The energy security debate in India is mostly centred on the county's import dependence on crude oil and other fuel, including, now, even coal, and on securing fuel sources by buying assets abroad and promoting investment in domestic production. This debate tends to overlook the challenge of providing affordable energy access to all, a topic that P C Maithani and Deepak Gupta effectively tackle in this book.The authors' experience in dealing with policy-making for renewable energy in the ministry of new and renewable energy is amply reflected in the book, which goes beyond the realm of green energy to tackle the issue of rural electrification through conventional generation as well. In the process, they highlight how misplaced definitions and targets under various government programmes have added to the problems.Maithani and Gupta rightly point out that energy access includes both electricity and cooking fuel. Globally, 1.4 billion people, over 20 per cent of the world's population, do

Renewing the energy debate

Business Standard

Between August 1946 and December 1947 at least one million - perhaps two - Indians killed each other. In the six years preceding, Adolf Hitler had killed off six million Jews in Europe. So the world didn't take much notice of India

India's holocaust

In November 1957, a Newsweek column called "Where Are They Now?" noted that William L Shirer, "made famous by his nightly radio reports from Berlin during the early years of the war and by his book 'Berlin Diary', has been off the air nearly 10 years and is now a writer and part-time lecturer".The item had the ring of a professional obituary. After reaching the height of celebrity, influence and wealth as a member of Edward R Murrow and CBS radio's lauded wartime broadcasting team in Europe, he was fired and later blacklisted during the Red Scare. He was so broke he could not afford to fix the furnace in his Connecticut farmhouse.Shirer spent his days tapping away on the typewriter he had set up on a table in one corner of his barn. He was hard at work on the book that would turn his reputation around for good, plunging once more into the Nazi era, many years of which he had witnessed first-hand in Berlin and Vienna: in the Austrian capital for the Anschluss, at Nuremberg for party ral

The rise, fall and rise of William Shirer

A meticulously researched biography shows that the brothers who designed and flew the world's first powered aircraft were complex individuals from an unusual family

A Wright turn for aviation

If one was looking for policy prescriptions, the book does not hold many. But if one is searching for a moral compass that should guide policy making towards a more just and equal society, then Looking Away is like a good cup of coffee one should drink to wake up

India's eyes are wide shut

Federalism is quite the flavour of the month in Indian policy circles. Partly through political action and partly thanks to the technocrats at the Fourteenth Finance Commission, the devolution of power and funds to the states has accelerated sharply in recent years. One of the purposes behind the replacement of the Planning Commission with the National Institution for Transforming India, or NITI, is purportedly a more collegial - rather than supervisory - role for the Centre.At this crucial moment arrives another in Oxford University Press' series on Indian economic policies. This volume - The Making of Miracles in Indian States: Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Gujarat - is edited by M Govinda Rao, a member of the Fourteenth Finance Commission, and Arvind Panagariya, the head of NITI. Both the subject and the editors thus must command our attention.The purpose of the three studies in the book, according to the editors, is to examine "the link between state-level policy reforms and the econom

Behind the 'miracles'

Unbound's writings tell me that there's someone, in some era, who may have thought and felt the way I do today. As Annie Zaidi's introduction eloquently puts it, 'We cannot know what to do next unless we know what we have already done, or what was done to us'

Women, in their own words

Nobody could recall a medical press conference quite like this one. On April 12, 1955, families huddled around radios, as if listening to the World Series or a championship fight. Crowds watched on television sets lining department store windows. Work stopped in offices and factories as word spread and tearful celebrations erupted. "Polio Is Conquered," the headlines screamed. The vaccine developed by Jonas Salk, a 40-year-old University of Pittsburgh researcher, had been judged safe and effective following the largest public health experiment in our history.Americans had long worshipped their athletes, inventors and war heroes - but a medical researcher? Salk was breaking new ground, whether he liked it or not. He'd become an instant celebrity, with all the baggage it entailed. A successful vaccine against polio, a viral disease that had paralysed tens of thousands of victims, mostly children, seemed almost heaven-sent.But not everyone felt this way. As Charlotte DeCroes Jacobs makes

The knight in a white coat

This extract from Follow your Gut by Rob Knight explains how a life-saver can cause long-term harm

Antibiotics: Good poison, bad poison

Freakonomics

More random musings by Steven D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner on crime and its discontents

Book Extract: When to Rob a Bank: Freakonomics revisited

In management literature, the name Marcus Sidonius Falx won't ring a bell. Of course, it won't, he's a nobleman living in the heyday of the Roman empire. But in some ways he is a man ahead of his time, having co-created a self-help book, the kind that has been all the rage in our barbarian age.As a member of the privileged Roman nobility, Marcus Sidonius Falx presided over a vast household and extensive estates and naturally had to manage a large workforce of slaves, just as his family had done for generations. His brisk and earthy wisdom is conveyed to us through the wide-ranging research and entertaining pen of Jerry Toner, fellow and director of Classics at Churchill College, Cambridge University.Professor Toner clarifies a point for us upfront: that Falx's existence "may be a subject of academic debate". In fact, the good professor's helpful Commentary at the end of each chapter makes it clear that it is Falx who is the ghost writer, a sort of Noble Everyman created to help philist

In search of excellence in slaves

One more book on leadership; one more model that tells us that times are changing - we live in a world of VUCAI (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity and interdependence) and should instantly change; one more book that proposes a new framework of leadership; one more book that talks down to the reader; one more book that has all the "feel good" factors of leadership - systems thinking, inclusiveness and how leadership comes from within.So what is different about this book? To start with, the narrative style. The author decides that he would have a conversation with the reader and, therefore, has a one-way interaction, peppered with comments that digress; he cracks poor jokes, admonishes himself and then moves on into the classroom. It is not only irritating, but also detracts from the arguments. And this conversational style is not even consistent through the book. If that were the case, it should not have had any trace of diagrams, arrows, boxes that are more conducive to a

The leadership of elephants

What perfect timing to get this book out when the Parliament's Joint Committee is reviewing the National Democratic Alliance's (NDA's) land ordinance, which reverts to the government the power to forcibly acquire land across the country. Anyone who wants to cut through the political rhetoric that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is spinning to valiantly defend its misfired ordinance should read Jairam Ramesh and Muhammad Ali Khan's book.The book describes and justifies the provisions of the 2013 law that the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) had passed. It takes you through each of the salient features of the law. It details the logic, the legal basis and, to a lesser extent, the compromises reached to stitch together a law that would eventually pass the Parliamentary test.When Mr Ramesh steered the law through the Parliament, bending to build in demands from the left and the right, he drew both flak and compliments from critiques of extremely different hues. But the NDA's attempt to t

The lay of the land law

For a man who lived most of his life on camera, Ronald Reagan eludes focus. There was, and remains, a gauziness to the picture; Reagan retained, throughout his political career, the remoteness of a screen idol, though he never achieved that status as a movie actor. He was ubiquitous for decades and, as president, left a lasting imprint on America's political culture. Yet he was all the same an unknowable man - even to those nearest him. In White House meetings, he was mostly silent, often leaving his aides to guess at (and feud over) his views. In his personal relationships, he was unfailingly warm but rarely intimate. "He doesn't let anybody get too close," one observer said. "There's a wall around him." That the observer was his wife, Nancy, should give pause to any politician or pundit who claims to know what Reagan would do if he were here today. (It should, but it won't.)It should also serve as a warning to any biographer. A two-volume treatment by Lou Cannon, who covered Reagan a

Reagan's enduring enigma

ISIS book

Islamic State

One of the Arab world's most distinguished commentators has provided unique insights into how this phenomenally successful jihadi group leverages the power of the Internet for propaganda, recruitment and battlefield strategy and tactics

A new book that explores how the Islamic State clicks

Senior bureaucrats are rarely adventurous or rarely admit to being so even if they are. Going off on holidays or expeditions into the mountains may be branded as frivolities unbecoming of a staid and serious representative of the sarkar. So I was delighted that an Indian Administrative Service officer Avay Shukla took full advantage of his assignment in Himachal Pradesh to undertake some of the state's most picturesque and delightful treks, including some lesser-known ones. I have no doubt that the quality of his administrative governance would have improved as a result. In The Trails Less Travelled, Mr Shukla has described, in some detail, 12 treks in the districts of Shimla, Kinnaur, Kullu and Lahaul and Spiti, covering 20-odd years. There are convenient and easy-to-read charts showing the trekking routes he has traversed, with key geographical features well marked. These will be helpful to those who may be enthused to follow in his footsteps to one of India's most scenically beautif

Trailing indicators of destruction

Neil Gaiman depicts Baghdad as a magical city ruled by Caliph Harun al-Rashid, the legendary protagonist of One Thousand and One Nights, in his graphic short story "Ramadan". Troubled by the inevitable impermanence of the splendour of his beloved Baghdad, al-Rashid offers it to the dream god Morpheus, to preserve it forever. The story ends, abruptly, with an old man in the modern,war-ravaged Iraq capital, telling the tale to boys for cigarettes and money. Gerard Russell's Heirs to Forgotten Kingdoms evokes a similar nostalgia, not just for Baghdad or Iraq but for all of West Asia, steadily spiralling into an endless conflict.A Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, Mr Russell has served for 14 years as a British and United Nations diplomat in Cairo, Jerusalem, Baghdad, Kabul and Jeddah, often during the height of violence. But unlike many of his colleagues who choose to serve their terms secluded from the local population, in the safety of green zones and diplomatic

Lost horizons

This is an ambitious book. Its promise is all the more seductive because of author Nalin Mehta's background as a social scientist and media man. And because Uday Shankar, chief executive officer of Star, was supposed to co-write it, as he confesses in the introduction that he has written. The book finally took shape as a result of Mr Mehta and Mr Shankar's discussions over the past 10 years on television in India. I also picked up the book with anticipation because I had liked Mr Mehta's earlier well-researched but not very coherently put-together India on Television: How Satellite News Channels Have Changed the Way We Think and Act (2008).Behind a Billion Screens goes a fair way to meet its promise - it is engaging, full of fresh anecdotes and it is much better written than Mr Mehta's earlier book. The one thing that really works is that Mr Mehta contextualises the Indian market against the US in terms of regulation, on concentration of media power and the other issues.The burden of M

What 'news television' tells us about itself

This March, a user with the name NSWGreat posted a thread on Reddit: [Complaint/ Warning] Evolution Admins Exit Scamming. "I hate to be the bearer of bad news," said NSWGreat, "…but the admins are preparing to exit scam with all the funds. … I am so sorry but Verto and Kimble have f***ed us over."And just like that, Evolution had vanished. In the roughly 18 months since the well-orchestrated Operations Onymous had taken down Silk Road, Evolution had become the top dark net, anonymous market for drugs, stolen identities and other high-value illegal commodities.Jamie Bartlett has little doubt that some version of Evolution or Silk Road will return, despite these hiccups. "It is not surprising that online drug markets exist," he writes in The Dark Net. "What is surprising is that they work." There are no regulators, buyers and sellers are anonymous, the risk of infiltration by law enforcement agencies is constant - and yet, he found, dark net markets are surprisingly reliable. Almost

The underworld at your fingertips

Through the massively ambitious Ibis trilogy, Amitav Ghosh has permanently changed and reshaped the way histories are seen and fictionalised

Book review: 'Flood of Fire' by Amitav Ghosh

The first signs of the sub-prime crisis surfaced in the United States towards the end of 2007. By the middle of 2008, the crisis had morphed into a full-blown financial catastrophe. Stock markets around the world tanked. Lending collapsed.The world economy may have been on the brink, but the publishing industry saw a boom. Books on the crisis typically fall into two categories. The first off the presses were the journalistic accounts, of which Andrew Ross Sorkin's Too Big to Fail proved a durable success. Later came the more thought-through academic analyses such as Raghuram Rajan's Fault Lines.Easy Money falls somewhere between these two categories. And though much has been written on the subject, Vivek Kaul, who is a columnist at Firstpost.com, manages to engage the reader. He tries to weave together detailed findings into a coherent narrative and present it in a manner that is easy to understand - even if his explanations are occasionally open to interpretation.As the title suggests

The downside of easy money

Book News: Check out for latest book news, reviews, book launches and more on Business Standard. Explore now for new books reviews along with books writers and novel reviews and more.

Books News: Latest Book, Book Reviews, Book Features, Book Launches | Business Standard

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