The Man Who Remade India

"When P.V. Narasimha Rao became the unlikely prime minister of India in 1991, he inherited a nation adrift. Despite lacking the support of his people, party or parliament, India's Deng Xiaoping reinvented his country. Relying on Rao's private papers and over a hundred interviews, this biography is a must-read for anyone interested in the transformation of India"--

Novel set against the contemporary political situation in India.

When P.V. Narasimha Rao became the unlikely prime minister of India in 1991, he inherited a nation adrift, violent insurgencies, and economic crisis. Despite being unloved by his people, mistrusted by his party, and ruling under the shadow of 10 Janpath, Rao transformed the economy and ushered India into the global arena. With exclusive access to Rao’s never-before-seen personal papers and diaries, this definitive biography provides new revelations on the Indian economy, nuclear programme, foreign policy and the Babri Masjid. Tracing his early life from a small town in Telangana through his years in power, and finally, his humiliation in retirement, it never loses sight of the inner man, his difficult childhood, his corruption and love affairs, and his lingering loneliness. Meticulously researched and brutally honest, this landmark political biography is a must-read for anyone interested in knowing about the man responsible for transforming India.

The book discusses the Pakistan factor in Indian foreign policy, covering the evolution of both Indian nationalism and Hindu nationalism and their impact on India’s foreign policy framework. To explain the bipartisanship on Pakistan in India, it separates party-centric foreign policy views of national parties of India. Then it explains India’s Pakistan policy from multiple aspects. It underscores India's pursuit of policy choices under Modi and ends with a discussion on the future of India-Pakistan relations.

Seventy-five years after Independence, India has much to be proud of. We are both the world’s biggest democracy and fastest-growing large economy. Yet, we face profound challenges that hinder both individual well-being and aggregate growth, including education and skills, health and nutrition, public safety, justice, social protection, and jobs. This seminal book systematically analyses India’s governance challenges, especially in delivering essential public services, and highlights how these are limiting India’s development. Drawing on a wealth of research and practical insights, it provides actionable, evidence-based strategies, emphasizing state-level reforms as critical for India’s advancement. Accelerating India’s Development is addressed to all Indians—leaders, officials, entrepreneurs, teachers, students, citizens, and civil society—and provides an urgent call to action. It argues that building an effective state is the great unfinished task of Indian democracy, because quality public services are key to translating the political equality of ‘One Person, One Vote’ into greater equality of opportunity for all Indians. Every chapter showcases the author’s dedication to bridging the gap between scholarly research, public understanding, and actionable governance. This book is a testament to cautious optimism and the belief that with the right public systems in place, India’s next twenty-five years can be a period of unprecedented growth and societal enrichment.

​This book explores India’s economic and political relations and defence cooperation with major West European countries—France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom as well as Austria, the Visegrad Four, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and the Baltics. It examines the complexity, the elements of convergence and divergence as well as the challenges and prospects of India’s relations with these countries and assesses the diverging EU think tanks’ images of India. It focuses on India’s multi-dimensional relationship with European countries, which are major trading partners, a significant source and destination of foreign direct investment, an important source of technology and best practices. It examines the Narendra Modi government’s policies to re-energise the India-EU matrix and proactively engage Europe and its sub-regions.

This book analyses how multiple and hybrid ‘modernities’ have been shaped in colonial and postcolonial India from the lens of sociology and anthropology, literature, media and cultural studies, law and political economy. It discusses the ideas that shaped these modernities as well as the lived experience and practice of these modernities. The two broad foci in this book are: (a) The dynamism of modern institutions in India, delineating the specific ways in which ideas of modernity have come to define these institutions and how institutional innovations have shaped modernities; and (b) perspectives on everyday practices of modernities and the cultural constituents of being modern. This book provides an enriching read by bringing together original papers from diverse disciplines and from renowned as well as upcoming scholars.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure dome decree Kublai Khan lives on in the popular imagination thanks to these two lines of poetry by Coleridge. But the true story behind this legend is even more fantastic than the poem would have us believe. He inherited the second largest land empire in history from his grandfather, Genghis Khan. He promptly set about extending this into the biggest empire the world has ever seen, extending his rule from China to Iraq, from Siberia to Afghanistan. His personal domain covered sixty-percent of all Asia, and one-fifth of the world's land area. The West first learnt of this great Khan through the reports of Marco Polo. Kublai had not been born to rule, but had clawed his way to leadership, achieving power only in his 40s. He had inherited Genghis Khan's great dream of world domination. But unlike his grandfather he saw China and not Mongolia as the key to controlling power and turned Genghis' unwieldy empire into a federation. Using China's great wealth, coupled with his shrewd and subtle government, he created an empire that was the greatest since the fall of Rome, and shaped the modern world as we know it today. He gave China its modern-day borders and his legacy is that country's resurgence, and the superpower China of tomorrow.