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Apologists for British colonial rule often claim that the Raj mainly brought democracy, the rule of law and trains to India. In her scholarly work about some of the best known hill stations on the subcontinent during the British colonial period, Queeny Pradhan provides us with another side to the story. She clearly shows that the Raj in India was an exercise in land appropriation, in the hegemonic domination of local colonized people, and in reordering of the natural space for the exclusive needs of the conquerors.

Is Indira Gandhi’s environmental legacy relevant to India of today? In Indira Gandhi: A Life in Nature, Jairam Ramesh endeavours to enlist all her achievements, her motivations, her obstacles and more. It is a monumental treatise, an outcome of extensive and meticulous searching.
The author traces Indira’s interest in the natural world from her childhood—the influence of Jawaharlal, of Santiniketan and Rabindranath Tagore, whom she calls an ‘ecological man’, of Salim Ali and the rest. Her interest in nature was genuine and deep—in forests, stones, animal and birds, perhaps most in birds.

May you live in interesting times’, a favourite Chinese curse for all unmentionable acquaintances, could well describe life today not only for most of us individuals but also most countries. Just recently Catalonia has announced an, albeit short-lived, unilateral declaration of independence. It is one of the more prosperous provinces of Spain, having only 16 per cent of its population but receiving more than 20% of their FDI accounts for over 25% of their exports. Since the book does not directly focus on this, it is best not to say more about Catalonia except that most of us did not know that there was so much internal unrest in Spain.

It’s hard to come by a read that forensically lays threadbare the crimpled cohabitation of Mint Road with the two big sandstone blocks in New Delhi—North and South Block; and the dynamics of what is an inherently conflictual contract—if you can term it so—between them. You have one (of a kind) in T.C.A. Srinivasa Raghavan’s Dialogue of the Deaf: The Government and the RBI. Who gets to have the right of way—the mint or its owner?

Raghuram Rajan, the erstwhile ‘Rockstar’ Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, came to India with an awesome reputation. He was a Professor of Finance at the prestigious Chicago University, had served as Chief Economist in the IMF, and had written widely acclaimed books on the western financial system. Above all, at a time the US ‘Goldilocks’ economy was chugging along merrily as if there was no morrow, with economic growth and asset prices at an all-time high,

Y.V. Reddy or Venu Reddy as he is generally known, has had a distinguished civil service career. He held important assignments in the undivided Andhra Pradesh, in the Commerce and Finance Ministries in New Delhi, in the World Bank in Washington and, of course in Mumbai as the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India where he had a momentous tenure.