On the eve of a landmark general election, Ruchir Sharma offers an unrivalled portrait of how India and its democracy work, drawn from his 2 decades on the road running after election campaigns across every major state, travelling the exact carbon copy of a lap around the earth. Democracy on the Road takes readers on a rollicking ride with Ruchir and his merry music group of fellow authors as they speak to farmers, shopkeepers and CEOs from Rajasthan to Tamil Nadu, and interview market leaders from Narendra Modi to Rahul Gandhi.

No book provides traced the arc of modern India by taking readers so close to the action. Offering an intimate view in the lives and minds of India’s politics giants and its own people, Sharma explains how the complicated forces of family, caste and community, economics and advancement, money and corruption, Bollywood and Godmen, have conspired to elect and topple Indian market leaders since Indira Gandhi. The eventually motivating message of Ruchir’s travels is usually that, while democracy is definitely retreating in lots of parts of the world, it is flourishing in India.