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Book Excerpts

Amartya Sen said no democracy, with a free press, has ever had major famines

In ‘How To Read Amartya Sen’, Lawrence Hamilton writes on the economist’s thrust on free press and public reasoning as the centre of a democracy.

Indira Gandhi faced a threat when she visited a New York gurudwara in 1982

In ‘The Khalistan Conspiracy’, former R&AW officer G.B.S. Sidhu writes about the security details of Indira Gandhi’s US trip and possible threats to her life.

A ‘skeleton bent like a bow’, Sri Ramakrishna’s battle with cancer made him child-like

In ‘Preparing for Death’, Arun Shourie traces Sri Ramakrishna’s battle with cancer and his pleading with the doctor to lessen the unbearable pain.

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.

On Camera

Modi’s speech rightly questions politics of appeasement. Wrongly targets all Muslims

The PM did make a valid point when he criticised the Congress for categorising the entire Muslim community in Karnataka under the Other Backward Classes. It is pure appeasement of Ashraaf Muslims and discriminates against Pasmandas.

Foreign policy resonating among more Indians in 2nd & 3rd tier towns of India, says EAM Jaishankar

Speaking at launch of economist Surjit Bhalla’s book, S Jaishankar also highlights Gen Z’s engagement with ‘reel culture’, which has 'promoted awareness, created interest in many subjects'.

Germany removes restrictions, India can now buy small arms from its firms

Germany’s erstwhile Christian Democratic Union govt, led by Angela Merkel, prevented sale of small arms to police forces in states they perceived had ‘bad human rights record’.

These 6 states are key for Modi’s ‘400 paar’ target. They’re also where Opposition can stop him

While this contest looks so predictable in large swathes of our political landscape, it is also more keenly contested than 2019 in some states.