A Much-Needed Ferment
By AMITA KANEKAR
India, said The Economist famously some years ago, is a ‘continent-sized embarrassment’. The description, which attracted outrage from sections of India’s ruling establishment, is actually a mild one, if you go by the recently-published book ‘The Ferment: Youth Unrest in India’ (Macmillan, 2019) by Nikhila Henry. The book paints a picture of contemporary India that is at once both depressing and inspiring. Depressing because it relentlessly and meticulously confirms the suspicion that must haunt every thinking Indian today: this country is just not working. Henry’s book interviews diverse young people across the country united by their involvement in protests of one kind or another, trying to find out just why they are angry. And, from almost all the vantage points she presents, the country resembles less a functioning republic and democracy than a disaster zone; a disaster zone in which millions of the weakest, poorest, most vulnerable of its citizens are trapped in poverty, violence, hierarchy, patriarchy, illiteracy, criminalisation, you name it, most of it based on caste, and with no freedom in sight.