Courtesy: Amazon India
V. Srinivas’ survey of the G20 and India’s road to its presidency is a reader-friendly and informative work that bridges the information gap and offers an insightful scholarly analysis of the multilateral.
Courtesy: HarperCollins Publishers India
Tilak Devasher's book The Pashtuns: A Contested History delves into the Pashtun tribe, highlighting its geopolitical significance and far-reaching consequences in the South Asian region. Reviewer Tim Willasey-Wilsey says the book brilliantly explains how the Pashtuns were strong-armed into joining Pakistan and why the prospect of Pashtun unity poses a threat to security in Pakistan and the entire region.
Courtesy: HarperCollins Publishers India
Tilak Devasher’s book on the Pashtuns brings out the dynamics of the Pashtun, their code, their relationship with Islam and with Pakistan. It contextualizes the current geo-political challenges in South Asia, making it required reading for those who want to understand not only the Pashtuns but regional strategic and security dynamics.
Courtesy: Juggernaut
In his new book, former Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran demystifies China's imagined belief of itself as the Middle Kingdom. Contemporary China's propensity to cut and paste history has resulted in China's resentment of India based on a limited understanding of Indian history and of China's past recognition of India as an advanced civilisation which impacted Chinese culture. Today the West recognises India's potential to match China, with depth and skills, over the long term.
Courtesy: Rupa Publications
Narendra Modi has completed eight years as the Prime Minister of India. His tenure has seen a strengthened and transformed Indian foreign policy. In his book, Crunch Time: Narendra Modi’s National Security Crises, author Sreeram Chaulia studies India’s national security crises under Modi, and his handling of it. His main argument that Modi was more decisive than his predecessors in dealing with China and Pakistan, holds.
Courtesy: Routledge India
Nearly two decades since the launch of the India Development Initiative, India-Africa relations have evolved. This book by Rajiv Bhatia, a former high-ranking IFS officer, takes a deep dive into Indo-African engagement. Bhatia outlines the history and presents concise yet informative capsules of India's relationship with individual African countries. It is a useful roadmap for companies looking to do business there.
Courtesy: Macmillan
The contemporary fate of Hong Kong, which has known freedom and rule of law, offers in microcosm a glimpse of what could happen if the liberal world order is up-ended. In this book, Mark Clifford convincingly argues that what happens in Hong Kong doesn’t stay in Hong Kong, as he draws connections between the techniques used to end freedom there with China’s penetration and manipulation of open societies elsewhere.
Courtesy: Penguin Random House India
In six concise case studies, Vijay Gokhale, former Foreign Secretary of India, demystifies the Chinese style of diplomacy. The reviewer says the book makes a compelling case for how the lack of diplomatic experience of newly independent India’s leaders enabled the Chinese Communist leadership to outmatch and outmaneuver them in the early years, despite the latter playing a relatively weak hand.
Courtesy: Sage Publishing
This book offers a bird’s-eye view of India’s strivings to forge close relations with the East, but covering a vast region and swathe of history has inherent drawbacks. The result is a haphazard narrative, focusing more on the contemporary period and lacking in insight or analysis
Courtesy: Konark Publications
This is a generally positive analysis of the Prime Minister’s foreign policy in his first five-year term, but, like Shakespeare’s tragic heroes, he too has his flaws. This is not a research treatise, but more an overview of contemporary events that will interest students of international affairs