India Smart

India is in transition. Since the publication of Culture Smart's first guide to India in 2003, the nation has been transformed from a developing third-world country into the world's fastest growing economy. This completely new and up-to-date volume by American author Becky Stephen is unrivalled.

India's huge population of 1.2 billion people is as varied and colorful as the spice markets of Old Delhi. Each region, caste, and community has its own culture, reflecting unique histories shaped by conquest, creativity, and religion. Steeped in ancient traditions, exceptionally fatalistic, and intensely passionate about their culture, the Indians are also ingenious, creative, and world leaders in cutting-edge science and technology. Show interest in their country, and it will be reciprocated with genuine warmth and friendship.

A portrait of India in mid-sentence - caught between tradition and transformation, noise and nuance. 'Penetrating insights into our sense of self... he has turned the observation of society into a gentle art form.' - Pratap Bhanu Mehta, academic and public intellectual 'The prose laureate of...

Foreign Policy managing editor and former CNN South Asia bureau chief Ravi Agrawal takes listeners on a journey across India, through remote rural villages and massive metropolises, to highlight how one tiny device - the smartphone - is changing all facets of Indian life. The rise of smartphones, and with them access to the internet, has caused nothing short of a revolution in India. In the West, technological advances have progressed step-by-step, starting with landline phones.