India House

From adventure to indenture, martyrs to merchants, Partition to plantation, from Kashmir to Kerala, Japan to Jamaica and beyond, the many facets of the great migrations of India and the world are mapped in India Moving, the first book of its kind. To understand how millions of people have moved - from, to and within India - the book embarks on a journey laced with evidence, argument, and wit.

In this ground-breaking vision document, first published in 1998, Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and Y.S. Rajan offer a blueprint for India to be counted among the world’s top five economic powers by the year 2020. They cite growth rates and development trends to show that the goal is not unrealistic. Past successes - the green revolution and satellite-based communication linking remote regions of the country, for instance - bear them out. The same sense of purpose can make us a prosperous, strong nation in a matter of years, assert Kalam and Rajan.

The Bharatiya Janata Party is an idea that was seeded into the minds of nationalist Jana Sangh leaders when they began to envision India after Independence. Much like the very core the freedom struggle was built on, they saw India as a demographically, culturally and historically cohesive and unified nation—as Bharat.

Surveying the many images of the country, De points out that for every truism about India, the opposite is also true: India as the land of the meek; India as inheritor of the earth; India gherao-ed by distinctly unfriendly neighbours; Indians fleeing to jobs in the West and then racing right back to a better life; Indians who ape their erstwhile colonizers and yet cling irrationally to tradition.

The story of the birth of India's states is the story of the birth and continuing rebirth of India, the nation. It is a story that everyone in India must know, from young to old. This rigorously researched book lays out the fascinating political and historical circumstances of the birth of India's states and union territories.

Written by an eminent economist, Bimal Jalan, Emerging India: Economics, Politics and Reforms talks about India's growth from the post-reform 1991 era to the modern days and the various challenges plaguing various arms of the government. In this book, Jalan praises the democratic setup that runs this complex and diverse country. Jalan produces a detailed account of the Indian economy and the way it has functioned and the various obstacles in front of it.

In a rare attempt to understand the Indianness of Indians - among the most intelligent people in the world, but also, to a dispassionate eye, perhaps the most baffling - V. Raghunathan uses the props of game theory and behavioral economics to provide an insight into the difficult conundrum of why we are the way we are. He puts under the scanner our attitudes towards rationality and irrationality, selflessness and selfishness, competition and cooperation, and collaboration and deception.

India's is a tale of private success and public failure. Prosperity is, indeed, spreading across the country even as governance failure pervades public life. But how could a nation become one of the world's fastest-growing economies when it's governed by a weak, ineffective state? And wouldn't it be wonderful if India also grew during the day - in other words, if public policy supported private enterprise? What India needs, Gurcharan Das argues, is a strong liberal state.

Since time immemorial, India has been an ocean bed over which numerous stories have flowed and enriched the world. Storytellers from Tulsidas to Rohinton Mistry have added their magic to this magnificent repository. Inspired in part by Somadeva’s Kathasaritasagara, William Radice collects these timeless tales of India and tells them anew through his unique idiom. Like itinerant storytellers, he fills these tales with emotion and wit, bringing them alive for the contemporary listener.

From Amartya Sen to Aamir Khan, Raghuram Rajan, Sachin Tendulkar, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Pranab Mukherjee, Arun Jaitley, Nirmala Sitharaman and Sania Mirza among others, in this book eminent journalist Sonia Singh opens a window to the myriad worlds of these stalwarts, who share their idea of India in freewheeling conversations. Chatty, candid, and amazingly gripping, these 15 interviews uncover the pivotal moments in their lives that have become defining moments in the history of the nation.

India has the second-largest legal profession in the world, but the systemic delays and chronic impediments of its judicial system inspire little confidence in the common person. In India’s Legal System, renowned constitutional expert and senior Supreme Court lawyer Fali S. Nariman explores the possible reasons.

My India: Ideas for the Future is a collection of excerpts from Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam's speeches in his post presidency years. Drawn from Dr. Kalam's addresses to parliaments, universities, schools, and other institutions in India and abroad, they include his ideas on science, nation-building, poverty, compassion, and self-confidence. Dr. Kalam draws on the lives of stalwarts such as Marie Curie and Dr. Vikram Sarabhai to encourage and inspire his young listeners. Through these speeches, he shares many valuable lessons in humility, resilience, and determination.

Basta decir que la historia lo conoce como El Chacal, y que es por aclamación el villano mayor en la galería de los presidentes de México. Sin embargo, es mucho más que eso: en su juventud, ese indígena huichol se convirtió en uno de los mejores astrónomos de su época y fue un brillante matemático, geógrafo, alpinista, cartógrafo y uno de los mejores militares mexicanos. Jamás perdió una batalla, algo único en la historia del país.

From the matter of environmental jurisprudence and custodial deaths to the controversial topic of reservations, the author deals extensively with each case in the 10 essays and points out the effects that the Supreme court’s final verdicts produced. The book describes how the Indian judicial system is capable of impacting the lives of the millions that thrive under this democracy and succeeds in restoring the listener’s faith on the legal system of the nation. The internal affairs that go about in each case, which otherwise escape scrutiny, have been shed light on through the book.

Is India ready to emerge as a world leader? Our times are characterized not by estranged superpowers building formidable arsenals but by engaged societies building a robust global economy. Emerging countries are redefining the geo-economic (and geopolitical) dynamic. The twenty-first century will be led, says Raghav Bahl, by a handful of Super Economies - large, prosperous countries with a high growth rate, ranking among the world’s top trading partners, commanding 15 to 20 percent of global GDP, having nuclear arms but using economic leadership to effect significant change.

A stone-age hand axe, an enchantingly sculpted yakshi, the Koh-i-Noor diamond, and even an HMT watch―can these things have anything in common? Yes, they can! Each of these has been conceived by the human mind and shaped by the human hand. Each object has a voice, not just of rulers and conquerors, but also of the common people. Most significant of all, each carries stories of how communities and identities were built on the Indian subcontinent.

Since time immemorial, India has been an ocean bed over which numerous stories have flowed and enriched the world. Storytellers from Tulsidas to Rohinton Mistry have added their magic to this magnificent repository. Inspired in part by Somadeva’s Kathasaritasagara, William Radice collects these timeless tales of India, and tells them anew through his unique idiom. Like itinerant storytellers, he fills these tales with emotion and wit, bringing them alive for the contemporary listener.

This is the story of a tiger. Once a helpless ball of fur, Genghis emerges as a mighty predator, the king of the forest. But the jungle isn’t just his kingdom. Soon, Genghis finds himself fighting for his skin against equally powerful predators of a different kind–humans. The very same ones that Vikram and Aditya get embroiled with when they attempt to lay their hands on a diary that belongs to a ruthless tiger poacher. Worlds collide when one ill-fated encounter plunges the boys and their friend Aarti into a thrilling chase that takes them deep into the magnificent game park of Ranthambore.

When Meena finds snakebites on her chest, her worst fears are realized: someone is after her and she must flee India. As she plots her exit, she learns of the Trail, an energy-harvesting bridge spanning the Arabian Sea that has become a refuge for itinerant vagabonds and loners on the run. This is her salvation. Slipping out in the cover of night, with a knapsack full of supplies including a pozit GPS, a scroll reader, and a sealable waterproof pod, she sets off for Ethiopia, the place of her birth.

A highly original, stirring book on Mahatma Gandhi that deepens our sense of his achievements and disappointments - his success in seizing India’s imagination and shaping its independence struggle as a mass movement, his recognition late in life that few of his followers paid more than lip service to his ambitious goals of social justice for the country’s minorities, outcasts, and rural poor.