'The Greater Common Good' and 'The End of Imagination'
In 'The Greater Common Good' Arundhati Roy chronicles the struggle of the people of Narmada Valley in Central India who, for the past fifteen years, have been fighting the Indian State's plan to construct 3,200 dams on a single river, and in the process displace hundreds of thousands of people. The most controversial of these is the Sardar Sarovar Dam, which envisages virtually re-routing the Narmada River ninety degrees north of its natural course. In the process of questioning this obsolete, Stalinist paradigm of "development" Roy travels deep into the heart of Indian politics. She asks the big questions - Who pays? Who profits? And in 'The End of Imagination', Roy writes about India's decision to go nuclear.
