Peter Oborne takes on established experts on South Asian cricket in an entertaining new book chronicling the history of cricket in Pakistan

If it surprises, it must be Pakistan

Business Standard

The Oxford Handbook of the Indian Economy in the 21st Century is a real doorstopper. At 965 pages, it's meant to be all-inclusive. And, in this, it succeeds (and fails) as much as any single volume, however large, can. Whether it's worth the price - Rs 2,495 - is quite another matter.The book has been edited by Ashima Goyal, a professor at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research in Mumbai. She has pulled together a large number of authors, including Laveesh Bhandari, Renu Kohli, Gita Sen, Ashwini Deshpande and Jayati Sarkar, most of whom write about their particular areas of expertise. It's an editor's job to maintain a consistent standard throughout and, as far as is allowed by the resources available to her, Ms Goyal manages that.Still, there are high points and low points. The chapter on primary education from Rukmini Banerji and Wilima Wadhwa, which draws heavily on the Annual Status of Education Report, or the ASER, reports that Ms Banerji produces, is one such. Readin

Debating a Handbook

Plant worship is universal. There is no human civilisation or religious tradition in which plants do not figure since life on earth would not be sustained without them.So while the cosmos in the myths of the Norse consists of Nine Worlds flanking the great tree Yggdrasil, a Lote tree, the Sidrat al-Muntahâ, marks the end of the seventh heaven in Islamic belief, a boundary that no creation can pass. Plants or their parts are also totems used in both spiritual and temporal realms. The shamrock, used by Padraig of Erin, is the symbol of the Catholic Irish, while the English rose, the fleur-de-lis and the chrysanthemum are symbols of the royal houses of Tudor, Bourbon and Nippon respectively.This book details similar linkages closer home, in South Asia, from the Stone Age to India today and the gamut of roles plants have played in religion, folklore and spirituality.The book has two broad sections. Part one begins with a chapter on plant worship in the Mesolithic Era. Using diagrammatical

The nature of divinity

If Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto's invocations of Asia are taken as some kind of pan-Asian commitment, his "eat grass" rhetoric must be treated as advocating vegetarianism. The British diplomat, Sir Morrice James (Lord Saint Brides), who was high commissioner to both India and Pakistan, called him "Lucifer" and a "flawed angel". Farzana Shaikh, his biographer, quotes both terms, but doesn't admit that Bhutto's Asianism was only an attempt to mobilise forces against the arch-enemy he called "Greater Bharat".This is not the book's only flaw. China's rise hardly needs the imprimatur of even someone as eminent as Bertrand Russell. A century before Russell's visit to China, with which Ramachandra Guha introduces this misleadingly titled anthology, Napoleon famously called China "a sleeping giant" who would "move the world" when she awoke . A collection of the lives of eminent Asians would have raised no cavil, but the attempt to suggest a supra-national framework for 11 ultra-nationalists (10 male an

Potted histories of some eminent Asians

It isn't easy to track down a positive word about West Asia these days. Then again, Juan Cole is not your typical observer. A professor of history at the University of Michigan, he is also a prolific and popular blogger on current affairs. An American, he spent part of his childhood in France and Ethiopia. A left-leaning idealist, he comes across as far more optimistic than the dour Occupy crowd. A cosmopolitan in constant touch with 20-somethings, he seems to be addressing boomers in his latest book, The New Arabs, which is replete with explanations that digital natives would never need. (Don't know what the "meatspace" is? Read on.)The New Arabs chronicles the heart-stirring youth revolts in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya. Early on, Mr Cole does some defying of his own. "The rise of the Internet," he notes, "may not have been as central to these social movements as some Western press coverage assumed."To be sure, Mr Cole affirms that online networks dramatically amplified the reach and res

Learning democracy in West Asia

For close to a century, an Indian Muslim family that has roots in Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh has been looking after an Indian hospice in the old city of Jerusalem. In this extract from his latest book, the author traces this unique story that is set in a complicated political, religious and cultural landscape

Indian oasis

Sathya Saran's book on one of Bollywood's legendary music directors doesn't quite hit the right note

Burman dada off key

John Pemble's book takes a broad sweeping view of the conflict and deals with every possible angle: trade, war, politics, etc

Documenting a war less known

Do people really learn from history? The answer is, a big no. But that is why it is better to keep everyone informed about the "war of all, against all" in partitioned Punjab, Bengal and the Sindh province

The unmaking of the Sindhis

Thanks to the huge explosion of uninformed opinion, no other prime minister has had to bear so much hate and, worse, ridicule as Manmohan Singh. How did his family react to this tsunami of abuse, jokes and even insults?Daman Singh, his daughter - the second of three - shows how in a very nicely written book. You can read it in about six or seven hours.It is not a biography because so much is missing from it. That will have to wait its turn. It is, quite simply, a doting daughter's ode to a father who lost his way when he accepted the poisoned chalice in 1998.Its main attraction for those born before 1980 is that so many economists and bureaucrats flit through it. Pleasantly, even though Dr Singh became finance minister in 1991, his new colleagues, the politicians are largely missing from it.There is no venom in it all. It is a happy and tranquil book. Dr Singh's philosophical acceptance of situations and coping with them - the quality that perhaps defines him best - drips from every pa

Father and friends

Reshma Patil has presented a kaleidoscopic picture of two giants, both deeply uncomfortable in their relationship with each other

A borderline case of discomfort

Parthasarathi Shome is a global authority on taxation. The volume does not purport to be a systematic treatise on the principles of taxation. Nor is it a comprehensive compendium on the practice of taxation worldwide. Yet it covers virtually every important aspect of tax policy or tax reform, and these are discussed within a rigorous framework of the principles of taxation. Moreover, the discussion is animated with illustrations from across the world: Latin America, Canada, the United States, Europe and the transition economies, Australia and Africa, India and South Asia, East and Southeast Asia. This richness is a reflection of the author's long and distinguished career in the field of taxation.The overview in part one is followed by several case studies on tax incidence and the distributive effects of taxation in part three. These cases illustrate how the ultimate long-term incidence of a tax on the basic factors of production - labour, capital and land - may be quite different from

Taxing issues about taxes

"To paraphrase Winston Churchill," Ronald Reagan said in his first Inaugural Address, "I did not take the oath I've just taken with the intention of presiding over the dissolution of the world's strongest economy."In November 1942, Churchill had said that "I have not become the King's First Minister in order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire." Why would the president of a republic born out of rebellion against that empire want to allude to those words, especially since, at the time Churchill spoke them, the American administration and people had been united in their resolve that, whatever else they were fighting for, it was not to preserve the British Empire?Born when imperialism was at its zenith, Churchill lived to see the end of empire, notably his own country's, and the part he played in this epic story is fascinating. Lawrence James, the author of several books of British history, says that Churchill and Empire deals with "a subject that has been overlooked or

Imperial son

A troll running on Facebook the past week invited the reader to translate the title of the hit series "How I Met Your Mother" into Bhojpuri before proceeding to do it on its own. The result "Kaisan mile tohaar amma se" is adroitly hilarious, in a goofy sort of way. However, one of my friends was not amused."No, I don't see why a childishly photoshopped picture is hilarious," he wrote on Facebook. "I don't understand how everything is instantly funny in Bhojpuri. Mutilation of a language, invoking half-baked socio-cultural stereotypes associated with its speakers, doesn't strike me as particularly funny, especially when there's no substance to what is being said."During the writing of Sea of Poppies, Amitav Ghosh revealed how he had to re-familiarise himself with languages such as Bhojpuri because a lot of the argot of the indentured labour that the novel was about was a mashup of several languages. As a Bengali comfortable with Oriya and Assamese, Ghosh found as much pleasure in resear

Writing in a non-native language

Devdutt Pattanaik's new book establishes that Indians didn't shy away from engaging with the conflicts arising out of differing sexual behaviour

Book review: Shikhandi by Devdutt Pattanaik

When they signed up for the Indiana National Guard, the three women at the centre of Helen Thorpe's compelling new book, Soldier Girls, never imagined they would end up in a combat zone in Afghanistan or Iraq.Michelle Fischer, who thought of herself as a "music-loving, pot-smoking, left-leaning hippie", signed up because it would pay for college and enable her to live on campus - not a bad deal, she figured, in exchange for what she thought would be 12 weekends a year, and two weeks of annual training. She'd be able to go to a great college and get in shape at the same time.Debbie Helton, a beauty salon manager, signed up in the 1980s because she wanted to emulate her father, who had been an Army drill sergeant. She was one of the pioneers who integrated the unit, and by 2001, at 49, she had become a cherished den mother to the men, and growing number of women, there. Being in the National Guard, Ms Thorpe writes, "gave Debbie what some people found at church - a community, a way to co

Women of war speak

The UPA got re-elected in 2009 due to favourable circumstances; the same may be said of the BJP's victory in 2014

Making sense of 21st century politics

The professed aim of the 12 essays in Politics Trumps Economics is to examine interface between economics and politics in contemporary India

Ideas of India's uncertainties

This book's core message is how the male-dominated world of British diplomacy gradually - and grudgingly - let professional women in. As an academic, the author scores on objectivity, but the reader may miss an intimacy of personal experience that an insider might have provided. The author's reliance on documentary material, and absence of interviews with working diplomats, produces a disproportionate emphasis on history; the book is weak on the contemporary scene.This 400-page tome is fluffed up with an extended introduction on the evolution of the world of British diplomats from the late 19th century onwards, in which women were notable for their absence. But useful nuggets are thrown up. Who might imagine that as far back as 1893, most of the candidates recruited into the Foreign Office passed through a "crammer" called Coombes to prepare for entrance tests? It was the shortage of men during World War I that brought women into clerical-level diplomatic work in London, but few rose t

The glass ceiling in diplomacy

Rajiv Bajaj & Sanjiv Bajaj

Family feuds do not just tear businesses apart, they shape them, says the author in his latest book that brings the inside stories of some of India's most high-profile business battles. An excerpt

Business Battles by Shyamal Majumdar

Rick Perlstein always hoped his book on the rise of Ronald Reagan would set off serious debate among scholars and historians. Just not this debate.Perlstein's new 856-page book, The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan, is proving to be almost as divisive as Reagan himself. It has drawn both strong reviews from prominent book critics, and sharp criticism from some scholars and commentators who accuse Perlstein of sloppy scholarship, improper attribution and plagiarism.The most serious accusations come from a fellow Reagan historian, Craig Shirley, who said that Perlstein plagiarised several passages from Shirley's 2004 book, Reagan's Revolution, and used Shirley's research numerous times without proper attribution.In two letters to Perlstein's publisher, Simon & Schuster, Shirley's lawyer, Chris Ashby, cited 19 instances of duplicated language and inadequate attribution, and demanded $25 million in damages, a public apology, revised digital editions and the de

Reagan book sets off debate

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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