"By democracy, I don't mean democracy as an ideal or an aspiration. I mean the working model: western liberal democracy, and its variants. Attempts to answer this question often turn into a comparison of different systems of governance and end with a somewhat prickly, combative defence of democracy. It's flawed, but it's better than anything else that's on offer," Arundhati Roy


”Listening to Grasshoppers : Field notes on Democracy” is a collection of contemporary essays that find the fierce energy of the author working overtime in a brutal dissection of the Indian system of democracy. It examines the fallacies that not only exist within the system but are actually weaved inextricably in the long tradition of individual differences that the world's largest democracy has nurtured through years. Religious high-handedness or cultural prejudice have been at the heart of most of the problems that India has faced and the situation has not got any better with existing totalitarian pockets of belief. Arundhati Roy in these essays shows how the journey that was begun in the 1990s by a spate of Hindu nationalism and neoliberal economic reforms is now having repercussions that are risky and dangerous.


The series of essays start with the killing of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002. She goes on to comment scathingly on the association between genocide and so called 'Progress', and expresses her doubt about the doubtful investigations that are carried after an incident, mostly as an eyewash. She gives her views on the role of the judiciary and about the sometimes unholy understanding between large corporations, the government and the mainstream media. The collection ends with an account of the August 2008 uprising in Kashmir and an analysis of the November 2008 attacks on Mumbai.


“Listening to Grasshoppers” asks fundamental questions about democracy itself, considered 'the best available option' and also examines the lines of discord threatening an apparently stable system. Ms. Roy's prose is brilliant as ever though understandably opinionated at times. Added to the force is her strength of conviction and apt political analysis. The book is a must-read for those that are willing to think. About the country, about the people and about the state of democracy in general.