India is a country of one thousand and two hundred million people and is the largest "democracy" in the world, with more than 800 million voters. But the 100 richest people in the country own assets that equate to a quarter of Gross Domestic Product. The rest of the population are ghosts in a system beyond their control. Millions of people live on less than two dollars a day. Hundreds of thousands of farmers commit suicide every year unable to cope with their debts. Dalits are expelled from their villages because the owners, who took their land from them for having no deeds of ownership, want to dedicate the land to agribusiness. These are just a few examples of the "green shoots" of an economy that has corrupted contemporary India.

Arundhati Roy examines the dark side of democracy and shows how the demands of globalized capitalism have subjected billions of people to racism and exploitation. The author explains how mega-units have dispossessed the country natural resources and been able to influence throughout the country throughout the country, routinely using the military and its brute force for profit, as well as a wide range of NGOs and foundations, to decide policy-making in India.