Recasting India: How Entrepreneurship Is Revolutionizing the World’s Largest Democracy

A boosterish quality runs through this collection of short profiles of Indian business ventures that, in scope and scale, are far from the globally recognized companies in the vanguard of the Indian economic renaissance. Sengupta, an editor for Fortune India, takes a business journalist’s cheerful view of small-scale enterprises he believes are obscured by the reverence accorded to tycoons and technology mavens in both India and the West. His subjects range from a housekeeping service that safeguards impoverished female employees, to the resurgent economy of violence-plagued Kashmir, to driven entrepreneurs from the Dalit, or “untouchable,” caste. This generally positive view is coupled with a charge that the country’s reigning mood of jugaad, a “spirit of can-do-ness,” actually has the negative effect of inhibiting further enterprise in the name of frugality. Skeptical readers may feel, however, that Sengupta tends to sweep away India’s complex structural problems—corruption, a sclerotic justice system, and a long-standing distrust of capitalism—with blithely upbeat assertions. Though there’s nothing wrong with his enthusiasm, localized business growth may prove less a panacea and more a supporting factor in the ongoing story of India’s rise to economic power. (Nov.)