In 1990, V.S. Naipaul published "India: A Million Mutinies Now." Of the three books that the Caribbean-born author has written about the land of his ancestors, it is his most insightful and sympathetic. He sensed the profound changes under way in the country that were only accelerated with the liberalization in 1992 of what had been a planned economy. Now, with India becoming a major economic player on the world stage, books taking the pulse of the country arrive with some regularity.

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