This is classic. Arundhati brought all irony in one single table called India. About dams, the nuclear weapons, the deficit of democracy, adivasi (indigenous peoples in India), lack of access to justice and our ignorant to one another.

"To slow a beast, you break its limbs. To slow a nation, you break its people. You rob them volition. You demonstrate your absolute command over their destiny. You make it clear that ultimately it falls to you to decide who lives, who dies, who prospers, who doesn't."

I couldn't be more than agree with her.

“There is beauty yet in this brutal, damaged world of ours."

3.5 stars. This is a book of two essays on India, published in 1999. These essays are intended to scare you out of complacency. They are not warm, and they are not comforting. They lay bare the horrors of humanity while somehow still making you want to protect humanity all the more.

Roy's first essay speaks about the Narmada Dam in India, which is perhaps old news but contains familiar themes — governments and people doubling down on what has been shown to be a damaging or untrue belief, exploitation of the lower class (or caste) for profit, questionable moral codes, and the ongoing exploitation of our world’s resources.

It’s easy to see how skilled writers like Roy make the written word their weapon. In her war against the Indian government’s actions, she crafts a dam(n)ing picture of millions of displaced Indians, irresponsible environmental impact, and decisions made purely for money and politics - not to mention questionable acts of "International Aid" given by the World Bank and first world countries.

The second essay shares Roy’s viewpoint on India’s development of the nuclear bomb. She rails against it, emphasizing that the nuclear bomb does not have to be used to be damaging. It causes enough damage to the human psyche purely by existing.

Roy has a tendency to be hyperbolic and make frequent appeals to fear, especially in the second essay, which kept me from truly connecting to the book. That said, these essays contain a lot of interesting information about India's history along with one of my all-time favourite quotes (which, incidentally, is the reason I picked this book up in the first place). That, alone, made it a worthwhile read.

"To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never, to forget."

She never ceases to amaze me. Her prose is razor sharp. Brava!!!

Two essay's in Ms. Roy's normal fashion. One on India's giant dams, one on the use of nuclear warfare in India, so not your "God of Small Things" but beautifully written and so IMPORTANT! I love her ability to be angry and write poetically simultaneously!

Two great essays. One concerning the building of a damn in India and the other their first nuclear testing. Contains her famous quote:
To love. To be loved. To never forget you own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.

Amazing.

On Beauty: There is beauty yet, in this brutal, damaged world of ours. Hidden, fierce, immense. Beauty that is uniquely ours and beauty that we have received with grace from others, enhanced, reinvented and made our own.
On education: However many garlands we heap on our scientists, however many medals we pin to their chests, the truth is that it’s far easier to make a bomb than to educate four hundred million people.

Roy does fantastic job of impressing upon the reader not just the depth of human sorrow created by dams and the atomic bomb but also the absurdity of human indifference behind these atrocities. One drawback of her writing is that it is overly colloquial, occasionally losing its power through misplaced sarcasm.

This book compiles 2 of Roy’s earliest articles:
1998 “The End of Imagination” (on India’s nuclear weapons)
1999 “The Greater Common Good” (on India’s mega dams, esp. Sardar Sarovar)

The Good:
--The rating and review here are for the essay “The End of Imagination”, which exposes the civilizational end of social imagination with India’s pursuit of nuclear weapons, and the fallacious reasons given (i.e. nuclear deterrence). While this is an eloquent start to a crisis that has faded from public discourse (i.e. nuclear proliferation), several contextual points would broaden understanding (see below).
--I review the other essay here: The Greater Common Good

The Missing:
--Expanding beyond the Indian state:
1) India’s previous social imagination was reflected in its prominent role in the Non-Aligned Movement, which had a principle of global disarmament. The era of decolonization was a moment of incredible global possibilities; see Vijay Prashad’s The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World.
2) The sad turn away from this came about as the Non-Aligned Movement/Third World project collapsed, and India’s hypocrisy in getting nuclear weapons while assisting the imperialist West in isolating Iran (who was actually part of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, with international inspections). More from the fabulous Vijay Prashad:
-summary of India-Iran: https://youtu.be/Tgphk_jDuE4?t=1513
-details of India-Iran: https://youtu.be/nATHmWl6uYg?t=221
-anti-colonialism eroding to cruel cultural nationalism: https://youtu.be/R6PnB7bnLFY?t=231
3) The ultimate driver of nuclear proliferation is regime change, especially since the Soviet Bloc collapsed. Iraq’s weaponry and overall State was deteriorating, making it a softer target. Gaddafi gave up his nuclear program in a gesture to open markets and now Libya is a leveled, failed state.
-ex. ideological censorship hiding North Korea’s experience after being labelled a “rogue state”/“Axis of Evil” and the annihilation of fellow “Axis of Evil” Iraq, and then Libya: https://youtu.be/6jKcsHv3c74

"To slow a beast, you break its limbs. To slow a nation, you break its people. You rob them of volition. You demonstrate your absolute command over their destiny. You make it clear that ultimately it falls to you to decide who lives, who dies, who prospers, who doesn’t. To exhibit your capability you show off all that you can do, and how easily you can do it. How easily you could press a button and annihilate the earth. How you can start a war, or sue for peace. How you can snatch a river away from one and gift it to another. How you can green a desert, or fell a forest and plant one somewhere else. You use caprice to fracture a people’s faith in ancient things- earth, forest, water, air."
"Once that’s done, what do they have left? Only you. They will turn to you, because you’re all they have. They will love you even while they despise you. They will trust you even though they know you well. They will vote for you even as you squeeze the very breath from their bodies. They will drink what you give them to drink. They will breathe what you give them to breathe.
They will live where you dump their belongings. They have to. What else can they do? There’s no higher court of redress. You are their mother and their father. You are the judge and the jury. You are the World. You are God."
"Power is fortified not just by what it destroys, but also by what it creates. Not just by what it takes, but also by what it gives. And powerlessness reaffirmed not just by the helplessness of those who have lost, but also by the gratitude of those who have (or think they have) gained."
I use this quote frequently in my work. I can think of no better expression of the difference between a 'charity' and a 'social justice' mindset, and why it matters.

sleepless nights. Haven't dared to read any other of her non fiction work.

A passionate report of the Indian government's disregard for the individual, "The Cost of Living" does just as named. A voice of this strength can be hard to come by, but Roy succeeds brilliantly in her compelling factual narrative.

An unlikely book to read on my part: statistical, matter of fact non-fiction activist view on (against) big dams and nuclear bomb in India. But I am glad I did. Obviously, God of Small Things led me to it.
There are some ingenious insights and social and political dissections the autor makes of her own country that she feels has lost its way (... "My world has died. And I write to mourn its passing. Admittedly it was a flawed world. An unviable world. A scarred and wounded world. It is a world that I myself criticized unsparingly, but only because I loved it. It didn't deserve to die. [...] I loved it simply because it offered humanity a choice. It was a rock out at sea. It was a stubborn chink of light that insisted that there was a different way of living. It was a functioning possibility. A real option. All that's gone now. India's nuclear tests, the manner in which they were conducted, the euphoria with which they have been greated (by us) is indefensible. To me, it signifies dreadful things. The end of imagination. The end of freedom actually because, after all, that's what freedom is. Choice. "). One of those dissections I liked the most was the one towards the end of the book starting with describing the letter of the prime minister's letter to the president of USA.
I think it is a great book for what it is here to do but I can't rate it. It's not my cup of tea or something I enjoy reading. I found it smart and insightful and I am now interested in learning more about India's history and what's going on there today.
I am definitely interested in reading more books from Arundhati Roy's 'activist phase' but I am looking forward to reading some of her other fictional works more.