I purchased this in Delhi between travel from Chennai and on the way to Mumbai a few years ago while doing some work for a French multinational that had nothing to do with advertising and yet called upon much of my experience as a planner to figure out a way of developing a market entry strategy as well as developing a nationwide network. No small task given India's size, and that in rural places a cart and oxen will take the place of the more modern services we're used to, and which India is naturally capable of providing in larger cities.
India is the most challenging country to the senses. Not even Burma or Laos comes close. I like it immensely though I find Mumbai less compelling and lean more towards the pregnant haze of spirituality in Madras over the unmistakable scent of gargantuan power in New Delhi. I still find it odd that the most British place I've ever been to in my life was the New Delhi Gymkhana Club. It's straight out of an E.M Forster novel, we had a full on three course dinner with my amiable Indian host, including Spotted Dick and Custard with cigars for the gentlemen afterwards. Lots of really interesting people from all over. People I couldn't figure out what they did or why they seemed so different from the expat crowds in other parts of the world.
This book doesn't take long to read. I just finished it a few minutes ago after two grazing sessions. There's not much that Chomsky can teach me historically these days as I've devoured most of his works over the last few years. He's a great teacher.
However, this book still pricked my conscience about the historical revisionism that has taken place with regard to Indonesia in the 60's. What the British, the U.S. and the Australians sanctioned through Suharto is possibly one of the worst genocides we've had a hand in and I really don't understand how there's only been one Bali bombing there or why I was I've always felt reasonably safe on my trips to Jakarta, including a stay at the Marriot which took a hit a few years back, and now has a large veneer of safety wrapped round it. I say veneer because all the waving of hand detectors in the world wont stop a determined person and in some ways this book is all about why some people are so determined to hit back and make up for history.
It becomes increasingly evident that the complexity of running a Hyper-power (notice how that word has slipped in the last few years) is extraordinarily complex and yet it's people like Chomsky (and Arundhati Roy who gets a few mentions) that are our real moral compasses; the people who should have got some airtime for every mention of 'weapons of mass destruction'...or was it delusion?
