India: Facing the Twenty-First Century

India ``seems bent on self-destruction,'' opines Crossette, a research associate at Columbia University's Southern Asian Institute and a New York Times senior editor who until 1991 was a correspondent in New Delhi. Staggering corruption at all levels; millions of indentured child laborers; the widespread murder of wives by husbands; deepening poverty among a vast, illiterate majority left out of technocrats' economic plans: these are among the problems that, according to Crossette, could derail the world's largest democracy. India, she reports, is becoming increasingly undemocratic--the thousands of Indians arrested without charge or trial being just one of the human rights abuses. Crossette faults the dynasty led by Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv, as well as the country's apolitical new middle class, for India's slide into inefficiency, regional strife and corruption. She commends the proliferation of grass-roots activist movements but her compelling report offers few solutions. (Oct.)