Mridula Ramesh

Mridula Ramesh’s compelling work traces the trajectory of India’s water over 4000 years to highlight the grave crisis India is facing today. Global warming is a tragic reality and it is being predicted that by 2030 India will fail to meet half its water demand. As the book’s blurb points out, water availability per person in India has been decreasing for decades, leaving parts of the country in a cruel ‘Day Zero’ situation, shuttering factories and pushing farmers over the brink.


Reviewed by: Mohammad Imtiyaz
Himanshu Prabha Ray

The wide prevalence of scripts, languages, architectural forms and iconography with a clear provenance from India in a wide swathe of South East Asia from quite early in the first millennium, has interested many in India almost from the beginning of modern history writing and archeological investigation in the country.


Reviewed by: TCA Raghavan
Major General Vijay Singh

There are three special things about the book under review, the last two of which are interconnected. To begin with the first: its description of a battle for Daruchhian between its well-entrenched Pakistani defenders and an Indian infantry battalion of the Grenadier Regiment. Daruchhian is a hill feature across from Poonch on the Pakistan Occupied Kashmir side of the Ceasefire Line—as the Line of Control (LC) was termed then.


Reviewed by: Ali Ahmed
Mohammad Aslam Parvaiz

The pandemic unveiled the system’s frailty, the dire need to develop a complementary long-term relationship between humans and the environment, and solutions for the crumbling system. Throughout the centuries, the debate of religion and science has been dominant in the discourse, providing a systematic and lawful way to sustain society.


Reviewed by: Azeemah Saleem
Bhaskar Chattopadhyay

The birth centenary of Satyajit Ray (1921-1992) has spawned a torrent of activities. Despite governmental indifference, there has been an outpouring of books, journals, articles, exhibitions and the like, by individuals and private institutions on arguably the most creative and composite artist of Independent India.


Reviewed by: Amitabha Bhattacharya
Vikas Kumar Jha. Translated into English from the original Hindi by Srishti Jha

The Queen of Indian Pop: The Authorized Biography of Usha Uthup is a faultless English translation by Srishti Jha of her father Vikas Kumar Jha’s original Ullas Ki Naav in Hindi. Both titles are appropriate for summarizing Usha Uthup’s journey. The book has a distinction in the sense that it has been able to address the conundrum.


Reviewed by: Nehal Ahmed