Christophe Jaffrelot. Translated from the original French by Cynthia Schoch.

Modi’s India: Hindu Nationalism and the Rise of Ethnic Democracy is a meticulously documented book. It tries to unpack India’s journey from populism to ethnic democracy and authoritarianism. It is divided into three parts.In the first part, Jaffrelot starts by explaining the rise of Hindu nationalism. He studies the rise of Modi in Gujarat and how he went from the RSS to the BJP in the 1990s, where he rose above the organization, subjugated it, and to some extent liberated himself from it. He gradually became a national-populist hero, cleverly turning the stigma of the Gujarat riots to his advantage by using his charisma and a well-orchestrated public relations campaign run by pro- fessionals to build his superhuman image. 


Reviewed by: Mirza Asmer Beg
Pavan K. Varma

The story of Indian civilization has been recounted and debated over considerably in India and beyond. For this, scholars have used the term Indus Valley Civilization or the Harappan Civilization, after Harappa, the first excavated site.  Almost all research works on Ancient India recognize the Indus Valley Civilization as one of the three greatest civilizations alongside Egypt and Mesopotamia. To John Marshall who supervised its excavations, it was ‘in some respects even superior to Mesopotamia and Egypt’.1


Reviewed by: Jawaid Alam
Edited by Sabyasachi Bhattacharya

A Comprehensive History of Modern Bengal: 1700-1950 edited by the late Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, an institution in his own right, covers a formidable range of themes. The articles contained in these volumes deal with a diverse array of issues. They deal with, among others, ecology, economy, science, military history, environment, politics, society, social movements, labour, class formation, culture in its multidimensional forms encompassing literature, theatre and art, though an article on the evolution of cinema in Modern Bengal is strangely absent.


Reviewed by: Sabyasachi Dasgupta and Bidisha Dhar
Ravi Agarwal, Omita Goyal

Our understanding of climate change has not advanced after the recent climate negotiations, the CoP26, November 2021 in Glasgow. Climate change, being the most complex and lasting of the series of environmental challenges that humanity and the planet have faced over the past two and half centuries, has no easy solution.


Reviewed by: Rajeswari S Raina
Yatindra Singh Sisodia and Tapas Kumar Dalapati

As India inches close to 75th anniversary of Independence, self-introspection about hurdles it has to overcome in policy and implementation domain needs to be debated. The book under review brings together fourteen well-researched papers based on field-level experiences of States across the country, interrogating critical dimensions of rural human development in contemporary India that need attention for percolation of developmental benefits to every corner of India.


Reviewed by: Pratip Chattopadhyay
Madhusudan Datta

The Indian growth story attracted global attention first, on account of the spurt in growth from the 1990s, and second, on account of its deviation from one of the most widely replicated patterns of the evolution of sectoral shares of agriculture, manufacturing and services in the gross domestic product (GDP) over time.  This thumb rule, stylized by Kuznets, Chenery and Taylor (KCT), was found to closely fit the evidence gathered from advanced countries and also developing ones outside the socialist bloc, over two whole centuries.


Reviewed by: Alok Sheel and Vrinda Saxena