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Saturday, November 22, 2025
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Book Excerpts

Why can’t officers use workers’ toilets? Tata factories showed the way

In ‘The Learning Factory’, Arun Maira, who worked with Tata Group for over two decades, writes about building factories 'as clean as German hospitals’.

Guns, Swedes and the Gandhis — how the Bofors scam tested the limits of the CBI’s power

In ‘A Road Well Travelled’, former CBI chief R.K. Raghavan writes about investigating the 2002 Gujarat riots, Bofors scam and cricket match-fixing scandal.

Why the Mughals stayed away from the Sundarbans

In ‘Pandemic’, Sonia Shah writes that the Sundarbans remained largely untouched till the 17th century. Then the East India Company came.

Long before RTI Act, the Janata Party was already pitching for ‘openness’ in govt

In ‘Capturing Institutional Change’, Himanshu Jha writes about the Official Secrets Act and the Janata government promising ‘openness’ after Emergency.

Manmohan Singh told me weeks before 1992 Budget speech that he’d have to resign

In ‘Portraits of Power’, economist and former civil servant N.K. Singh writes about his decades of working with India’s top bureaucrats and prime ministers.

Lost brothers, bhot jolokia, paan — how local stories shaped Assam-Nagaland border politics

In ‘Living with Oil and Coal’, Dolly Kikon explores how the nineteenth-century discovery of oil in the eastern Himalayan foothills impacted life in the Northeast region.

Why highly placed Muslims became ‘Krishna bhaktas’ in the Mughal period

In ‘Voices of Dissent’, Romila Thapar writes that Rajput-Mughal joint patronage helped make Vrindavan the focus of Krishna bhakti.

Front companies, corrupt govts, banks that vanish overnight — how global kleptocrats unite

In ‘Kleptopia’, Tom Burgis follows how dirty money floods the global economy when crisis hits democracies and kleptocrats see an opportunity to seize power.

India is Hindu, Hindus are India — Why Indian Americans think the way they do

In ‘Open Embrace’, Varghese K. George writes how groups like Hindu American Foundation influence US thinking — from Modi visa ban to lynchings.

Why Gandhis losing to Modi has a clear lesson for PPP’s Bilawal Bhutto

In ‘The Bhutto Dynasty’, Owen Bennett-Jones writes that even if Bilawal Bhutto tightens his grip on the party, he must win over voters too.

On Camera

Trump’s 28 points for Ukraine add up to a no-go at peace

Two questions are pertinent: Why does the Trump administration keep making the same mistakes on the peace proposal? And what does a hurried peace plan mean on the ground?

At Charcha 2025: Local entrepreneurship, not just big IT, will drive next wave of distributed AI work

While global corporations setting up GCCs in India continue to express confidence in availability of skilled AI engineers, the panel argued that India’s real challenge lies elsewhere.

Tejas fighter aircraft crashes at Dubai Air Show, IAF confirms pilot’s death

This is the second such incident after a Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) Tejas had crashed into a hostel on the outskirts of Jaisalmer in March last year.

INDIA has a Congress-sized hole. And the fix begins with a little humility

Without a Congress revival, there can be no challenge to the BJP pan-nationally. Modi’s party is growing, and almost entirely at the cost of the Congress.