Deepti Kapoor has been described as the new voice of Indian writing for her acclaimed novel A Bad Character. She joins journalist Samanth Subramanian, who was born in Tamil Nadu, and Ira Trivedi, one of India’s most influential youth voices on gender and culture, to explore poverty, sexual politics, corruption and violence in the subcontinent. Has the country gone awry and what will it take to overcome a national feeling of pessimism? Christopher Kremmer poses the big questions.