Archives: Books

These are not memoirs of a civil servant in the conventional sense. There is no post-mortem of any government action. There is no advice or exhortation to anyone in the government on matters relating to administration. This is a collection of narratives. They are not fictional but based on real life incidents of which the author was a witness during his career as a civil servant in West Bengal and Delhi.

In recent years there has been a significant reorientation in India’s policy towards its Northeast region. Yet, Indian policy thinking has been insulated from the virtual intellectual revolution in the last one decade to study armed civil conflicts and ways to manage, resolve, and transform them. This volume lays emphasis on the term ‘rethinking’ and offers new ways of understanding the conflicts, and of ways to resolve them.

The chapters discuss wide-ranging issues which include the multilayered nature of the conflict in the Northeast, and how democratic politics and the world of armed rebellions intersect in complex ways in this region. An analysis of the Naga war and its nation-building project is discussed. How the Northeast figures in postcolonial India’s national imagination, how Assamese society engages with the term ‘terrorist’, and how state-society conflicts are muted in Mizoram have been argued. The role of ideas in conflict transformation, and an alternative vision of development in Mizoram have been argued. The role of ideas in conflict transformation, and an alternative vision of development in Arunachal Pradesh have also been discussed.

This monograph comprehensively examines water law regulations and reform in the present decade, going beyond a simple analysis of existing water law and regulations to encompass environmental, social, economic, and human rights aspects of water as a natural resource.

Using the specific case of India and on the related international law and policy framework that directly influences water regulatory developments in India, this book offers what will be the first and only analysis of water law reforms taking place at the national level in many developing countries in their domestic and international context. On the one hand, international freshwater law remains under-developed and existing legal instruments such as the 1997 UN Convention only address a limited set of relevant issues. Yet, the international law and policy framework concerning freshwater is increasingly important in shaping up law reforms taking place at the national level, in particular in developing countries. Indeed, non-binding resolutions such as the Dublin Statement on Water and Sustainable Development (1992) have had an immense influence on water law reforms in most developing countries.

This book seeks to conceive of and analyse freshwater regulation in a broader context, and go beyond a literature that either lauds or criticises ongoing water sector reforms to provide an analytical basis for the reforms which all countries will have to adopt in the near or medium-term future.

That a diverse country like India has succeeded for over half a century as a thriving democracy raises many questions about the relationship between cultural diversity and social and economic inequality; the robustness of some institutions and the weakness of others; the negotiation of political space, ideologies, and identities by the state, political parties, and civil society; the capacity of the state to redistribute wealth and alleviate poverty; and the perceptions of India on the global stage.

The Oxford Companion to Politics in India provides answers through the most comprehensive survey of the Indian political system till date. The depth and breadth of issues covered range from elections to economic reforms; business and politics to redistribution and social justice; coalition politics to judicial activism; and foreign policy.

The book focuses on water law reforms in India. It seeks to provide a sweeping overview of the issues arising in respect to changing policy context for water use and aims to provide a broader understanding of the conceptual framework informing existing water law and ongoing reforms. It assembles in one volume the contributions made by a broad range of scholars working on some of the most important law and policy issues arising in the context of water sector reforms in India . The contributions have been specifically selected in order to address the broad range of issues that must be examined when one considers the legal regime for the allocation of water, which covers a number of areas including water distribution to households, irrigation, industrial use and wastewater treatment. These questions are dealt with from a range of perspectives including human rights, environment, agriculture, development and trade, and it thus becomes imperative to encompass all these perspectives in the analysis. The book is divided into two parts. The first part critically analyses the international law context for water reforms and the second part provides the national level focus, with the selected contributions describing in detail the multifaceted aspects of water sector reforms in India.

During his seventeen years as Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru led India through one of its most difficult and potentially explosive periods in international affairs. As the leader of a new state created amidst the bloodiest partition in history, saddled with new and outstanding problems, Nehru was confronting with a range of disputes which threatened to boil over.

Srinath Raghavan draws on a rich vein of untapped documents to illuminate Nehru’s approach to war and his efforts for peace. Vividly recreating the intellectual and political milieu of the Indian Foreign Policy establishment, he explains the response of Nehru and his top advisors to the tensions with Junagadh, Hyderabad, Pakistan, and China. He gives individual attention to every conflict and shows how strategic decisions for each crisis came to be defined in the light of the preceding ones. The book follows Nehru as he wrestles with a string of major conflicts — assessing the utility of force, weighing risks of war, exploring diplomatic options for peace, and forming strategic judgements that would define his reputation, both in his lifetime and after.

War and Peace in Modern India challenges and revises our received understanding of Nehru’s handling of international affairs. General readers as well as students of Indian history and politics will find its balanced consideration of Nehru’s Foreign Policy essential to gauge his achievements, his failures, and his enduring legacy.

During his seventeen years as Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru led India through one of its most difficult and potentially explosive periods in international affairs. As the leader of a new state created amidst the bloodiest partition in history, saddled with new and outstanding problems, Nehru was confronting with a range of disputes which threatened to boil over.

Srinath Raghavan draws on a rich vein of untapped documents to illuminate Nehru’s approach to war and his efforts for peace. Vividly recreating the intellectual and political milieu of the Indian Foreign Policy establishment, he explains the response of Nehru and his top advisors to the tensions with Junagadh, Hyderabad, Pakistan, and China. He gives individual attention to every conflict and shows how strategic decisions for each crisis came to be defined in the light of the preceding ones. The book follows Nehru as he wrestles with a string of major conflicts — assessing the utility of force, weighing risks of war, exploring diplomatic options for peace, and forming strategic judgements that would define his reputation, both in his lifetime and after.

War and Peace in Modern India challenges and revises our received understanding of Nehru’s handling of international affairs. General readers as well as students of Indian history and politics will find its balanced consideration of Nehru’s Foreign Policy essential to gauge his achievements, his failures, and his enduring legacy.

With the world’s fastest-growing markets, fastest-rising military expenditures, and most volatile hot spots, a resurgent Asia holds the key to the future global order. Facing complex security, energy, and developmental challenges in this era of globalization and ever-sharpening interstate competition, a strong China, a strong India, and a strong Japan need to move beyond historical legacies and find ways to reconcile their interests in order to coexist peacefully and achieve greater prosperity.

In Asian Juggernaut, Brahma Chellaney, a renowned authority on Asia’s political and economic development, explores the importance of this strategic triangle formed by Asia’s three largest economies offer a clear, insightful, and revelatory analysis of their cooperative future and pivotal role on the world stage.

At the outset, this book must be viewed as a policy relevant document rather than an abstract historical research paper. The authors have revisited the seemingly intractable India-China border dispute from a contemporary conflict resolution perspective and thus are relatively detached from the historical baggage that has so often influenced other commentaries on this controversial subject. The great natural defensive line of northern India, the mighty Himalayas, separating Tibet from north-east India, is a barrier which, by tradition, was impenetrable. This defensive line is embodied by the 1914 Line, India s non-negotiable interest. Thus, from an Indian perspective, it can never be conceived that its frontiers with China are ever formalized on the Brahmaputra plains. Further, the 1914 alignment, aside from its strategic sanctity, also upholds the ethnic and linguistic affinities to peoples south of it, who are distinct from the homogenous Tibetan or Han people. Similarly, from China s perspective it too is in possession of its non-negotiable interest the Aksai Chin plateau. And therein lies the essence of an east-west swap. By retracing the historical record, the authors argue that such a swap is eminently feasible and historically justifiable. Moreover, realpolitik demands it. From the Indian perspective, however, it should be equally clear that a bipartisan national consensus is imperative for any breakthrough resolution to emerge. It remains to be seen, however, if political managers on both sides are able to muster the necessary will to resolve a dispute that has lasted for more than half-a-century.

This monograph documents the early experience of states, insurance companies, households and hospitals with the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana or RSBY in India. The scheme is still in its infancy, with its first enrolment taking place on February 28, 2008. It aims to provide health insurance for inpatient care for all households below the poverty line in Indian states (and is now being expanded to include other groups). At the time of printing, the RSBY covered over 23 million households in 23 states and had been used to cover inpatient care for 1.6 million hospital visits. The authors of the papers in this monograph come from several institutions reflecting collaboration with several external agencies and institutions including GTZ, India Development Foundation, Centre for Policy Research and the World Bank.