Book Review: Rouge Elephant, Harnessing the power of India's unruly democracy By Simon Denyer ISBN 9781620406083

The best book about modern India I read so far. "A penetrating portrait of what has happened to India in the past decade and where it is headed".

It covers India's pillars of democracy: Executive branch, legislative branch and media by profiling the movers and shakers of the country: Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, Arnab Goswami, Narendra Modi, Arvind Kejriwal, etc. The angles of author's viewpoint are wide and analysis of each area is deep, from India's Right for Information law to land ownership dispute, the author talked to the key people and also went to the ground level to research, and the end result is a remarkable piece of India democracy today that is both sobering and hopeful.

What kind of democracy will Arab Spring bring to middle east? Maybe India is a good place to look and study. With the democracy's success in holding up the diverse and multi-religious cultures together as a country, and rampant corruption and inefficiency in governance as side effects from the democracy.

One wanting I have for the book is a detailed map of India, for people who are not familiar with India.

Rating: 5 out of 5