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“When JBS Haldane died in 1964, in Bhubaneswar, he was an Indian scientist. He had a passport, but he also had a deep and abiding love for the country’, reads the blurb in this fascinating biography. Haldane’s move to India was an eventual act in his brisk life. A geneticist and firebrand, Haldane wrote his first scientific papers in the trenches of the First World War. A card-carrying member of the Communist Party, he went to Spain to fight the Fascists during the civil war. Haldane was under heavy suspicion of being a spy for the Soviets; courted trouble and ticked off the establishment repeatedly. All this and more have been put together in this sparkling life story.  ‘A Dominant Character – The Radical Science and Restless Politics of JBS Haldane" by Samanth Subramanian (Simon & Schuster, New Delhi) examines the radical research and writing of scientists and philosophers. Haldane’s immense contribution to genetics and Evolutional biology is legendary. He was t...

When the story of a fugitive diamantaire fills the pages of a book, it is bound to evince more than average interest. 'Flawed: The Rise and Fall of India's Diamond Mogul Nirav Modi'b (Hachette India/ New Delhi) does exactly that. The book written by journalist-author Pavan C Lall sheds light on one of the biggest financial scandals in India, and profiles the man allegedly behind it. Kolkata-born and Texas –raised Pavan C. Lall is an associate editor at the Business Standard, where he writes about the automotive sector, private equity, real estate, storied conglomerates and more. A winner of the Citi Journalistic Excellence Award 2016,  Pavan -  having a soft spot for  unraveling corporate conspiracies and industry scandals and laying them bare -  does that here  with  great aplomb. Says the blurb of the book, ‘in early 2018, the implosion of Nirav Modi's Firestar Diamond International, on its way to becoming India's first truly global luxury company, threw ...

  When a defense researcher and an aggressive reporter takes us into the White House Situation Room, the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s “Tank” in the Pentagon, and the gigantic chambers of Strategic Command to bring the myriad stories of how America’s presidents and generals have thought about, threatened, broached, and just about avoided nuclear war, it is bound to be an exceptional book. Fred Kaplan is the national-security columnist for  Slate  and the author of five previous books,  Dark Territory: The Secret History of Cyber War, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War  (a Pulitzer Prize finalist and New York Times bestseller), 1959,  Daydream Believers, and The Wizards of Armageddon. In the present book  ‘The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War’ , Kaplan has come up with the story of the Bomb from the dawn of the atomic age until today. Based on exclusive...

In 1947, as the struggle for India’s freedom, was intensifying, the Indian National Congress and the Government of India had a single objective—to politically integrate the country. To accomplish this, the Department of State was established in June 1947 with two important men at the helm of affairs. One was the fearless leader who also became the first Deputy Prime Minister of India—Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. Yet, the person who continued to remain unsung was Patel’s right-hand man, VP Menon. Although it was Patel who created the original framework to influence the Indian princes to accede, it was Menon who did the actual groundwork of coaxing them. He traveled from court to court, state to state having numerous eye-to-eye discussions and negotiations. While his wit and diplomacy were able to win over several of the erstwhile maharajas, the task was arduous. It is said Menon once had a close shave with death when an angered maharaja sprung out a gun and threatened to shoot h...

Statelessness is a massive problem that affects millions of people worldwide. Those without a nationality often face difficulty participating in society and accessing a full range of privileges, together with education, health care, travel, and employment. Some are even detained because they are outlawed. According to a 2013 UN global migration statistics, 232 million international migrants – or roughly 3 percent of the world’s population – are living out of the country, worldwide. This makes transnational migration a key feature of globalization and a central issue on the international agenda. Migration certainly unlocks a host of opportunities for the individuals and countries involved. But at the same time, it is also marked by tremendous inequalities and serious human rights abuses. Targeted interventions are therefore crucial if the full potential of migration is to be explored and its negative aspects sufficiently addressed. The present book ‘ Displacement and Citizenship: H...

The term tribe or tribal is not defined anywhere in the Indian Constitution. According to Article 342, Scheduled Tribes (ST) are ethnic communities that are notified by the President of India. India’s tribes are not part of the traditional Hindu caste structure. They are more similar to the “indigenous” or “native people” in other parts of the world. Tribal communities in India aren’t the same everywhere.  Some  574 individual groups  make up India’s tribal population. Different tribal groups are at   different  levels of social and economic development.   Realizing that Scheduled Tribes are one of the most deprived and marginalized groups with respect to education, a host of programs and measures were initiated since independence. Despite these initiatives, t ribal development – particularly tribal education has  not  reached  the desired levels.  The  high dropout rate among tribal  students is a glaring example of the ch...

  Four hundred plus pages of dense prose, a provocative subject like nationalism and a best-selling author in the likes of   Shashi Tharoor–that is a startling combination. ‘The Battle of Belonging–On Nationalism, Patriotism and What it Means to be Indian ’ - the latest book by Aleph–is said to be Tharoor’s magnum opus that deals with theory, evolution and practice of nationalism across the globe, but more expressly in India. An extension of his earlier book ‘Why I Am a Hindu’, it provides the historical context to the ideas of nationalism, patriotism, humanism, democracy and their origins in the 18th and 19th centuries. The basic proposition or inquisitorial of the book is: there are over a billion Indians alive today. But are some Indians more Indian than others? From ‘Midnight to Millennium’ to ‘The Paradoxical Prime Minister: Narendra Modi and His India’, Tharoor has been writing expansively and, every so often, contraryly. Detectably, contempo...

This is an unusual memoir. Unusual because it isn’t archetypal, not old-fashioned nor even written in a sequential order. The autobiography is set apart into personal and professional years, covering all that happened in a long and distinguished career. ‘The Brass Notebook’ By Celebrated economist-writer Devaki Jain (Speaking Tiger, New Delhi) is structured in such a way that it is no-holds-barred and edifying. In the brilliant life account, she recounts her own story and also that of an entire generation and a nation coming into its own. Born in 1933, in Mysore, Karnataka, Devaki Jain’s father was a dewan in the Princely States of Mysore and Gwalior. Student of Mysore University, where she studied Mathematics and Economics, she later studied in St Anne’s College, Oxford University and graduated in Economics and Philosophy, where she is now an Honorary Fellow. Devaki Jain made significant contributions to feminist economics, social justice, and women’s empowerment in India. ...