A Graphic Novelist Captures the Paradoxes of Living in the “New India”

There’s been talk of a “New India” ever since the country’s economic liberalization took place more than two decades ago. But the term has always meant different things to different people: an India with potentially the world’s largest middle class, a global India with an exploding youth demographic, an ascendant India that can serve as a counter to a rising China. To critics, claims of a New India are contradicted by the persistence of poverty, entrenched structural inequalities, discrimination against minorities, and the repression of free speech. Champions of the New India, by contrast, like Prime Minister Narendra Modi, of the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, point to a culture of enterprise and opportunity that has made entrepreneurs of even India’s “slumdogs.”