I finished reading the book Walking With the Comrades by Arundahti Roy on my Kindle last night and needed some time to afterwards to ponder and reflect about what I might try to say in my review. The book was filled with so many shocking and dismaying stories, that I was not quite sure how to coalesce it succinctly. In short, it is best to say that not all is what it appears to be on the surface in India , for beneath the nation’s glitzy and rapid economic growth are some very deep and troubling problems that need solving soon to avoid mass unrest and greater bloodshed. Even more discomforting was the similarities between the debates in India and here in the United States. Could India be a harbinger of things to come here?

Ms. Roy spent two weeks walking the forests and jungles of central India with members of a Maoist revolutionary group who are fighting the government of India in what began as an effort to preserve the rural lifestyles of the residents of this region. However, as time has gone by and ideologies stiffen, the ultimate goal has morphed into toppling the national government.

Residents of rural India have been under nearly constant assault by mega-development projects like steel mills, bauxite mines, auto plants, dams, and new highways. According to the book, approximately 60 million residents of India (a staggering number) have been displaced since independence by mega-projects or the side effects of them. There have been many unfortunate actions and short-sighted decisions made by central planning and economic development agencies, law enforcement, the military, and by other government authorities over the decades.

The format of the book can be hard to follow at times and includes a number of words, terms, and names that can become confusing to a reader who is not versed in Indian history or culture. Do not let that hindrance stop you though, because Walking With the Comrades tells an important story that needs to be shared. To her credit, Ms. Roy points out the inconsistencies in the debate and actions of both sides of this fight. She also clearly demonstrates the tenacity of the communist rebels.

There are numerous quotes from the book I could cite that would depict the mood in this text, but here are a few potent ones (sorry, but page numbers are not provided by my older version Kindle):

Not everybody likes the idea of their cities filling up with the poor. A judge in Mumbai called slum dwellers pickpockets of urban land. Another said, while ordering the bulldozing of unauthorized colonies, that people who couldn’t afford it shouldn’t live in cities. To make Delhi a world-class city for the 2010 Commonwealth games, laws were passed that made the poor vanish, like laundry stains. Street vendors disappeared, rickshaw pullers lost their licenses, small shops and businesses were shut down. Beggars were rounded up, tried by mobile magistrates in mobile courts and dropped outside city limits. The slums that remained were screened off, with vinyl billboards that said. ‘Delhiciously Yours.’ People are engaged in a whole spectrum of struggles all over the country – the landless, the homeless, Dalits, workers, peasants, weavers.They’re pitted against a juggernaut of injustices, including policies that allow a wholesale corporate takeover of people’s land and resources. Suddenly, it’s beginning to look as though the 10 percent growth rate and democracy are mutually incompatible. More than 60 million people have been displaced by rural destitution, by slow starvation, by floods and drought, by mines, steel factories and aluminum smelters, by highways and expressways, by 3300 big dams built since independence, and now by special economic zones. The tenacity, the wisdom and the courage of those who have been fighting for years, for decades, to bring about change, or even the whisper of justice to their lives, is something extraordinary. Whether people are fighting to overthrow the Indian State or fighting against Big Dams or only fighting a particular steel plant or mine or SEZ, the bottom line is that they are fighting for their dignity, for the right to live and smell like human beings. They’re fighting because, as far as they’re concerned. ‘the fruits of modern development’ stink like dead cattle on the highway. I am aware that my dreams cannot come true by solely using democratic means. In fact, I have come to believe that real democracy flows through the barrel of a gun. [a quote from India’s Prime Minister] Allowing ‘market forces’ to mine resources ‘quickly and efficiently’ is what colonizers did to their colonies… We are watching a democracy trying to eat its own limbs. And those limbs are refusing to be eaten.

What stuck in my mind the most while reading this book is how much the ongoing battle(s) for social and economic justice in India sound eerily familiar to debates taking place here in the United States. Doesn’t matter whether it’s a debate about corporate control, personhood and greed; on the possession and/or use of land; on neglecting the poor and needy; on mega-projects like the Keystone Pipeline; or on the negative impacts affecting rural residents from mining activities such as fracking and deep well injection. Perhaps, it was the mirrored image of our own nation being portrayed in Ms. Roy’s book that was the most frightening aspect of all.