Averting the Apocalypse : Social Movements in India Today

There are two Indias: the caste and class elite that holds all power and makes up 10 to 15 percent of the population, and everyone else. Averting the Apocalypse is about everyone else. Bonner, a former New York Times special correspondent in Asia, traveled almost 20,000 miles within India, seeking out and interviewing those at the bottom of Indian society and the activists who are beginning to mobilize for social change. Working and traveling in areas torn by violence, the author offers a terrifyingly accurate picture of a society bloodied by decades of unequal social structure and the absence of a civil society and political mechanism capable of responding to exploitation of the poor and weak. A society, he fears, on the verge of apocalyptic upheaval. Bonner finds hope, however, in the social movements that are mobilizing to make changes to avert an explosion.