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Is there life after Democracy? That’s the provocative question that Arundhati Roy, India’s leading social critic starts her new book with. India, the world’s largest democracy is plagued with many of the same problems facing other democracies: state violence, religious fundamentalism, free market reforms that make the rich richer and the poor poorer, militarization, and so on. In her new book “Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers,” Roy grapples with the question of what democracy really means if democratic governments like India’s offer its people so little control over their destiny. But she also profiles the mass social movements that are constantly struggling and reclaiming their lives in spite of the efforts of their representatives. “Once they are elected,” says Roy, “the people’s representatives are free to break their promises and change their minds.” It’s a story we see unfolding before our eyes here in the US all the time. Arundhati Roy is winner of the 1997 Booker Prize for her novel, The God of Small Things. Her non-fiction books include The Cost of Living, Power Politics, War Talk, An Ordinary Person’s Guide to Empire, and Public Power in the Age of Empire. Naomi Klein has called Roy “one of the most confident and original thinkers of our time.”

GUEST: Arundhati Roy, author of “Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers”