Monthly Archives: July 2017

Most comparisons of India and Pakistan are defined by which side of the border (or the Line of Control) you are standing on, and are often heavily rhetorically loaded: Pakistan as a failed army-state overrun by radicals and terrorists, India as a corrupt, unmanageable confederacy grappling with poverty and insurgencies.

Professor Cohen’s writings on the India and Pakistan have always elicited great debate in both the countries since his first work on the subject.

There are many accounts by now of the military’s role in politics in Pakistan. Ejaz Hussain’s volume is a welcome addition to that. The primary objective of the volume is to build a model of civil-military relations applicable to the case of Pakistan which should explain the causes and mode of military intervention as well as the nature of military rule.

This volume contains a collection of papers on different aspects of private foreign investment in Asia. The contri­butors are the members of the Joint Re­search Team set up by the United Natio­ns Economic and Social Council for Asia and Pacific (ESCAP).

This is a book spanning a period of 50 years, from 1927 when the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry was established to the eve of 1977, which is the Golden Jubilee year of the organization.

‘We will either have a divided India or a destroyed India’ were M.A. Jinnah’s words announcing 16 August 1946 as Direct Action Day.

Sunil Gavaskar writes as well as he bats—almost. In a simple and straight­forward style he sets out his cricketing experiences. The narrative is full of little stories and anecdotes, which make interesting reading. In Sunny Days, Gavaskar gives his candid opinion about umpiring in Eng­land,..

Studying Sino-Indian relations or comparing the two Asian giants across multiple indicators and themes is today a veritable industry for scholars, analysts, publishers and policymakers.

Three narratives on science and technology (S&T) in China are prevalent today in scholarship and policy circles. Firstly, while China invented the printing press, paper-making, gunpowder and compass (the Four Great Inventions—sida faming) in the ancient times not excluding the Grand Canal or the Great Wall and other grand engineering projects, soon it was relegated to the background since the 15th century as western European countries marched with the ongoing scientific revolutions.

It is perhaps axiomatic that charisma­tic leadership absorbed in the projection of its charisma, is followed by nuts-and-­bolts leadership. Of the latter, President Sadat of Egypt is an instructive example. His six years as Egypt’s Head of State have been a remarkably open account of involvement…

There is no clarification in the pre­face about the ‘experimental’ nature of this autobiography; there is instead a brief account of the unhappy circumstan­ces in which this book came to be writ­ten. At the age of 60, says Mr. Abbas, it struck him at the instigation of a friend that he had led an interesting life…

One of the stock criticisms of the post-Independence I.C.S. is that it is totally devoid of unusual individuals. Unique­ness and occasional eccentricity, it has been said, vanished with the British.

Thakura Ghara, the Sahitya Akademi award winning book of 1976, is the fifth and the latest collection of short stories by the author. ‘God’s Apartment’ is the vantage point from which the author sur­veys the middle class world.

Mathura is a miracle in itself. In its imperial past, it was a scene of high civili­zation, a centre of attraction for far-flung peoples. It remains a magnet; scores of visitors continue to flock there, drawn now not by temporal glory but by the magic of the Krishna legend…

Few rulers have been so maligned and misrepresented as Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, who has generally been pictured as an ‘intolerant bigot’ or ‘the furious fanatic’—and consigned to the category of monsters. Generations of readers have accepted this view of the contemporary Englishman, writing with a sense of moral superiority over the so­-called barbarian…

Inadequate food production and the population explosion in developing count­ries were favourite themes for economists during the 1950s and 1960s. They have generally suggested that there is a need to modernize agriculture and increase food production, and take effective mea­sures to bring down the population growth…

The rise of China and India in the post-Cold War global power configuration is now universally accepted. What is less well known is back in the eighteenth century, these Asian giants accounted for nearly one half of the global manufacturing output. A potential reversal to that era is beginning to unfold.

If the world has a ‘West’ and an ‘East’ , it is fairly well established that the center of gravity is shifting to the East. The author goes a bit deeper into this conclusion to say that the East is not a peaceful homogenous bloc.

It is generally accepted that peace is a natural condition while war is an aberration. Peace is defined as ‘not violence’. Johan Galtung has defined violence in two categories, direct violence and indirect violence.

Terrorism has traditionally presented states with a major security challenge. After 9/11, however, governments have become totally focused on this threat to national security for what they fear most is terrorist violence designed to achieve clearly defined political objectives like independence from central authority.