title: India: Facing the Twenty-First Century (The Essential Asia)
author:  Barbara Crossette 
description: 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. <br />Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
zlib_text: ![](Images/image00283.jpeg)
  
  > SHASHI THAROOR
  
  > PAX INDICA
  
   _India and the World of the 21st Century_
  
  ![](Images/image00288.jpeg)
  
  Contents
  
  > About the Author
  
  > Praise for the Book
  
  > 1 Revisiting the Tryst with Destiny
  
  > 2 Brother Enemy
  
  > 3 A Tough Neighbourhood
  
  > 4 China and India: Competition, Cooperation or Conflict?
  
  > 5 India’s ‘Near Abroad’: The Arab World and the Rest of Asia
  
  > 6 Red, White, Blue and Saffron: The United States and India
  
  > 7 Familiar Lands and Uncharted Territories: Europe, Africa and Latin America
  
  > 8 The Hard Challenge of Soft Power and Public Diplomacy
  
  > 9 ‘Eternal Affairs’: The Domestic Underpinnings of Foreign Policy
  
  > 10 India, the UN and the ‘Global Commons’: The Multilateral Imperative
  
  > 11 ‘Multi-Alignment’: Towards a ‘Grand Strategy’ for India in the Twenty-
  > first Century
  
  > Footnote
  
  > 10 India, the UN and the ‘Global Commons’: The Multilateral Imperative
  
  > Selected Bibliography
  
  > Acknowledgements
  
  > Follow Penguin
  
  > Copyright Page
  