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India: A Portrait is a detailed account of India’s economic growth and recent history by Patrick French. Summary of the Book The world is surprised at India’s economic growth. It is surprised that a country with so much diversity, so many problems can produce so many billionaires. How, it wonders, can it manage to do this in the face of its crippling poverty, vast differences and corruption? Patrick French examines how Indians manage to excel consistently in the fields of business, medicine, finance and electronics. He looks at India’s success model, and compares it with its cultural forces, examining whether the two are related. He looks back at the time when India made a tryst with destiny and bet on democracy, studying the staggering shift from inflexible socialism to uninhibited capitalism. How does India manage to brave its inherent problems and constantly impress its neighbours and the entire world? About Patrick French Patrick French is a British historian and writer known for his books Younghusband: The Last Great Imperial Adventurer, The World Is What It Is and Tibet, Tibet: A Personal History Of A Lost Land. French won the Somerset Maugham Award and the Royal Society of Literature's W. H. Heinemann Prize for his biography of the British explorer Francis Younghusband. He has also opened an India-centric website called The India Site to report Indian news and related cultural articles.