Review by Booklist Review
Courageous and clarion Roy (Walking with the Comrades, 2011) continues her analysis and documentation of the disastrous consequences of unchecked global capitalism. She investigates India's Gush Up capitalism and how it is reinforcing a caste system that benefits the elite while wreaking cruel havoc on the greater population and the country's invaluable natural resources. Roy reports on collusion between New Delhi and multinational corporations that results in the corruption and dysfunction of local governments and brutal initiatives, disguised as security measures, in which people are forced off their land to make way for highways, airports, dams, mines, and factories. While violence is used against the poor, the middle class is covertly coerced by way of what Roy calls the exquisite art of Corporate Philanthropy. She cites eye-opening examples of how the support by well-established international foundations of admirable cultural projects and NGOs also insidiously engenders privatization and the infiltration of grass-roots movements against corporate pillaging. As Roy observes, The algebra of infinite injustice works in mysterious ways. Precise and revelatory, Roy gives us an awful lot to think about.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2014 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Part political journalism, part polemic, Roy's (Walking with the Comrades) book begins with Karl Marx's quip that capitalism is like a sorcerer's apprentice, conjuring forces too strong for it to control. She labels these apprentices as America's multinational corporations and the various organizations that act as tentacles, disrupting the cultures, economies, and governments of the world. Prominent in the list are endowed foundations like those started by Ford and Rockefeller, which transformed the fortunes of the US's most successful magnates into political influence by funding the beginnings of the U.N., the CIA, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Research and Development (RAND) Corporation. Roy traces the links between these groups and the co-optation of social science research, using NGOs to soften the politics of radical social movements in the face of IMF-imposed structural adjustment, and the separation of feminist and class analysis in mainstream political discussions. Roy's central concern is the effect on her own country, and she shows how Indian politics have taken on the same model, leading to the ghosts of her book's title: 250,000 farmers have committed suicide, 800 million impoverished and dispossessed Indians, environmental destruction, colonial-like rule in Kashmir, and brutal treatment of activists and journalists. In this dark tale, Roy gives rays of hope that illuminate cracks in the nightmare she evokes. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A vehement broadside against capitalism in general and American cultural imperialism in particular, focusing on the effects on the novelist's native India. After winning international raves and the prestigious Booker Prize for her debut novel (The God of Small Things, 1997), Roy (Walking with the Comrades, 2011, etc.) has become an increasingly political, polarizing and controversial writer, even charged with sedition in her homeland. "Day after day, on primetime news, I was being called a traitor, a white-collar terrorist, and several other names reserved for insubordinate women," she writes. She also recognizes that, as someone "who lives off royalties from corporate publishing houses," she risks biting the hand that feeds her. But her teeth are sharp, and her bite is fierce, as she focuses on how American corporate values and foundation philanthropy have had an insidious effect around the globe, resulting in a wider gap between the wealthy few and the impoverished masses. The influence extends from economics to education to arts and culture, as scholars in line with American values get funded and others see courses cancelled, while foundation support has had the same moderating effect elsewhere that it did in America, where it marginalized black militancy in favor of nonviolence. "Armed with their billions, these NGOs have waded into the world, turning potential revolutionaries into salaried activists, funding artists, intellectuals and filmmakers, gently luring them away from radical confrontation." Like the Occupy movement, which Roy strongly supports, she sees class warfare as a political necessity that recognizes that systems of capitalist democracy require more than reform. Her accounts of political repression are vivid and moving, but her analysis would require more depth for her pontification to convert those who don't already agree with it. Less a reasoned argument than an impassioned manifesto.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
