This is a book which no marketing manager, economist, or equity analyst can afford to ignore. It provides, in painstaking detail, an exhaustive as well as in-depth view of the Indian market, its various product categories, and projections of the state of the market right up to 2007. Apart from its obvious uses as an unrivalled source of data on the Indian product markets in the manufacturing sector, the long view also has the additional merit of smoothening out the projections caused by the changes in the business cycle. The scope of the book, comprising as it does definitive data on the entire Indian manufacturing product market, is awesome.

The Indian marketplace has been metamorphosed in recent times as a result of liberalisation. The main emerging trends have been summarised in the book. These are:consumer awareness about products, product quality and brands has grown appreciably; some product markets, which in the Indian context can be styled as sunrise areas, have shown leap-frogging trends; multi-directional market penetration has intensified with new consumer responses; there are shifts from functional to convenience goods, loose to packaged products; markets are becoming more competitive and more oligopolistic at the same time; sellers' markets are changing into buyers' markets; market structures and prices are getting more volatile, making the producer and brands more vulnerable; delivery systems are getting upgraded with perceptible consumer-orientation.

All these trends point to the need to have a thorough understanding of the Indian market if a company is to survive in today's cutthroat environment. As the authors of the book put it, "The power of the winner comes from skill; skill from knowledge and knowledge from information. Information of the markets is, therefore, an imperative forsurvival and success."

Information about the market is what this book provides, all 783 pages of it-great big dollops of information. The volume seeks to develop and provide indicators, direct and supportive, needed for designing market strategies and corporate growth. In order to accomplish this, the book aims at 1) reviewing and measuring the dimensions of the markets of the manufacturing industry in India, which are a powerful engine of growth; 2) dissecting and scanning mercurial and expanding markets; 3) identifying the direction of the market and measuring their mobility; 4) projecting the magnitudes in what the authors term the epochal decade (1997-2007). It covers the size, structure and segmentation, as well as the dynamics and behaviour of the markets. The market strategist faces a mind-boggling inventory of challenges set in a complex change-matrix. The book aims to scan the recent past, analyse the present and do some crystal gazing of certain modules of the multivariate transformation and theevolving opportunities. The book contains data on the entire spectrum of manufacturing activities, including automotive products, metals and products, machinery and components, electricals and accessories, processed food, drinks and beverages, consumer products, consumer durables etc.

A typical industry status report also contains a snapshot of past and future demand, market growth rates, market structure i.e. the share of various market segments, lead players as well as strategic alliances. A list of contemplated projects in the industry is also provided, enabling the corporate strategist to plan ahead. Some of the projections have been overtaken by the ongoing downturn in the economy, but nevertheless, a turning of the business cycle should bear out the longer-term forecasts.

Module 4 of the book provides data on the leading brands in the Indian market, leading global brands, and some extremely interesting data contained in a series of tables. These include regional variations in crude market indicatorsfor the middle and upper classes, regional dispersal of relative market status et al, all of which would be extremely useful for precise targeting of consumer groups. This volume is, clearly, absolutely essential for anybody wanting to understand the size, structure, as well as dynamics of the Indian market for manufactured products.