The Cost of Living

Arundhati Roy has a wonderful way of writing. This woman could write about absolutely anything at all and I think I will still enjoy it. She has a naturally earnest free flowing poetic yet precise language. She has the ability to choose her words so well as to get the exact picture or impression she wants us to see. Truly she paints with her words.Roy used her amazing writing skills and sensitivity so very well in her fantastic work, The God of Small Things. Here she uses the same skills and more aiming primarily at her own people asking them to re-examine 2 strongly held views. As non-Indian I thoroughly enjoyed both essays of this book.The first essay deals with the construction of river dams in India since the independence in 1947. Roy set about in a very systematic way to establish the true cost of the dams in terms of human suffering. She focused on one project in particular but her research was wide ranging and indeed she had to dig into several completed projects to establish true benefits and costs. Roy's central message is that the price paid by an oppressed native minority is way too high and the alleged benefits to India are low. Where this essay is truly universal, at least applicable to so many third world countries in the post colonial era, is in its research for a definition for her own country, identity and common good and modes of opposition to this common good! Roy was also highly unimpressed with the western approach to 3rd world development projects but her approach was a times too general and sweeping.The Second article, probably far more universal, is the nuclear weapons article. Roy's analysis of the policies of the Congress party and the BJP nationalists leading to the 1998 explosions shows great insight and clarity of mind. She categorically opposes the bomb as weapon of peace and she totally rejects the overwhelming support of her people for the bomb and the Indian nuclear tests. Having traveled to India shortly after the Indian and Pakistani explosions I was horrified with the attitude of "our bomb was better than theirs" and this is the first work that I personally have seen that takes on this subject with such force. Roy's opposition leaves no prisoners behind. It is hard to overstate the courage of Roy on this issue given the level of tension between Hindu India and Islam within India itself and across the borders.I strongly recommend this wonderfully written book to anyone interested in issues related to regional conflicts and postcolonial development.

Arundhati Roy is more or less guaranteed to hit below the belt. For an American reader, she is also guaranteed to teach you something you probably knew little about. She invariably does so in a marvelous fashion; her prose is unmatched. If you enjoyed her work of fiction, The God of Small Things, I encourage you to try her non-fiction works.This book focuses on the dams on India; it's a passionate argument against damming and in favor of considering people, all the poor people of India.Roy also discusses India's testing of the atomic bomb, another topic which most Americans probably haven't spent a great deal of time considering. Roy is convincing and writes from the heart in a way very few politicians or politicists do.

Another wonderful book by this author. Strongly recommend you read this . A must read for anyone interested in the future of India and Pakistan . I learned so much from this book .It probably should be used as a text book at the high school or even college level for teaching an international government class . Never have I learned so much about waste in government spending and the negative affects of dams . Apparently we haven't learned anything because China and others continue to make the same mistakes .

For $11.99 it is an expensive ebook for $4.99 it would have been affordable. I am saying this as someone who read it and feel not have got the money's worth. There is little in it that cannot be ascertained from reading her other Book 'Walking with the Comrades'. That book is well written and more fact rich all be it the facts in her book are not likely to be independently verified. I wonder why she sticks to narratives which are full of Rhetoric and facts that are difficult to verify. But I suppose facts that cannot be independently verified is better than having no facts at all. In any case this book is not rich on facts about the events that are written about. And besides not everyone is interested in facts.

Excellent

I believe I ordered mine as a used but it's great quality and doesn't have any marks inside, which I appreciate.