India House

Abandoned on the Mumbai railways, Ajay has grown up with nothing but a burning wish to be a journalist. Finding an abandoned printing press, he and his friends Saif, Vinod, Yasmin and Jai create their own newspaper: The Mumbai Sun. As they hunt down stories for their paper, the children uncover corruption, fight for justice and battle to save their slum from bulldozers. But against some of the most powerful forces in the city, can Ajay and his friends really succeed in bringing the truth to light? Not to mention win the most important cricket match ever.

New York City, 1972. Jaryk Smith, a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, and Lucy Gardner, a southerner, newly arrived in the city, are in the first bloom of love when they receive word that Jaryk's oldest friend has died under mysterious circumstances in a rural village in eastern India. Traveling there alone to collect his friend's ashes, Jaryk soon finds himself enmeshed in the chaos of local politics and efforts to stage a play in protest against the government—the same play that he performed as a child in Warsaw as an act of resistance against the Nazis.

Jack and Annie are whisked back in time to the jungles of India, where they meet snakes and tigers, and find ancient ruins.

Reservation or affirmative action is a hugely controversial policy in India. While constitutionally mandated and with historians, political scientists and social activists convinced of its need, many resist it and consider it as compromising 'merit' and against the principle of equality of opportunity. In These Seats Are Reserved, Abhinav traces the history and making of the reservation policy.

Kalki Divekar grows up a daughter of Kingston—a city the British built on the ashes of Bombay. The older generation, including her father, have been lost to the brutal hunt for rebels. Young men are drafted to fight wars they will never return from. And the people of her city are more interested in fighting each other than facing their true oppressors. When tragedy strikes close to home, Kalki and her group of friends begin to play a dangerous game, obtaining jobs working for the British while secretly planning to destroy the empire from the inside out.

Black Friday is a ghastly account of the one of the biggest terrorist attacks on Bombay, in 1993. The book chronicles the devastation caused to life and property due to the attacks and the trauma, both physical and mental, undergone by the people at large post the terrorist attacks and the consequent rift between the communities of Hindu and Muslims and hatred and clashes which often turned extremely violent.

On the eve of a landmark general election, Ruchir Sharma offers an unrivaled portrait of how India and its democracy work, drawn from his two decades on the road chasing election campaigns across every major state, travelling the equivalent of a lap around the earth. Democracy on the Road takes listeners on a rollicking ride with Ruchir and his merry band of fellow writers as they talk to farmers, shopkeepers, and CEOs from Rajasthan to Tamil Nadu, and interview leaders from Narendra Modi to Rahul Gandhi.

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.

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.

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.

Sita, the beloved princess of Mithila, is one of the most revered women in Indian history; so well known, yet probably the least understood. At every crossroad of her life, she chose acceptance and grace over self-pity. Her life was filled with sacrifice yet wherever she was, there was abundance. It was as if she was carved out of an intense longing for Rama, yet she had infinite patience.

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.

The Indian subcontinent was the scene of dramatic upheavals a few thousand years ago. The Northwest region entered an arid phase, and erosion coupled with tectonic events played havoc with river courses. One of them disappeared. Celebrated as Sarasvati in the Rig Veda and the Mahabharata, this river was rediscovered in the early 19th century through topographic explorations by British officials. Recently, geological and climatological studies have probed its evolution and disappearance, while satellite imagery has traced the river's buried courses....

A big part of Hindu and Indian mythology is the lengthy Mahabharata, with stories about princes, princesses, monsters, and many mysterious creatures. Krishna is one of the prominent figures in many ancient mythology writings from this region, and his victories over evil have been applauded and believed by many.

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.

Published to coincide with Pope Francis' Year of Mercy and the Vatican's canonization of Mother Teresa, this new book of unpublished material by a humble yet remarkable woman of faith whose influence is felt as deeply today as it was when she was alive offers Mother Teresa's profound yet accessible wisdom on how we can show mercy and compassion in our day-to-day lives.

Originariamente publicadas como folletín, en 1870, en el diario La Tribuna, las cartas que componen este libro son el particular relato de la expedición de Lucio V. Mansilla Tierra Adentro y de su encuentro con los indios ranqueles. Con una minuciosidad por momentos cercana a la obsesión, en ellas el autor toma nota de los detalles de la geografía pampeana y describe lúcidamente los hábitos, costumbres y comportamientos del mundo indígena, ese gran Otro de la literatura argentina.

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.

India’s Five-Year Plans were one of the developing world’s most ambitious experiments. After nearly two centuries of colonial rule, planning the economy was meant to be independent India’s route from poverty to prosperity. Planning Democracy explores how India married liberal democracy to a socialist economy. Planning not only built India’s data systems, it even shaped the nature of its democracy. The Five-Year Plans loomed so large that they linked surprisingly far-flung contexts—from computers to Bollywood to Hindutva.

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.