Page 107 - Book Review

Civil society and its discontents

The idea of public policy has gained credence in recent years while discussing democratic institutions and political processes

Despatches from the conflict zone

There is a grand narrative about the way areas impacted by Maoist insurgency operate. Maoist rebels are painted as villains of the worst kind. The people sympathetic to them, either by choice or under compulsion, are considered anti-development. Government servants are seen as helpless spectators unable to do much to make some breakthrough. And corporate houses willing to invest are perceived as saviours because they want to use money to bring some development in such neglected regions. Any deviation from this narrative is seen as a betrayal of the cause of development.The story, unfortunately, has no place for victims who suffer silently because of their refusal to take sides. They are bound to suffer because their only interest is survival. After all, they are the ones who allowed the dreaded Maoists to flourish in their midst in the first place.The book under review, however, questions this grand narrative and does so fairly persuasively. The author is a professor at a leading busin

Zika's long jump

Since Mr McNeil's book was finished on June 1, numerous new findings have offered further cause for concern about Zika's arrival in the United States

Women on the balancing beam

As more Indian women enter the workforce, two recent books examine the tenuous balance that women struggle to achieve between professionalism and their gender-based roles. One is written by an award-winning journalist/author Pallavi Aiyar, who calls herself an elite-in-a-developing-country kind of brat; the other studies inter-generational changes in attitudes towards women's work through case studies of respondents who have been the first women in their family to seek jobs.Author Alice W Clark has observed the strategies that have enabled modern Indian women to work in spite of the limitations placed upon them and concludes that familial support is one of the most important facilitators of women's careers. Whether in large cities or small towns, the extent of a girl's education (which determines her employability and her attitude towards work) is most often determined by her family, especially by the father, and post-marriage, by her husband's attitudes. Ms Clark writes about Lilawati

A Promethean project

An internationally famed cellist, also the best friend of a ruthless politician, serving as the clandestine owner of shady companies that help the elite in his country siphon away public funds; corrupt officials selling off broadcasting rights for major sporting events to a private media company for a pittance; a "banana republic" in Central America offering a tax haven; and at the centre of it, the mysterious son of a former Waffen-SS officer assisting drug lords, gun runners and autocrats conceal their ill-gotten wealth... Sounds like the plot of an Alistair McLean pot boiler?On the contrary: It's the true story of the greatest data leak ever. And, the international journalists who dug through the unimaginable mountains of data to focus the light of day on a shadow financial system that aids the rich and powerful conceal their wealth, and maintain the status quo of inequality. Now, the world knows of the leak as "Panama Papers" - the 1.5 million documents of the Panamanian law firm M

Syria's forgotten war

As Henri De Wailly's book, rigged wars are by no means the prerogative of the 21st century powers

Deep thinking about immigration

From Hobbes and Hegel to John Stuart Mill and John Rawls, the seminal figures of Western political theory are united in their almost complete neglect of immigration. No doubt they have their reasons. Who among them witnessed anything like the global refugee crisis of 2015? Or the anxieties about national identity that it inflamed? Be that as it may, with hostility toward immigrants and refugees fueling the "Brexit" movement and the presidential campaign of Donald Trump, we could use some deep thinking about the relationship between the state and its citizens.On the case is the political philosopher David Miller. His book Strangers in Our Midst: The Political Philosophy of Immigration aims to be the first to combine such an abstract approach to the topic with such a strong dose of realism. Make no mistake: Mr Miller is a humane, social democratic Oxford University professor. But comes down in favour of a state's right - except when human rights are threatened - to close its borders to o

India's unofficial apartheid

Being the Other: The Muslim in India explores the continuing marginalisation of Muslims in India in the post-partition years

A recognition of Kalidasa

Few people know that Swami Vivekananda was fluent in Sanskrit. He had a disciple named Sharatchandra Chakravarty who kept a diary, written in Bengali but it has since been translated into English. This anecdote is from this diary. Shri Ramakrishna had a householder disciple named Nag Mahashaya. On one occasion in 1897, when Sharatchandra Chakravarty was present, another disciple, who frequently visited Nag Mahashaya, came to meet Swami Vivekananda and mentioned Nag Mahashaya. Swami Vivekananda addressed this disciple in Sanskrit with a reference to Nag Mahashaya's great spiritual success. Translated, the quote reads: "We have been destroyed in our pursuit of the truth. O bee! You are the one who has indeed been successful."What is remarkable is not that Swami Vivekananda spoke in Sanskrit, but that he used a quote from literature, Kalidasa's Abhijnanashakuntalam in this case. The Shakuntala story is about King Dushyanta and Shakuntala, and King Dushyanta said this when a bee was hoveri

Our digital lives tomorrow

Defining and understanding these 12 technological forces and how they will shape our future in the next 30 years is the thrust of The Inevitable

Dark history of the Olympics

The true history of the games is a far cry from the platitude-laden, sepia-toned nostalgia pumped out by the International Olympic Committee and sponsors

Doctors diagnose the decline of health care

Authors Arun Gadre and Abhay Shukla have based this book on a set of 78 interviews with leading doctors across the country conducted at Support for Advocacy and Training to Health Initiatives

The new world troika

Ms Anja Manuel has tackled political systems and dissent in both countries as interrelated themes

My granduncle's hat & other tales

S Muthiah and Ranjitha Ashok's book collects plenty of such anecdotes from erstwhile employees of British firms in India, and presents them in an immensely readable format

In the engine room of the start-up economy

Antonio Garcia Martinez's Chaos Monkeys, a book whose bland all-purpose title belies the fact that this is a valley account like no other

Narasimha Rao: one legacy, two verdicts

The book contains evocative details of Rao's failures in preventing two of the ugliest incidents of social disharmony in independent India - the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition and the 1984 Sikh riots

Philosopher's guide to climate change

Amitav Ghosh creates a fabric out of threads drawn from all the themes that must be part of a complete conversation on climate change

How the battles were lost & won

The transition from British rule to independence is conventionally described as peaceful. This is true only insofar as there was no armed conflict with the erstwhile imperial power, for multitudes died in the Partition bloodbath and there was open war within two months of the "Brexit".The subcontinent has never enjoyed an extended period of peace since. India has fought three-and-a-half wars with Pakistan, one war with China (plus a big artillery duel), indulged in an insane foray into Sri Lanka, carried out a more justifiable counter-coup in the Maldives and also been enmeshed in innumerable long-running internal conflicts with separatists, insurgents, Maoists, and what have you. The republic also undertook several "police actions" between 1948 and 1961, to integrate princely states like Hyderabad and Junagadh, and to force the Portuguese out of Goa, Daman and Diu.This book covers conventional conflicts and police actions during the first quarter-century of independent India's existen

Biography of Mr Bush as scathing indictment

For George W Bush, the summer already looks unbearable. The party he gave his life to will repudiate him by nominating a bombastic serial insulter, who makes the famously brash former president look like a museum docent by comparison. And a renowned presidential biographer is weighing in with a judgment that makes Mr Bush's gentleman's Cs at Yale look like the honour roll.If Mr Bush eventually gets a more sympathetic hearing by history, as he hopes, it will not start with Jean Edward Smith's Bush, a comprehensive and compelling narrative punctuated by searing verdicts of all the places where the author thinks the 43rd president went off track.Mr Smith, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, made a name for himself in part with masterly biographies of Dwight D Eisenhower and Ulysses S Grant, offering historical reassessments of underrated presidents who looked better with the passage of time. With Bush, he sticks to the original conventional assessment, presenting a shoot-from-the-hip Texan

SLAPPing the messenger

On the evening of April 15, 2014, Gas Wars: Crony Capitalism and the Ambanis, a book written by Paranjoy Guha-Thakurta, Subir Ghosh and Jyotirmoy Chaudhuri was officially released at the India Habitat Centre in New Delhi. The next day lawyers for Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries (RIL) sent the authors a legal notice alleging defamation, calling for a cease on the sale, publication and distribution of the book. The notice suggested that all copies be destroyed, publicity for the book be stopped and the authors tender an unconditional apology. The same notice was sent to the publisher, distributor, printer, internet retailers Amazon, Flipkart and Kobo and even to the lady who sent the invitations for the launch function.A week later, on April 22, came a second legal notice from ADAG, the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group. On April 23, came a third notice to all the nine respondents. This one took umbrage at comments made at the launch function and asked for damages of Rs 100 crore within 10