What might India become in a world where the certainties of yesterday no longer hold? For Kiran Karnik, the answer begins with taking both the country’s possibilities and its problems seriously.
Few writers can bring to the questions facing India the breadth of experience that Karnik has acquired over a lifetime at the forefront of technological and institutional change. In Dusk or Dawn?, he draws on that experience to consider the forces reshaping our world, and the choices that will determine how we live.
Moving between technological advances and the stubborn difficulties of everyday life, these essays consider what artificial intelligence could mean for livelihoods and learning, and how migration and an ageing population might alter family life. Karnik examines the failures that leave our cities flooded and our public services inadequate. He looks at shifting global power and the changing nature of warfare, alongside questions of identity and belonging in an increasingly divided society. Throughout, he asks how development might reach those still excluded from its benefits. Running through these reflections is a larger question: what kind of society do we want to build, and can GDP alone measure its success?
Karnik is frank about failures of governance and the dangers of concentrated power. His confidence in technology leaves room for searching questions about whom it serves. Yet he continues to look for workable responses, finding possibilities in stronger local institutions and in the diversity that India now too often treats as an obstacle.
Informed by long experience and an insatiable curiosity about what lies ahead, Dusk or Dawn? invites us to think beyond immediate crises and take a more active part in shaping the future.
