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Any attempt to find a parallel between Rajgopal’s works on crime and criminals in India and the novels of Charles Dickens would, on the face of it, look odd and far-fetched. Yet the frightening para¬meters of the rapidly worsening crime situation in this country, progressive erosion of human sympathy and compassion in our society and the all-pervasive phenomenon of criminalization of politics portrayed by him bring immediately to mind the London scenario of 1820’s and 30’s.

Indo-Japanese trade has been important since pre-second world war period. How¬ever, while Japan still reaps advantage of such bilateral trade, India has not bene¬fited substantially. On the contrary, when Japanese foreign trade registered rapid expansion, India’s share in Japanese trade declined.

In 1984 the Indian National Trust (INTACH) was set up with a munificent donation from an Englishman, Wallace. In 1784 the Asiatic Society of Bengal had been instituted, to which the Indian rulers of Awadh and Tanjore and others made generous grants. Both are examples of the continuous Indo-British collaboration in the great task of discovery and cata¬loguing the wonder that is India.

The movement toward regional cooperation in South Asia can take credit not only for the hundreds of annual official and unofficial meetings, seminars and workshops, but also for modest achievements in terms of evolving various activities and institutional mechanisms which can help ensure more concrete forms of cooperation for the benefit of the common South Asian citizen in the future.

John Lall has written two books and had them bound together in one volume. Of the six long chapters the last one of about sixty pages stands by itself. It is a clear account of relations between free India and People’s China from the start till the large-scale aggression of China in 1962, written by one who, first as dewan of Sikkim and then as a senior official in the defence ministry, had an insider’s view.