14. www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2018.html. India measures it slightly differently, enumerating the number of girls born per every 1000 boys. The 1941 census, carried out just before independence, found that for every 1000 boys under the age of six, there were 935 girls. By 2001, that had fallen to 933, and by 2011, the number improved slightly for the first time in decades, to 940 girls for every 1000 boys. The 2011 Indian census data on the sex ratio is summarized on the Census of India website: www.census2011.co.in/sexratio.php. The 1941 Census figures are available at www.censusindia.gov.in/Census_And_You/old_report/Census_1941_tebles.aspx.
15. These figures were obtained from the Indian Ministry of Child Development in response to a Right to Information request.
16. Seema Jayachandran and Rohini Pande, “The Youngest Are Hungriest,” The New York Times, August 10, 2014, available at www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/opinion/sunday/the-youngest-are-hungriest.html.
17. Valerie M. Hudson and Andrea M. den Boer, Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia’s Surplus Male Population (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2004).
18. Lena Edlund, Hongbin Li, Junjian Yi, and Junsen Zhang, “Sex Ratios and Crime: Evidence from China’s One-Child Policy” (Bonn: Institute for the Study of Labor, December 2007), available at http://ftp.iza.org/dp3214.pdf.
EPILOGUE
1. In certain sites in Calcutta, for instance, the presence of bacteria found in fecal matter is more than 100 times the recommended level, according to numbers from the Indian government figures that were analyzed by the news site India-Spend. See www.indiaspend.com/cover-story/rs-986-cr-30-years-ganga-water-quality-plunges-67807.
2. The International Labour Organization estimates that four out of five workers in the countries across South Asia, the biggest being India, are in vulnerable jobs; see www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---dgreports/---dcomm/---publ/documents/publication/wcms_337069.pdf.
Additional praise for
The End of Karma
“The End of Karma is the essential beginning for any reader who wants to understand the future of the world’s biggest democracy. With meticulously researched, grippingly told stories about youth in today’s India, Sengupta’s quest to understand her daughter’s birthplace seized me like no other book coming from the country today.”
—Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found
“Sengupta does a wonderful job of detailing the distinct lives of seven young individuals . . . struggling to fulfill their educational and economic dreams. . . . Highly recommended.”
—Library Journal, starred review
“The book is a series of stories about these young Indians [the generation that has grown up since 1991], with ample portions of hope, despair, humor, love, contradiction and all those ingredients that make narratives compelling. Really, it’s great.”
—Bloomberg View
“Anyone who imagines that India today is simply a land of IT companies and call centers should read this book. Somini Sengupta sees the new India in all its complexity—its gated towers and remote villages; its kidnapped maids and chief ministers; those who want to remake it into a Hindu nation and those who care only about getting ahead. India is home to nearly a fifth of the world’s people—few places will be more important to the shape of the twenty-first century. The End of Karma, with its vivid storytelling and intimate portraits of India’s younger generation, is a riveting vision of the future.”
—Larissa MacFarquhar, author of Strangers Drowning
“The End of Karma brilliantly opens the door into the world of the striving young men and women of the new India as they try to shed India’s past and invent their own future. Somini Sengupta’s chosen characters are so vividly drawn and so sensitively reported.”
—Tina Brown
“The End of Karma stands out, even amid the rich literature on the society of a dizzily changing India. . . . The book should be read as a gripping human drama, one that will play itself out millions of times as India continues to astonish itself, both breaking and preserving age-old traditions.”
—Survival: Global Politics and Strategy
Copyright © 2016 by Somini Sengupta
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First published as a Norton paperback 2017
Excerpt from The Story © Michael Ondaatje. Used with author’s permission.
Photograph on page 222: AP Photo / Rafiq Maqbool.
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Names: Sengupta, Somini, author.
Title: The end of karma : hope and fury among India’s young / Somini Sengupta.
Description: First Edition. | New York : W. W. Norton & Company, 2016. |
Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015041519 | ISBN 9780393071009 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Youth—India—History—21st century. | Women and democracy—India. | India—Social life and customs.
Classification: LCC HQ799.I5 S46 2016 | DDC 305.235095409/05—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015041519
ISBN 978-0-393-29287-9 (e-book)
ISBN 978-0-393-35360-0 (pbk.)
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The End of Karma Page 27