladder believed they did not have to be bound by their past, that they could escape what had been predestined." Not so if you are born a Manganiyar, traditional court musicians to the rulers of Rajasthan somehow classified as untouchable, so low that you are "technically outside the Hindu caste system" and therefore legally, socially, and economically invisible. One case study involves a budding, brilliant entrepreneur who, in the end, settled for the safety of a government job—not the worst thing that can happen but a terrible loss of possibility. Another depicts a rural Maoist guerrilla, for India is one of the few countries in the world where Maoism still gets an airing—thanks, Sengupta writes, to its having been able to "tap into the well of anger" that young Indians feel for having so few avenues out of poverty and predefined roles short of dropping out of society altogether, emigrating, or being swallowed up by Facebook. A compelling portrait of what will soon be the world's most populous nation, one on the verge of great change—for better or worse.

Kirkus Reviews

"The End of Karma brilliantly opens the door into the world of the striving young men and women of the new India as they try to shed India’s past and invent their own future. Somini Sengupta’s chosen characters are so vividly drawn and so sensitively reported."

Tina Brown

"[Sengupta] marvels at the resulting ambition and ingenuity, while also observing the power of residual caste and gender prejudices."

The New Yorker

"Gorgeously written. . . . Sengupta lays out the enormous challenges India faces. But she remains optimistic that the young generation will continue to push the country toward more meaningful progress."

Seattle Times