I wrote “Impressions of India” for What We Now Know at InvestorsInsight. This is the first of two dispatches based on my visit to India.

Writing from Bhopal, I describe the deterioration of the city and its public infrastructure, the continuing dangers surrounding the abandoned Union Carbide site, and the speculative enthusiasm driving Indian property and stock prices. I also examine the growing divide between a prosperous urban minority and the large majority whose economic position has barely improved.

Although India is creating opportunities in certain sectors, I question the popular claim that the country as a whole is booming. Beneath the optimism remain bureaucracy, pollution, weak manufacturing, social disorder, and a widespread failure to respect other people’s rights and property.

Read “Impressions of India” at InvestorsInsight via the Wayback Machine →

Continued in Impressions of India II.