When Google Met WikiLeaks

When Google Met WikiLeaks by Julian Assange from Navayana.

Nobody wants to acknowledge that Google has grown big and bad. But it has. The firm’s geopolitical aspirations are firmly enmeshed within the foreign-policy agenda of the world’s largest superpower.

—Google, whose logo is imprinted on human retinas almost six billion times each day, has made petabytes of personal data available to the US intelligence community
—In 2008, Google helped launch an NGA spy satellite, GeoEye-1. It shares the photographs from the satellite with the US military and intelligence communities
—In 2010, NGA awarded Google a $27 million contract for ‘geospatial visualization services’
—In 2012, Google arrived on the list of top-spending Washington lobbyists

In June 2011, Julian Assange received an unusual visitor: the chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt. For several hours the besieged leader of the world’s most famous insurgent publishing organization and the billionaire head of the world’s largest information empire locked horns. For Assange, the liberating power of the Internet is based on its freedom and statelessness. For Schmidt, emancipation is at one with US foreign policy objectives and is driven by connecting non-Western countries to American companies and markets. When Google Met WikiLeaks presents the story of the Assange–Schmidt encounter.

 In our Media section, Rs. 295, in paperback, 224 pages, ISBN :9788189059668, Sales Restriction: Sale In SAARC Countries Only

Medicine, Healthcare and the Raj

Medicine, Healthcare and the Raj: The Unacknowledged Legacy by Daya Varma from Three Essays Collective.

The book is a significant intervention in the debates and existing scholarship on colonialism and medicine. Equally critical of the postmodern perspectives and of those who claim modern medicine as “gift” from the western world, virtually identifying modern medicine with “western” medicine, Daya Varma sifts the irrational from the rational critiques of imperialism. He makes a strong defense of modern medicine, preventive care, hygiene and public health as core of a viable strategy for accessible medicine.

Particularly striking are the linkages he makes between poverty and health, and between the state of public health in Britain and colonial India in the corresponding years, themes ignored by most scholars. Less concerned with the effect of modern medicine on “indigenous” medicine, he argues for criteria that center on the health of Indian people.

Unlike most researchers and scholars of the subject, the author is well-versed in theory and practice of medicine and in medical history, which lends his book an originality and wider perspective. The book both provokes and educates.

Written in a lucid and accessible language, and with a clear historical approach, the book would be of as much interest to lay persons as to historians and those in the medical profession.

In our Public Health Studies section, Rs. 500, in hardback, xx+196 pages, ISBN :9789383968060

Sathyavathi

Sathyavathi: Confronting Caste, Class & Gender by Vasanth Kannabiran

I have the satisfaction of knowing that whatever I longed for—a full meal, an education, a roof over my head, self-respect—I have been able to bring all that within the reach of many of my people. Sathyavathi captures the struggle of a Dalit woman in Telengana to survive and acquire an education in the face of overwhelming odds—grinding poverty, discrimination, violence. Her determination to go back to work for her community, her hard-won success, despite lack of political backing, and the hostility and intolerance she faced are testimony to the triumph of the human spirit. Without a trace of self-pity or rancour she recalls her life with dispassionate clarity and an irony that are exceptional.

SATHYAVATHI is one among countless Dalit women in Telengana who battled starvation and discrimination for an education that she knew would change her life. She set up her own organisation, Rural Awareness and Development Society, committed to fighting for Dalits, minor girls, women and tribals. She was awarded the Resourceful Women Award of Merit from the Shaler Adams Foundation in 1994 and Swara Veda Charity—Spirit of Life Award of Appreciation by the NTR Memorial Trust in 2011.

 In our Gender Studies section, Rs. 175, in paperback, 124 pages, ISBN :9788188965908

'Letters for a Nation' "Nehru and Bose"

Letters for a Nation: From Jawaharlal Nehru to His Chief Ministers 1947- 1963 by Madhav Khosla from Penguin Books India.

In October 1947, two months after he became independent India's firstprime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote the first of his fortnightly lettersto the heads of the country's provincial governments-a tradition that hekept until his last letter in December 1963, only a few months before hisdeath.

Carefully selected from among nearly 400 such letters, this collectioncovers a range of themes and subjects, including citizenship, war andpeace, law and order, national planning and development, governanceand corruption, and India's place in the world. The letters also covermomentous world events and the many crises and conflicts the countryfaced during the first sixteen years after Independence.

Visionary, wise and reflective, these letters are not just a testimony toNehru's statesmanship and his deep engagement with every aspect ofIndia's democratic journey, but are also of great contemporary relevance forthe guidance they provide for our current problems and predicaments.

In our Literature section, Rs. 599, in hardback, 352 pages, ISBN :9780670087723

Nehru and Bose: Parallel Lives by Rudrangshu Mukherjee from Penguin Books India.

'Nobody has done more harm to me than Jawaharlal Nehru,' wrote Subhas Chandra Bose in 1939. Had relations between the two great nationalist leaders soured to the extent that Bose had begun to view Nehru as his enemy? But then, why did he name one of the regiments of the Indian National Army after Jawaharlal? And what prompted Nehru to weep when he heard of Bose's untimely death in 1945 and to recount soon after, 'I used to treat him as my younger brother'?

Rudrangshu Mukherjee's fascinating book tracks the growth of these two towering figures against the backdrop of the independence movement, delicately tracing the contours of a friendship that did not quite blossom as political ideologies diverged and delineates the shadow that fell between them for, Gandhi saw Nehru as his chosen heir and Bose as a prodigal son. Nehru and Bose: Parallel Lives brings to light the riveting story of two contrasting personalities who would go on to define modern India.

In our History section, Rs. 599, in hardback, 280 pages, ISBN :9780670087235

People's Mission to the Ottoman Empire

People's Mission to the Ottoman Empire: M.A. Ansari and the Indian Medical Mission, 1912-13 by Burak Akçapar from Oxford University Press (India).

During the Balkan Wars of 1912-13, concerned Muslims around India mobilized to dispatch three medical teams to treat wounded Ottoman soldiers. Among them, the one organized by Mohammad Ali Jauhar and directed by Mukhtar Ahmad Ansari caught the limelight, thanks to the regular letters sent home by the director of the Mission and published in the weekly Comrade journal. 

In the body of scholarship on Ottoman pan-Islamism, as a manifestation of pan-Islamist political ideology and Muslim internationalist action and its influence on the 1919 Khilafat Movement in India, the 1912-13 Indian Medical Mission has not been analysed in detail.This book studies the letters by the director of the Mission and the political and ideational context of the period to provide the first full narrative history of the Medical Mission, detailing its simultaneously humanitarian and political purposes and activities in Turkey. 

The Mission was as much a humanitarian initiative as it was an effort to heal the pride of the Muslim population in India. This is their story, reconstructing to the extent possible their thoughts, voice, and the era that shaped them.

In our History section, Rs. 995, in hardback, 352 pages, ISBN :9780198099574

Politics and Cosmopolitanism in a Global Age

Politics and Cosmopolitanism in a Global Age by Sonika Gupta And Sudarsan Padmanabhan from Routledge India.

This book offers a unique reconceptualization of cosmopolitanism. It examines several themes that inform politics in a globalized era, including global governance, international law, citizenship, constitutionalism, community, domesticity, territory, sovereignty, and nationalism. The volume explores the specific philosophical and institutional challenges in constructing a cosmopolitan political community beyond the nation state.

It reorients and decolonizes the boundaries of ‘cosmopolitanism’ and questions the contemporary discourse to posit inclusive alternatives. Presenting rich and diverse perspectives from across the world, the volume will interest scholars and students of politics and international relations, political theory, public policy, ethics, and philosophy.

In our Politics section, Rs. 795, in hardback, 288 pages, ISBN :9781138822405

Corporate Coaching

Corporate Coaching: The Essential Guide by Sraban Mukherjee from Sage India.

Worldwide, organizations invest heavily on their employees to enhance their capabilities and manage growth and build competitive advantage. Through a comprehensive approach, Corporate Coaching shows how organizations can use coaching as a development tool to improve the effectiveness of employees at all levels of management. This book focuses on how to improve individual and organizational performance using coaching, develop the leadership pipeline and evolve a coaching culture.

The book is a ’How To’ guide for corporate coaching, written primarily for human resource and learning and development professionals. It will help readers understand the nuances of corporate coaching and make better decisions in introducing coaching as an intervention for organization development. Sponsors or decision makers of coaching intervention can use the methods given in this book for measuring the return on coaching investment and evaluating the effectiveness of corporate coaching.

In our Management Studies section, Rs. 495, in paperback, 272 pages, ISBN :9788132114956