“The cost of living” summary — Arundhati Roy

Introduction

You live in a world where corporate globalization, state militarism, and religious nationalism combine to crush fundamental human rights and silence dissent. When you watch powerful states launch nuclear tests, build massive displacement dams, and wage endless imperial wars, you witness a systematic destruction of the poor and the environment. You face an aggressive political machinery that brands all resistance as treason while selling public resources to transnational corporations.

Arundhati Roy exposes these mechanisms across several distinct fronts. The book explores how nuclear nationalism manufactures consent for violence and how majoritarian politics dismantles secular democracy from within. You will examine the human cost of large dam projects and the predatory nature of corporate globalization. The chapters also reveal the reality of rural hunger alongside state terror and trace how global imperial powers use instant-mix democracy to wage war.

Consider the following questions as you read:

How does the state manufacture consent for nuclear weapons and aggressive nationalism?
What mechanisms drive the displacement of millions for big dam projects?
How do neoliberal economic policies create both extreme wealth and systemic rural hunger?
In what ways does corporate media disguise imperialist military aggression as humanitarian intervention?

1. The End of Imagination and Nuclear Nationalism

On May 1998, devices detonated 200 to 300 meters deep in the earth at Pokhran, creating heat equivalent to a million degrees centigrade. The blast vaporized rocks weighing around a thousand tons and lifted a mound of earth the size of a football field.

A scientist witnessing the blast remarked that it made him believe stories of Lord Krishna lifting a hill, as cited in India Today.

The 1998 nuclear tests in Pokhran unleashed physical devastation and manufactured a toxic brand of Hindu nationalism that brands all dissent as anti-national.

The Theory of Deterrence is dangerously flawed because it assumes a rational enemy and relies on public fear driven by widespread ignorance. The Bhabha Atomic Research Center health group head suggested taking iodine pills, staying indoors, and going to the basement, reflecting institutional lunacy. Nuclear weapons are the ultimate colonizers that alter human existence by embedding themselves into society's thinking, behavior, and dreams.

Nationalism and Fascism

The ruling political class and right-wing groups use the bomb as a loyalty test. Dissent is branded as anti-national and anti-Hindu, paving the way for the suppression of minorities, artists, and writers through intimidation and legal threats. Shiv Sena leader Mr. Thackeray remarked that Indians had proved they were not eunuchs anymore following the nuclear tests.

Official justifications for India's nuclear tests—China, Pakistan, and exposing Western hypocrisy—are superficial political pretexts masking domestic insecurity. The nation houses nearly a billion people, ranked No. 138 out of 175 countries in the UNDP Human Development Index. More than 400 million illiterate and in absolute poverty struggle alongside over 600 million lacking basic sanitation and over 200 million with no safe drinking water.

Secession and Resistance

Finding the political climate and the celebration of the bomb indefensible, Roy formally renounces the nationalist narrative in a 4,600 million years old world. You can refuse the warmongering state to align yourself with the preservation of life and imagination. True fulfillment comes from living consciously and refusing to become numb to the violence and disparity of life rather than seeking fame and success.

You can follow a personal manifesto focused on bearing witness:

To love.
To be loved.
To never forget your own insignificance.
To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you.
To seek joy in the saddest places.
To pursue beauty to its lair.
To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple.
To respect strength, never power.
Above all, to watch.
To try and understand.
To never look away.
And never, never to forget.

2. Democracy and Communal Fascism in India

The political concept of a unified Hindu nation is a surprisingly recent construct driven by modern representative governance and demographic anxiety rather than ancient religion. Historically, people identified primarily by their jati or caste names within a hierarchical taxonomy termed Brahmanvaad. The introduction of territorial constituencies and elected bodies by the British created the political necessity to form large voting blocs. Diverse communities banded together under the political umbrella label of Hindu.

The rise of Hindu majoritarianism and state-backed communal violence, exemplified by the 2002 Gujarat pogrom, dismantle secular democracy from within.

Bhimrao Ambedkar noted in Annihilation of Caste in 1936 that Hindu society is a myth. He stated that Hindu is originally a foreign name given by Mohammedans to natives living east of the river Indus. Today, only 5 percent of marriages in India cut across caste lines.

The Sangh Parivar Network

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh operates as an extensive holding company that methodically infiltrates public institutions while advancing a majoritarian agenda. Founded in 1925, the RSS maintains a vast network of shakhas, trade unions, educational institutions, women wings, medical missions, media divisions, and allied militant organizations like the Bajrang Dal and Vishwa Hindu Parishad. It systematically places its loyalists in universities, government committees, and intelligence services.

M. S. Golwalkar, the second supreme leader of the RSS, theorized that Muslims, Christians, and Communists are the three main enemies obstructing the path to a Hindu Rashtra. The BJP was founded later in 1980. The Hindu nationalist Sangh Parivar operates as a coordinated multi-headed political orchestra that deploys different figures for contradictory public roles while maintaining a singular extremist agenda.

The network uses distinct roles for its operations:

hardliners for ideological agitation;
suave politicians for foreign affairs;
English-speaking lawyers for television debates;
grassroots workers for physical violence.

While Prime Minister A. B. Vajpayee spoke of equality or recited poetry, organizations like the VHP and Bajrang Dal executed communal violence on the ground. This duality enabled 100,000 copies sold of the Prime Minister's poetry cassette.

The Gujarat Pogrom

The 2002 Gujarat pogrom under Narendra Modi marked a departure from previous communal massacres by openly showcasing its ideological underpinnings in the era of mass media. The anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat was a meticulously planned operation conducted with the active connivance and protection of state authorities.

Following the burning of a train coach carrying Hindu pilgrims in Godhra, organized Hindutva mobs murdered Muslims, raped women, and destroyed properties while police stood by. Fifty-eight kar sevaks were killed in a train coach fire in Godhra in February 2002, which served as the trigger for weeks of widespread anti-Muslim violence across Gujarat. Hindu nationalist groups unleashed violence using computer-generated cadastral lists of Muslim properties, gas cylinders, and police protection.

The violence left staggering destruction across the region:

800 officially dead, up to 2,000 according to independent reports;
150,000 displaced people living in refugee camps;
240 dargahs and 180 masjids destroyed.

Former Congress MP Ehsan Jaffri was murdered and dismembered after his emergency phone calls to top police and administrative officials were ignored by authorities. Modi subsequently won multiple elections in the state and secured backing from major corporations, remaining chief minister of Gujarat for 12 years.

Student Resistance and Caste Oppression

The institutional marginalization and tragic suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula galvanized student resistance and exposed systemic caste oppression in Indian universities. Rohith Vemula, a PhD scholar and member of the Ambedkar Students Association at the University of Hyderabad, was suspended after campus clashes. He faced financial and social ostracization, leading to his suicide on January 17, 2016, and sparking nationwide protests against institutional casteism.

Rohith Vemula left behind a powerful suicide note stating that the value of a man had been reduced to an immediate identity, a vote, or a number rather than a mind. Only 3 percent of the Dalit population are college graduates.

3. The Greater Common Good and Big Dams

Big dam projects function as weapons of mass displacement that sacrifice millions of Adivasis and Dalits to subsidize the lifestyles of the urban and industrial elite.

Mass Displacement

Big dams function as weapons of mass destruction and tools of state control, silently displacing tens of millions of people without official accountability. The Indian government lacks any official record of people displaced by dams.

Based on an IIPA study of 54 dams averaging 44,182 displaced persons each, the author calculates a conservative estimate of 33 million people displaced by 3,300 big dams built since independence. Planning documents and government secrecy mask the true human toll.

Ram Bai lost her village when the Bargi dam was built on the Narmada and was forced to live in a Jabalpur slum, bitterly questioning why the government didn't just poison them instead.

The Rehabilitation Charade

Government rehabilitation programs for displaced villagers are an administrative charade characterized by broken promises, cash compensation that is useless to illiterate farmers, and severe destitution. Under the Land Acquisition Act, the government is only legally bound to provide cash compensation rather than land, ignoring that most Adivasis lack land titles and have no use for cash. Resettlement sites often feature uninhabitable tin sheds lacking basic sanitation, leading to rampant disease and starvation.

At a resettlement site in Gujarat for families moved from Manibeli, thirty-eight children died in the first year.

While Adivasis make up only 8 percent and Dalits 15 percent of India's population, they account for 57.6 percent of those displaced by the Sardar Sarovar dam and roughly 60 percent across dam projects generally. This displacement strips them of their self-sufficient livelihoods and reduces them to cheap urban labor.

Adivasis displaced from the Nagarjunasagar Dam Project resorted to selling their babies to foreign adoption agencies, after which six infants died of neglect in public hospitals.

Ecological Destruction and the World Bank

International financial institutions like the World Bank trap developing nations in cycles of debt while driving destructive dam projects that prioritize loan targets over human welfare. The World Bank's board had approved every single one of 6,000 submitted projects between 1947 and 1994 to meet loan targets and move money. India actually pays back more in interest and installments than it receives, creating an economic bondage akin to a village moneylender relationship. In 1998, India paid the World Bank $478 million more than it borrowed, and over five years from 1993 to 1998, it paid $1.475 billion more than it received.

Perennial canal irrigation without adequate drainage destroys agricultural soil through waterlogging and salinization while failing to deliver its promised crop yields. Perennial irrigation acts on soil like anabolic steroids, initially increasing yields but progressively raising water tables and drawing toxic salts to the surface. Because adequate drainage systems cost five times as much as irrigation systems, planners omit them, resulting in widespread soil toxicity and declining agricultural productivity. Secret government studies revealed that more than 52 percent of the Sardar Sarovar command area is prone to waterlogging and salinization.

The 1992 Independent Review commissioned by the World Bank exposed fundamental flaws in the Sardar Sarovar project, proving that human and environmental concerns had been entirely subordinated to engineering and economic imperatives. Led by Bradford Morse, the independent committee conducted extensive investigations and concluded that proper resettlement was impossible under prevailing circumstances and that environmental impacts were ignored. This unprecedented critique ultimately forced the World Bank to withdraw from funding the project. Despite the Morse Report's damning conclusions, the World Bank initially attempted a patchwork remedy via the Pamela Cox Committee before the Indian government asked the Bank to withdraw on March 29, 1993.

4. Power Politics and the Reincarnation of Rumpelstiltskin

Global capitalism has mutated into a transnational collective entity that treats raw capital as its realm and corporate profit as its religion. You witness this force personified as a modern, multi-gnome version of Rumpelstiltskin whose weapons are nuclear and economic. Its media and sound systems filter out the suffering of the world while amplifying corporate interests.

Transnational corporate globalization privatizes essential public assets and natural resources while corrupt politicians sign predatory deals that plunder developing nations.

The Mechanics of Privatization

Privatization of essential public assets and natural resources transfers state-held trusts into private hands, leading to barbaric dispossession on an unprecedented scale. By commodifying essential survival resources like water and power, transnational corporations and local elites force vulnerable populations to pay market rates, effectively treating human rights as commodities available only to the rich. Out of the global population, 1 billion people have no access to safe drinking water, while 70 percent of India's population lives in rural areas.

In 1999, Bolivia privatized Cochabamba's water supply under a forty-year lease to a Bechtel consortium, which spiked water prices and provoked mass protests and martial law until Bechtel fled.

The Enron Power Deal

The privatization of the power sector in developing countries is driven by first-world manufacturing overcapacity and local political corruption rather than genuine energy needs. Multinational corporations with redundant production capacity target developing nations like India, where local politicians and bureaucrats bypass domestic self-sufficiency to sign corrupt, one-sided Power Purchase Agreements. Four dominant corporations account for 20,000 megawatts of power equipment manufactured annually.

Enron signed a massive power project deal in Maharashtra, leading to electricity costs so exorbitant that the state board faced billions in losses and had to contemplate paying fixed charges without buying power. Under the renegotiated agreement, 30 billion dollars bound the Maharashtra State Electricity Board to Enron, requiring 220 million dollars a year in fixed charges for Phase I of the project alone.

The Pincer Action of Power

State governance relies on a pincer action where economic privatization and cultural nationalism work in tandem to distract the public and suppress dissent. While one arm of the government sells off national assets to transnational corporations, the other arm orchestrates religious bigotry, militarism, and cultural nationalism to manufacture mob frenzy and demonize activists. These two forces operate as Siamese twins to dismantle public welfare and crush opposition.

5. How Deep Shall We Dig and the Republic of Hunger

Society and governance in India have become profoundly disconnected from reality. This schism between factual knowledge and state-sanctioned information turns the country into a metaphorical mental asylum.

While state granaries overflow with rotting surplus grain and media celebrates economic growth, rural India suffers from extreme hunger, starvation, and draconian state terror.

Utsa Patnaik calculated that food grain absorption between the early 1990s and 2001 dropped below World War II levels, including the Bengal Famine. An average rural family eats 100 kilograms less food annually compared to the early 1990s. Forty percent of the rural population has food absorption matching sub-Saharan Africa. Forty-seven percent of India's children below three suffer from malnutrition, while 46 percent are stunted.

The state allows 63 million tons of grain to rot in government storehouses. It exports 12 million tons of grain and sells it at subsidized prices abroad.

Malnutrition and Starvation

Virtual media illusions celebrate an "India Shining" or "Feeling Good" campaign while poverty deepens. New Secessionism represents a vertical split where an elite minority privatizes public assets and resources. India Pvt. Ltd. takes over public enterprises that serve the 70 percent of the population living in rural areas, numbering 70 million people who depend on natural resources.

Neoliberal economic reforms and communal neo-fascism operate as a dual orchestra. L. K. Advani's Rath Yatra and the destruction of the Babri Masjid in December 1992 coincided with financial minister Manmohan Singh opening markets to neoliberalism. Enron signed the first private power project in Maharashtra in 1993 while public frustration was diverted into communal violence.

Draconian Legislation and POTA

State security forces operate with absolute impunity under the guise of hypernationalism. In Andhra Pradesh, encounter deaths average about two hundred extremists a year. An estimated 80,000 people have been killed in Kashmir since 1989.

The Prevention of Terrorism Act, known as POTA, institutionalized state terror across 10 states. In Jharkhand, 3,200 people mostly poor Adivasis accused of being Maoists were indicted under POTA. In Gujarat after the 2002 pogrom, 287 people were accused under the law, of whom 286 were Muslim and one was Sikh.

New Secessionism

Grassroots workers' movements organize to fight corporate globalization and state violence. You can participate in this resistance by applying these practices:

Stand by victims of communal, social, and economic assaults regardless of group affiliation;
Contribute worker funds to build independent community infrastructure such as hospitals and schools;
Inculcate revolutionary thought in the younger generation to train future resistance leaders.

6. Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy and Global War

Modern empire operates under the guise of democracy, using military intervention and corporate media to subvert facts and justify unprovoked wars of aggression.

The U.S. government and its coalition partners label military interventions as missions for infinite justice and enduring freedom, ignoring the immense civilian casualties they inflict in developing nations. Former U.S. Ambassador Madeleine Albright stated on television that the death of 500,000 Iraqi children due to economic sanctions was a hard choice but worth the price.

Before the invasion of Iraq, a New York Times/CBS News survey showed 42 percent of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for the September 11 attacks, and an ABC News survey showed 55 percent believed he directly supported Al-Qaeda, despite a complete lack of evidence.

Corporate War Profiteering

Modern military conflicts and defense policies are inextricably linked to corporate and private investment interests in weapons, oil, and gas. Prominent political figures hold leadership positions in private equity and defense investment funds like the Carlyle Group, while major oil corporations negotiate pipeline deals across Central Asia. Former U.S. Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci served as chairman and managing director of the Carlyle Group, which invests heavily in the defense sector.

Following the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the CIA and Pakistan's ISI launched a massive covert operation to foster an Islamic jihad, funding radical fighters and utilizing the opium trade to finance the conflict. The borderland between Pakistan and Afghanistan transformed into the world's biggest producer of heroin within two years of the CIA's arrival, with annual profits funding militant training.

Peoples' Sanctions

Resisting corporate empire requires abandoning feel-good political theater in favor of targeted direct actions and international solidarity.

Because individual governments and leaders become powerless against capital flight once in office, radical change must be enforced by civil society through targeted boycotts and direct economic disruption of corporate war profiteers. Activists can reverse economic sanctions by imposing Peoples' Sanctions on every corporate house awarded a postwar contract in Iraq, similar to the global campaigns that targeted apartheid institutions.

You can execute this strategy through concrete steps:

Choose two major corporations profiting from the destruction of Iraq.
List every project they are involved in globally.
Locate their offices in every city and country across the world.
Go after them, shut them down, name them, expose them, and boycott them until they are forced out of business.

Conclusion

Modern corporate globalization, religious nationalism, and state militarism operate as an interconnected tyranny that dispossesses the rural poor, destroys the environment, and suppresses fundamental democratic dissent. You see how nuclear nationalism, big dams, corporate privatization, and communal violence emerge from the same systemic engine of destruction.

You must reject the passive consumption of mainstream propaganda and corporate narratives. To confront this interlocking machinery of power, you can follow these practical steps:

Question official pronouncements on economic growth, national security, and development whenever they mask human displacement and ecological ruin.
Support grassroots resistance movements fighting for land, water, and basic human survival against corporate plunder.
Defend secularism and democratic freedoms by exposing religious nationalism and state violence wherever they arise.
Boycott transnational corporations that privatize essential public resources and exploit marginalized communities.
Build international solidarity across borders to counter the march of global empire and authoritarian rule.

10 Key Ideas

The 1998 nuclear tests in Pokhran unleashed physical devastation and manufactured a toxic brand of Hindu nationalism that brands all dissent as anti-national.
The rise of Hindu majoritarianism and state-backed communal violence, exemplified by the 2002 Gujarat pogrom, dismantle secular democracy from within.
Big dam projects function as weapons of mass displacement that sacrifice millions of Adivasis and Dalits to subsidize the lifestyles of the urban and industrial elite.
International financial institutions like the World Bank trap developing nations in cycles of debt while driving destructive dam projects that prioritize loan targets over human welfare.
Transnational corporate globalization privatizes essential public assets and natural resources while corrupt politicians sign predatory deals that plunder developing nations.
State governance relies on a pincer action where economic privatization and cultural nationalism work in tandem to distract the public and suppress dissent.
While state granaries overflow with rotting surplus grain and media celebrates economic growth, rural India suffers from extreme hunger, starvation, and draconian state terror.
Modern empire operates under the guise of democracy, using military intervention and corporate media to subvert facts and justify unprovoked wars of aggression.
Modern military conflicts and defense policies are inextricably linked to corporate and private investment interests in weapons, oil, and gas.
Resisting corporate empire requires abandoning feel-good political theater in favor of targeted direct actions and international solidarity.

Book summary “The cost of living”: summary

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