Reddit mentions of Everybody Loves a Good Drought: Stories from India's Poorest Districts

Here is a list of 5 books specifically in an Indian context

1. "India since Independence" by Bipin Chandra. It is a well researched, thorough, and succint book on India's journey after attaining independence. It chronicles the significant events accurately, and doesn't leave any aspect untouched.
   
   
2. "Every loves a good drought" P Sainath is among those, fast dissappearing breed of journalists who reports on poverty related issues from the hinterland. He single-handedly thrust the issue of farmer suicide in the Vidarbha region onto the mainstream through his dogged journalism. This is one of his earlier books in which he details extreme poverty and the policies that sustain it with his own keen insights.
   
   
3. "The Meadow" . One of the authors is Adrian Levy who is an award winning investigative journalist. He has also written a book on 26/11 attacks; The siege. In 'The Meadow', the authors investigate the kidnapping of ten Western backpackers in Kashmir during the height of freedom movement in 1995. The book explains how their lives became pawn in the geo-politcal struggle, the role of Indian army during the event, while at the same time providing a good understanding of the Kashmir Issue. Highly Recommended.
   
   
4. "The Discovery Of India" It is a scholarly work on India's history.
   
   
5. "Gunahon ka devta" by Dharmveer Bharti. It is the only fiction book in the list, and probably the last hindi novel I finished. I read this when I was still quite young (I think in eight or ninth class). The characters, their complexities, ambitions, are etched very nicely. If you are still not sold, read the first paragraph.
   
   Along with these 5, one of my favourite book is "The banality of Evil". It deals with something which confounds me still, just how the seemingly nice, sane people come to support the purest manifestations of evil. What drives such public sentiment ? The book gives some of the answers.

If you're American, I think the stuff here is good.

For me as an Indian, this book was extremely powerful: https://www.amazon.com/Everybody-Loves-Good-Drought-Districts/dp/0140259848