India Briefing

by Alyssa Ayres (editor), Philip Oldenburg (editor)

Since 2001, India has gained new attention as an emerging world power with a rapidly growing economy, a world-class science and technology sector, and a huge English-speaking labor pool. After a period of escalating tension with neighbor Pakistan, wide-ranging peace talks are underway. Within India, there is an unprecedented mood of optimism about the future. At the same time, the nation wrestles with difficult questions about the place of secularism in society, the role it sees for itself globally and within Asia, and the reality that millions of Indians still live at the subsistence level. This volume of India Briefing examines India's changing fortunes through chapters that cover the economy; the twists and turns of domestic politics; labor in the large informal sector; the cultural roots of Hindu nationalism; the foreign relations rollercoaster; the business of Bollywood; and a special chapter on the range of new resources about India available on the web.

312 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2005

About the author

ALYSSA AYRES is senior fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations. She is a foreign policy practitioner and award-winning author with senior experience in the government, nonprofit, and private sectors. Her book on India's rise on the world stage, Our Time Has Come: How India is Making Its Place in the World, was just published by Oxford University Press.

In 2015 she served as project director of the CFR-sponsored Independent Task Force on US-India relations, which produced the report titled, "Working With a Rising India: A Joint Venture for the New Century." Her book on nationalism, culture, and politics in Pakistan, Speaking Like a State, was published worldwide by Cambridge University Press in 2009. It received the 2011-2012 American Institute of Pakistan Studies book prize. She has co-edited three books on India and Indian foreign policy: Power Realignments in Asia: China, India, and the United States; India Briefing: Takeoff at Last?; and India Briefing: Quickening the Pace of Change.

Ayres speaks Hindi and Urdu, and in the mid-1990s worked as an interpreter for the International Committee of the Red Cross. She received an AB magna cum laude from Harvard College, and an MA and PhD from the University of Chicago, where her dissertation was defended with distinction.