Arandhati Roy, with her unique combination of storytelling skills and political insight, discusses her new book Capitalism: A Ghost Story (Haymarket Books), at an evening hosted by New York's the New School.

Capitalism: A Ghost Story examines the dark side of democracy in contemporary India, and shows how the demands of globalized capitalism has subjugated billions of people to the highest and most intense forms of racism and exploitation.

In discussion with fellow Indian author Siddhartha Deb (author of The Point of Return, which was a 2003 New York Times Notable Book of the Year), Roy touches on lots of different topics about contemporary India.

Of particular interest is their discussion (around the 1.09 mark) about censorship and the Wendy Doniger case (where her book, The Hindus, an alternative history was, after protests by a right wing group, recalled and pulped by Penguin India). Roy comments "It's quite fascinating that as you legislate more about free speech, and as you make more of a song and dance about free speech, in fact, in India what the Urdu and Persian poet Ghalib could say, in the nineteenth century, about his relationship with Islam, nobody could say today. "