Jan Myrdal is always worth reading because in his anger and bitterness there lurks real tragedy. India Waits is pure Myrdal. I disagree violently with much of what he says but I am glad he has written.

Jan Myrdal is one of the dominant figures in contemporary Swedish culture.

The author of the controversial Report from a Chinese Village delivers a caustic and impassioned indictment of the economic, social and political inequities threatening to tear apart contemporary India. The abuses are known to all. But with poker-hot prose, Myrdal makes us feel each horror anew, impressing through the force of his writing his conviction in the unacceptability of hunger, poverty, and racism.

Many good books have been written on India. But no one offers such a convincing synthesis of the political and cultural dimensions of its modern history. Beyond the usual political analysis, this book offers the deepest insights into Indian society and finally explains the reasons for which India failed to find its own way out of underdevelopment.

India Waits is a most disturbing book, written by the son of the Nobel laureate Gunnar Myrdal and his wife Alva, who was Swedish Amabassador in Delhi, and illustrated by his wife, Gun. A blasting indictment of our administration, our leaders, our police, our jails, corruption, poverty and our helplessness to do anything about them. They see ‘darkness in every home, tears in every eye.’ They ask, ‘To whom does power belong? To whom happiness? For whom is the land milked? So that some starve while others reap bounty?’

Few foreigners have written about India with a similar combination of intimacy, outrage and optimism. This is a nasty, gutsy, angry book. Yet, a deep respect for India’s history and an abiding concern for its peoples shines through these journals of Myrdal’s and his wife’s extended and involved journeys through that stricken and promising land.