Customer Reviews

The Cost of Living.

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Ms. Roy captures the essence of the technological problems of the planet today. We humans like to think of ourselves as "Masters of the Universe." When, in fact, we are flawed creatures who do things without the wisdom to see the long-term consequences of our actions - be they building a dam or nuclear weapon.

It is not lost on this reader, that the "father" of the atomic bomb quoted the lines of Shiva when he first saw his weapon exploded - "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." We humans are good at destruction; sometimes it even looks like building.

While Ms. Roy's prose is a bit less poetic than that found in "The God of Small Things," her passion makes up for the linguistic power. She is calling out the leaders, not only of India, but also of the world, to reconsider the consequences of what they are doing to the earth and its peoples. All of these actions, of course, in the names of progress and national defense.

It is not likely that Ms. Roy's writings will change the governments. But perhaps they will open your eyes as they did mine, to the realities of what we are doing on and to this planet. At the beginning of the 21st century we are again looking at the exploitation of the earth that nurtures us to the point where it may no longer support us.

Not a book that would wow the reader with eloquence, but a passionate and serious account of two examples of the folly of massive state-sponsored projects "for the people's good."

What not enough reviewers have taken into account is the book's implicit indictment of modern Western thought, culture & politics on India's -- and Pakistan's -- people.

India & Pakistan are at war primarily because of the original British plan for Partition that created separate Hindu and Muslim states. Skillful Western diplomacy that has played one off against the other for fifty years keeps passions high and these two nations at each other's throats -- to neither's benefit.

By playing India & Pakistan off each other, each nation has been unable to break free from Soviet-style planning and join the rest of the developed world. They instead measure progress by 1940s and 1950s standards, both Soviet and Western, and the results, as outlined by Roy in this book, are devastating.

Now, the World Bank and IMF (whom Roy despise) are propping up the smaller middle-class at the great expense of most of India's population. 600 million illiterates; poor sanitation, hygiene, family planning & health care; and a completely corrupt economy are the problems -- yet Roy shows clearly that the state is moving in a direction farther away from solutions.

The West must take a great deal of responsibility for this, and the passion of Roy can't help but move one to action.

My India-born spouse once described the difference in how he and I had been taught, through subtle societal reward, to make and respond to assertions. "If you say, 'The sky is blue,'" he said, "I think, 'Ann thinks the sky is blue.' But if I say to you, 'The sky is blue,' you say, 'Oh, it is?' You're ready to believe, just because I stated it as fact. That's why you hedge your thoughts with the words, 'I think,' rather than just saying what you think."

I recall that conversation as I read Arundhati Roy's The Cost of Living, in particular, the essay "The Greater Common Good." Because her voice is clear and compelling, my first response is, "Fifty million people have been displaced by ineffective dam-building in India! Good god, what can be done?"

Then I slow down. Remember. "Arundhati Roy thinks that fifty million people have been displaced in India, by dams she thinks are ineffective. Does she make her case?"

She does.

"The Greater Common Good" means to persuade, but its reportage is separable, sentence by sentence, from the argument. Roy's research is compiled, not from debunkable interviews, but from government plans and records, World Bank reviews and estimates of economic benefit and capital cost, and from statistics such as river flow, reservoir levels, areas of irrigated land, numbers of malaria cases, and megawatts of power produced. More than careful, Roy gleefully points out that the Indian government has produced no studies to verify the difference from the lowest baseline calculation of displaced people, or to quantify agricultural benefits gained from completed dam projects.

To follow along, you'll need to work through numbers and a cast of characters, as with any story about accounting and the preservation of power. The payoff to your attentiveness is that once you gather who's done what and at what cost in India's dam-building plans, you are as fully armed as Roy herself to examine the rest of her assertions. You'll have enough facts to agree or disagree with her thesis, "Carelessness cannot account for fifty million disappeared people... Let's not delude ourselves. There is method here, precise, relentless, and 100 percent manmade."

Roy doesn't leave the American reader the familiar out: "I don't live there. I don't have the right to an opinion." Roy works in facts as well as narrative; you'll be hard pressed to evade responsibility for your assent or dissent from her conclusions. Like this one: "Resettling 200,000 people in order to take (or pretend to take) water to 40 million--there's something very wrong with the scale of operations here. This is Fascist math." You can agree or disagree... but reading "The Greater Common Good," you can't wheedle your way out of having a stance.

Two treasures are secreted away inside "The Greater Common Good." One is the story of modern Satyagraha--the practice of nonviolent resistance--how the villagers of the Narmada valley walked into the valley when it was to be flooded, willing to drown. They won a postponement and an independent review of the dam project. The other is a thin, brilliant thread through the narrative: Roy's support of her right as a citizen to research and respond to her government's decisions. It implies the reader has an obligation to respond as well.

In a single sentence, in the heart of the essay, Roy says, "The people whose lives were going to be devastated were neither informed nor consulted nor heard." Her challenge to the reader echoes, unstated: So what do you think of that? What do you think?

Contrary to what one of the reviewers above would have us believe, this in fact is a great book. It takes some courage to go with an open mind and curiosity and come back with the facts. It is very easy (and convenient) for people with cosy lives to dimsiss disturbing details about the real injustices done to India's poor in the name of developement because doing otherwise would force one to examine ones own life and that in turn can lead to a lot of discomfort.

However it is well worth remembering that an unexamined life is not worth living. If we want to continue to mainatain a facade in the name of Developement while constantly sweeping the dirt under the rug, we must realize that sooner or later the bulge is going to show and the stench is going to be unbearable. Guess what? It is showtime. The ugliness and calousness with which we pursue "Development" is now out in the open. Now is as good a time as any for all of us to ask ourselves, what is the basis for all that we do in the name of Development and who are we helping develop anyway? The answers may lead to discomfort and may force us to give up our preconceived notions and prejudices. If enough people do this perhaps in the long run we will be the better for it.

Read this book, think and act.

Arundhati Roy has a wonderful way of writing. This woman could write about absolutely anything at all and I think I will still enjoy it. She has a naturally earnest free flowing poetic yet precise language. She has the ability to choose her words so well as to get the exact picture or impression she wants us to see. Truly she paints with her words.

Roy used her amazing writing skills and sensitivity so very well in her fantastic work, The God of Small Things. Here she uses the same skills and more aiming primarily at her own people asking them to re-examine 2 strongly held views. As non-Indian I thoroughly enjoyed both essays of this book.

The first essay deals with the construction of river dams in India since the independence in 1947. Roy set about in a very systematic way to establish the true cost of the dams in terms of human suffering. She focused on one project in particular but her research was wide ranging and indeed she had to dig into several completed projects to establish true benefits and costs. Roy's central message is that the price paid by an oppressed native minority is way too high and the alleged benefits to India are low. Where this essay is truly universal, at least applicable to so many third world countries in the post colonial era, is in its research for a definition for her own country, identity and common good and modes of opposition to this common good! Roy was also highly unimpressed with the western approach to 3rd world development projects but her approach was a times too general and sweeping.

The Second article, probably far more universal, is the nuclear weapons article. Roy's analysis of the policies of the Congress party and the BJP nationalists leading to the 1998 explosions shows great insight and clarity of mind. She categorically opposes the bomb as weapon of peace and she totally rejects the overwhelming support of her people for the bomb and the Indian nuclear tests. Having traveled to India shortly after the Indian and Pakistani explosions I was horrified with the attitude of "our bomb was better than theirs" and this is the first work that I personally have seen that takes on this subject with such force. Roy's opposition leaves no prisoners behind. It is hard to overstate the courage of Roy on this issue given the level of tension between Hindu India and Islam within India itself and across the borders.

I strongly recommend this wonderfully written book to anyone interested in issues related to regional conflicts and postcolonial development.

I found Roy's essays fascinating, but the first, on India's massive dam projects, interested me the most. By the MOST conservative estimates, 33 million people have been displaced by these projects since partition in the late 1940's. It is difficult for a Westerner to grasp the magnitude of this problem. Think about the populations of New York and California, for example, and then we can begin to understand it.

The Cost of Living is the second book by Arundhati Roy, but is her first non fiction book. Her first book was the phenomenally good novel The God of Small Things . The Cost of Living is a collection of two essays.

The first is "The Greater Common Good" and deals with the building of the Big Dams in India (Roy is native to India and still lives there). Roy writes about some of the politics involved in the building of the dams and makes clear enormity of the human cost and the lives lost and displaced. Roy is vehemently against this ongoing project, and while this essay only presents one side of the argument, it is still a well crafted and well written and emotionally compelling argument.

The second essay is "The End of Imagination". This essay was written in 1998 shortly after India had revealed that it was doing nuclear testing. Apparently, the party line was that nuclear weaponry = patriotism = Hinduism = India. By this logic, any Indian who was not in favor of the testing was also against India itself. Flawed logic, and Roy takes the government to task focusing on nuclear testing when so much of the nation is starving, uneducated, and needs true assistance. Roy's arguments against nuclear testing are wide ranging. She discusses the fact that most of the nation is uneducated and does not know what it means to have nuclear weapons and what the negatives are. She writes against the government, lining its pockets at the expense of the nation. She writes against the United States for introducing the nuclear game to the world. The biggest loser in this game, Roy believes, is India. India believes itself to be a world player, but Roy explains the national delusion and why this is simply not the case.

This is a short, but interesting book. Roy is an excellent writer and while her thoughts skirt the extreme, she writes with a passion that cannot be ignored.

Arundati Roy turns from fiction, momentarily, we hope, to non-fiction.

That is not to say that 'The Cost of Living' lacks power of imagination. The book consists of two short essays that centre on two very problematic situations in the current India- and they are issues worth writing about.

The essay that most enthralled me (much to do with it being in the news a lot) was the essay which dealt with India's nuclear testing, and the tension it has created not only in the region, but in the world. She investigates the Wests' hypocrisy- do they have a right to lambast the Indians, when they themselves have done the same thing- the exact same thing? It is very interesting.

Like the great novelist she is, Roy writes with compassion, an intense focus, and is very articulate. It is worth reading this book even if you have no interest in Indian politics, because it is a matter of life and death, hypocrisy, possible armageddon and the hole that humankind insists on digging itself into.

Strongly reccommended.

In her newest offering Arudhati Roy , the writter of the widely known and multi-awarded The God Of Small Things presents a deep , careful study on the impact " progress " has made on the life of thousands of people in her country . She describes an India with many cultural and racial entities where the goverment keeps building huge dams in the valley of Naramada with no certain strategy and essential reasons . What she seems to be asking is this : " even if these dams are useful , does it eventually worth sacrificing so many people's lifes and houses for them ? " . In the end the book wins the reader not so much because of Roy's writing style but thanks to the power of her own personallity . She's a young , beutiful and wealthy woman who never forgets though the poor part of her country's population . Instead , she keeps standing by them with her writtings and her actions .

This is a short but effective book. It's divided into two parts. In part one, Arundhati Roy writes about dam-building in India. This heavily-footnoted chapter gets a longer treatment in her next book, Power Politics. Here she introduces the topic, adding a lot of context to the statistics. Her outrage is palpable. This leads into the second part, and angry essay about India and Pakistan becoming part of the nuclear fraternity (both countries publicly tested nuclear weapons in May of 1998). Both countries have so many problems --- and so much tension between them over Kashmir --- that this development can only be considered a disaster for the hundreds of millions of people in the region.

Arundhati Roy is someone we should all listen to. She's an activist, novelist, and a great writer. This book is a good introduction to her work.