NEW DELHI: Broadcaster-turned-author Daniel Lak doesn't resemble an exotica peddler but, if his debut book is to be believed, India is on the cusp of a major transformation as an America-style "good, liberal superpower".
"America wants to delegate some of its hyper power responsibilities. India is a natural choice as it is a vibrant democracy with a growing economy and shares the US' liberal ethos. Given a chance, it can be a good liberal superpower like the US," Lak, the former BBC correspondent in India, said in an interview.
Mantras of Change: Reporting India in a Time of Flux, (Penguin) is Lak's audacious attempt at re-mapping the mental, physical and spiritual geography of a contemporary India sans clichZs and myths circling around snake charmers, mystic holy men and bullock carts.
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"New images of India are enormously exciting. In the past, we were fixated on the British Raj. Let's make an aggressive attempt to put these negative, exotic images of India to bed," says the 47-year-old broadcaster who started writing the book in response to a university student's accusation that his reporting only fed stereotypical images of the country to a global audience.
Karma cola and dharma bums, that spiritual backpacker kind of writing, is clearly not his style. Instead one can hear in his book a vast carnival roar celebrating a diverse India swarming with IT gurus, beer barons, brahmins, computers, crime busters, love counsellors, rat persons, statisticians, lesbians and environment-friendly Hindu priests.
"India is in the middle of incredible change, economic, social and technological. It's probably the most intense change any country may have undergone in history," says Lak, whose love affair with "this glorious and perplexing land" started more than two decades ago in a restaurant in Toronto called Omar Khayyam.
"There is no one India. It's a big, wide global player like the US, Europe, France or Japan. What is most refreshing is that there is tremendous opening to changing imagery about the country," says Lak, who has been reporting South Asia for over a decade.
Social mobility, powered by a vast burgeoning middle clbutt whose aspirations are exploding like a nuclear device impresses the debutant Canadian author, but that doesn't stop him from pointing out the dark side of these runaway desires.
"Traditional family structures are breaking down. Social mobility has improved phenomenally, but caste reservation continues to be a potent player in the political sphere," he says.
And yes, poverty and illiteracy still continue to dog India's superpower aspirations. "I look forward to a day when poverty alleviation will become a mission of society and not just of crusaders and a few people in the government," says Lak, who finds India the promised land for television journalists lusting for a good story.
"India is a hugely visual place and unlike Africa, people are aware of their visual culture. Africa is not a television-friendly place."
What really excites him are the possibilities of transformation of the government and civil society as India pursues its superpower ambition. "Civil society and the government have to forge a unity to spur the emergence of India as a superpower." Not surprisingly, the next book he is writing tells the story of India as the next economic giant.
