A year ago, John Elliott wrote a controversial prize winning book, IMPLOSION - India?s Tryst with Reality, which was recognised as a hard-hitting analysis of how and why India punches below its weight, failing to achieve what it could and should be doing. In a new paperback edition, Elliott brings the story up to date by looking at the election of Narendra Modi as prime minister, his political past, and his new challenges. The issues raised in IMPLOSION amount to an Agenda for Change that Narendra Modi needs to tackle if he is to meet voters? expectations that he can reverse the years of drift. The question is how much one leader can achieve, and whether there is real support for change.
John Elliott:
John Elliott is a former Financial Times journalist, based in New Delhi. He is now Asia Sentinel?s India correspondent and writes the Riding the Elephant blog http://ridingtheelephant.wordpress.com/ on South Asia current affairs, which also appears on the websites of Newsweek (US) and The Independent (UK).
He first came to India in 1983 to open the FT?s South Asia bureau and stayed for five years. In 1988, he was posted to Hong Kong, and in 1991 left the newspaper to spend three years in the Hong Kong Government as public affairs adviser to the Chief Secretary.
He returned to India in 1995, and since then has reported at various times for The Economist, Fortune magazine and the New Statesman.
In 1995 he wrote ?India and China - Asia?s New Giants: Stepping Stones to Prosperity?, for the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Contemporary Studies. He lead-edited an anthology, "Foreign Correspondent - 50 years of Reporting South Asia? (Penguin India, 2008/9).
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