This is book 2 of the "Family D'Alembert" series.

This note contains spoilers for the book.

Number 2 in the Family D'Alembert series. Written with Stephen Goldin. Actually, I think everything after the first book was entirely written by Goldin.

Ah, yes. "Strangler's Moon". And the planet below has a horrible over-population problem. Somehow India, and "thugs", are coming to mind already.

Yep; the Indian heritage of the planet is specifically mentioned. And the final conclusion is that it's such a wretched hive of poverty that it would always be a problem, so something had to be done about that.

Boy, the super-agents sure do have a lot of lucky close calls.