Roy argues that populism in India originated with Indira Gandhi, who as prime minister in 1969 formed a breakaway faction of the ruling Congress Party that campaigned successfully on a platform of righteous popular anger at a corrupt political establishment. The same impulse eventually drove Gandhi from power in 1977 and in the long run opened the door to the victory of India’s current prime minister, Narendra Modi, who portrays himself as a political outsider with a mandate to cure the ills of