Anna L. Dallapiccola, Brigitte Khan Majlis and George Michell with John M. Fritz. Photography: Surendra Kumar

This book presents a fairly comprehensive primary coverage of the heart of the Lepakshi temple town where lay its religious and trade basis. Its richly painted ceilings take us beyond an identification of religious iconography to tell us about the shifts.


Reviewed by: Naman P. Ahuja
Aakash Singh Rathore and Ashis Nandy

The 2019 General Elections confirmed the hypothesis that the broad consensus over the ‘idea of India’ forged at the time of Independence no longer holds and a fundamental shift has taken place in favour of values that are the antithesis of this consensus.


Reviewed by: Janaki Srinivasan
Paul Wallace

India’s 2019 elections result deepened the fundamental transformation of politics since 2014. The BJP not only witnessed a surge in quantitative terms but it also penetrated into new territories that were largely dominated by regional parties.


Reviewed by: Vikas Tripathi
Sanjoy Chakravorty and Amitendu Palit

The contestations over land continue to remain relevant in the age of capitalist industrialization. While in the pre-industrial world, land clearly maintained a central role in the generation and accumulation of wealth, modern industrialization and the subsequent upheaval.


Reviewed by: Arindam Banerjee
T.C.A. Sharad Raghavan

Money as a medium of exchange, and a store of value, has gone through many avatars as civilizations have surged and ebbed. Precious metals, precious stones, cowrie shells, rice–at various times in various places, these things have been used either as currency.


Reviewed by: Devangshu Datta
Puja Mehra

The Indian economy has been lurching from crisis to crisis for more than a decade now. The latest crisis is unfolding as we speak, with the COVID-mitigating country-wide lockdown already taking an economic toll on industries with factories closed, and a huge population dependent on the informal economy unable to earn its daily wage.


Reviewed by: T.C.A. Sharad Raghavan