Mihir Bose was born in January 1947. Eight months later – and seventy years ago in August- India became a modern, free nation. The country he knew growing up in the 1960s has undergone vast and radical change.

India today exports food, sends space probes to Mars, and all too often Indian businesses rescue their ailing competitors in the west. In From Midnight to Glorious Morning Bose travels the length and breadth of India to explore how a country that many doubted would survive at birth has been transformed into one capable of rivalling China as the preeminent economic superpower. Multifarious challenges still continue to plague India and Bose’s penetrating analysis of the last 70 years asks what is yet to be done for the country to fulfil its destiny.

The growth has been exponential and there is much to celebrate, the predictions of doom in August 1947 have proved to be unfounded, but Bose’s nuanced, personal and trenchant book shows that it is naive to pretend the hoped-for bright morning has yet dawned