In his latest book, Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country,
journalist Sudeep Chakravarti, 44, argues that India could implode in a war fuelled by the anger of the poor and the dispossessed.
In a wide-ranging interview with Deputy Managing Editor Sarita Ravindranath, Chakravarti talks about the sham that is 'Superstar India' and his attempt to shake Middle India out of its mall-stupor and humanise a tragic conflict: Of a country at war with itself.
Your book goes against the grain of the 'Superstar India' image that mainstream media is celebrating. You focus instead on 250 million people who live on less than Rs 12 a day and the Maoists feeding on their anger. Why and when did you decide to write about them?
I have spent my career as a journalist, both as reporter and editor, tracking India’s economic development, meeting top ministers, entrepreneurs and executives from India and abroad; and attending summits from Delhi to Davos. I am a direct beneficiary of India’s ongoing economic liberalisation and freedom of expression that India’s urban middle classes have come to take for granted. But there is a growing disconnect I do not wish to keep quiet about.
Except for perhaps ‘unity’ based on the rupee, corruption, cinema and cricket, there is a grave disconnect between urban and rural India, and, even within urban India. This disconnect is economic, social and political. Seventy per cent of India is away from the ‘growth party’.
In a wide-ranging interview with Deputy Managing Editor Sarita Ravindranath, Chakravarti talks about the sham that is 'Superstar India' and his attempt to shake Middle India out of its mall-stupor and humanise a tragic conflict: Of a country at war with itself.
Your book goes against the grain of the 'Superstar India' image that mainstream media is celebrating. You focus instead on 250 million people who live on less than Rs 12 a day and the Maoists feeding on their anger. Why and when did you decide to write about them?
I have spent my career as a journalist, both as reporter and editor, tracking India’s economic development, meeting top ministers, entrepreneurs and executives from India and abroad; and attending summits from Delhi to Davos. I am a direct beneficiary of India’s ongoing economic liberalisation and freedom of expression that India’s urban middle classes have come to take for granted. But there is a growing disconnect I do not wish to keep quiet about.
Except for perhaps ‘unity’ based on the rupee, corruption, cinema and cricket, there is a grave disconnect between urban and rural India, and, even within urban India. This disconnect is economic, social and political. Seventy per cent of India is away from the ‘growth party’.
