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

Cartel Regulation/ Culinary Culture in Colonial India

Cartel Regulation: India in an International Perspective by Lovely Dasgupta from Cambridge University Press (India).

The recent decision of the Competition Commission of India imposing Rupees 60 billion penalties on the Cement cartels exemplifies the extent to which cartelization affects the Indian consumers. The book looks into the law, policy and practice that inform the anti-cartel provisions within the Indian Competition Act 2002.

In the process, it tries to establish that even though the anti-cartel provisions of the Indian Competition Act are ambiguous on their support or opposition to cartels, the primary purpose of the Act is protection of the interest of consumers. Therefore, the Competition Commission of India and the Central Government are expected to come up with such regulations and notifications that help in clarifying the scope of the anti-cartel provisions in the interest of consumers.

The book also compares the Indian regulator’s approach vis-à-vis the approach taken by the fair trade regulators in more advanced jurisdictions like the EU, US and UK. Importantly, it introduces readers to a developing country perspective by bringing forth the impact of cartels on bargaining power of both end consumer as well as intermediaries. It also provides workable solutions to enhance the efficacy of anti-cartel provisions.

In our Governance section, Rs. 995, in hardback, viii+375 pages, ISBN : 9789382993759

Culinary Culture in Colonial India: A Cosmopolitan Platter and the Middle-Class by Utsa Ray from  Cambridge University Press (India).

This book utilizes the idea of cuisine to understand the construction of the colonial middle-class in Bengal. Colonial transformation contextualized the cultural articulation of a new set of values, prejudices and tastes for the colonial middle-class. This middle-class ensured that cuisine was not commoditized and remained domestic and embedded in the material culture of Bengal. One of the chief arguments of this book is that the middle-class in colonial Bengal indigenized new culinary experiences that came with colonialism.

This process of indigenization was an aesthetic choice imbricated in the upper caste and patriarchal agenda of middle-class social reform. While enabling the middle-class to soak in new culinary pleasures, the process of indigenization also made possible certain social practices, including the imagination of the act of cooking as a classic feminine act and the domestic kitchen as a sacred space. In these acts of imagination, there were important elements of continuity from the pre-colonial times, especially evidenced in the reinstitution of caste-based norms of gastronomy.

The process of indigenizing new gastronomic practices was at the same time anti-colonial yet capitalist, cosmopolitan yet gendered and caste based. Thus, the idea of a refined taste that was so integrally associated with the formation of the middle class in colonial Bengal became a marker of standards of good and bad, acceptance of some things, rejection of some others and in Pierre Bourdieu’s apt phrase ‘disgust for other tastes.

In our History section, Rs. 695, in hardback, 284 pages, ISBN :9781107042810

Talking of Justice

Talking of Justice: Peoples Rights in Modern India by Leila Seth from Aleph Book Company.

In Talking of Justice, eminent jurist Leila Seth discusses several critical issues that she has engaged with in a legal career spanning over fifty years - violence against women, the nurture of the girl child, the need for a uniform civil code, women's rights, prisoners' rights, gender sensitization of the judiciary, and judicial administration, among others.

From the landmark Justice Verma Committee (2012-2013), on which she suggested amendments to the law as well as speedier trials and more effective punishment for all those accused of sexual assault and violence against women, to her experience as a member of the 15th Law Commission of India (1997-2000), to her appointment as the one member commission to enquire into the custodial death of Rajan Pillai (1995-1997), Leila Seth shares her insights on some of the most substantive and contentious matters facing the nation today

Keenly observed and elegantly argued, Talking of Justice goes deep into the laws of the land that need to be reviewed and revised, and offers suggestions for protecting the rights of the people, especially those who are marginalized and vulnerable.

Interesting Facts
Essays on key points of law and human rights on critic al issues of women's rights, children's rights, judicial administration, gender sensitization of the judiciary and more.
Written by eminent jurist whose career spans fifty years - as lawyer, judge and chief justice.
An easy-to-understand guide for every citizen of India who wants to know his or her rights.

In our Sociology section, Rs. 500, in hardback, 228 pages, ISBN : 9789382277965

The Night it Rained Guns

The Night it Rained Guns: Unravelling The Purulia Arms Group Conspiracy by Chandan Nandy from Rupa & Co.

On the night of 1718 December 1995, an aging Russian Antonov26 plane dropped three weaponsladen wooden pallets over Purulia, a backward, nondescript district in West Bengal. Four days later, the same plane was forcelanded at Mumbai's Santa Cruz airport, from where the mastermind of the operation, Kim Davy aka Niels Christian Nielsen, managed a daring escape. Who were the endusers of the weapons? Why were they airdropped over that particular region? Were they, as claimed later, meant for the shady cult, the Ananda Marga? Was it an effort to topple the CPI (M)ruled state government of West Bengal?

Or was it a conspiracy of international proportions, spanning continents and masterminded by a global superpower? As a reporter for The Telegraph and later, the Hindustan Times, Chandan Nandy broke several stories on this bizarre covert operation. Nineteen years after the sensational arms drop, in this book, he exposes the grave lapses committed by India's security agencies and pieces together the story of how the operation was planned and executed.

He brings to light as yet undisclosed evidence about the end users, whose identity still remains a mystery. Based on scores of interviews with R&AW, IB and CBI insiders and relying on classified documents, The Night it Rained Guns is a riveting exploration of India's greatest security breaches.


In our Fiction section, Rs. 295, in paperback, 298 pages, ISBN : 9788129134738

A Descriptive Study of Bengali Words

A Descriptive Study of Bengali Words by Niladri Sekhar Dash from Cambridge University Press (India).

The book is about the study of modern Bengali words based on the data obtained from a corpus of written texts. The corpus contains more than five million words of written text samples collected from hundred subject domains published within 1981 to 2000. The author analyses Bengali words from empirical point of view to understand their form and function in the language.

It also deals with the form and function of Bengali words in a systematic manner from the perspective of structure and use of words to understand how Bengali words are formed and used. The book provides, for the first time, some important findings about the general patterns of use of Bengali morpheme. It sheds new light on the form and function of morphemes in construction of words in the language.

Bengali single word units (both inflected and non-inflected) are analyzed from the perspective of their structure or surface forms. The book also provides a solid empirical support for developing tools and systems for morphological analysis, morphological generation, lexical decomposition and lexical composition for the language for machine learning and language teaching.

In our Linguistics section, Rs. 895, in hardback, 374 pages, ISBN :9781107064249

India 2050

India 2050: A Roadmap to Sustainable Prosperity by Ramgopal Agarwala from Sage India.

Can India achieve a high-income status by 2050 when it celebrates the centenary of its Republic? Will the nation eliminate absolute poverty and improve its human development record?

This book emphasizes the centrality of a trade-oriented services sector led by communication, business services, health, education, research, and innovations for achieving these growth targets. It also argues that inclusiveness, financial prudence, and low-carbon lifestyles are preconditions to long-term growth.

India can achieve such prosperity neither through the socialistic policies of 195080 nor through the neo-liberalistic policies since 1980. It needs to, instead, follow a middle-path approach closer to the systems adopted by Germany and the Nordic countries. It is within this framework that India will devise its independent development paradigm rooted in its own traditions and realities.

In our Development Studies section, Rs. 995, in hardback, 388 pages, ISBN : 9789351500438

Behind the Door

Behind the Door: The Oscar Pistorius and Reeva Steenkamp Story by Mandy Wiener And Barry Bateman from Macmillan India.

Oscar Pistorius was the golden boy of South African sport and an inspiration to millions around the world - until the tragic shooting that left his model girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp dead and Pistorius on trial for murder. Behind The Door will be written by South African journalists Mandy Wiener and Barry Bateman. Published once the trial is concluded, it will explore the characters involved, relate the courtroom interactions and unpack the forensic and circumstantial evidence.

But more than that, this book seeks to go beyond the facts of the case in search of the wider context behind this shocking tragedy: the back-story of the police investigation, the nature of the South African criminal justice system, the culture of violence in South Africa and the need of society to create flawed heroes who are destined to fail.

In our Biography section, Rs. 599, in paperback, 300 pages, ISBN : 9781447267867

One Hundred Years of Servitude

One Hundred Years of Servitude: Political Economy of Tea Plantations in Colonial Assam by Rana P. Behal from Tulika Books.

This book presents a hundred-year history of tea plantations in the Assam (Brahmaputra) Valley during British colonial rule in India. It explores a world where more than two million migrant labourers worked under conditions of indentured servitude in these tea plantations, producing tea for an increasingly profitable global market. The book is divided into six chapters. The first chapter traces the genesis and early development of the tea industry, from 1840 to the early 1860s. It examines the links between the colonial state and private British capital in fostering plantations in Assam. It also discusses the nature of the ‘tea mania’ and its consequences, which led to the emergence of the indenture labour system in Assam’s tea gardens.

In the second chapter, the focus is on the process of labour mobilization and the nature of labour relations in the tea plantations. It deals with the operational aspects of labour recruitment for the plantations, which involved the transportation and employment of migrant labourers, from the 1860s right up to1926 – when the indenture system was formally dismantled. The third chapter examines the power structure that ruled over the organization of production and labour relations within the plantations. This power structure operated at two levels: around the Indian Tea Association, the apex body of the tea industry, and the coercive authority exercised by planters.

The fifth chapter offers a critical analysis of the quantities of production, market prices, volume of exports and profitability, acreage expansion, labour employment and wage payments in the Assam Valley tea plantations from the 1870s to 1947. The final chapter tells the story of everyday labour life in the tea gardens, and of the resistance to the oppressive regime by ‘coolie’ labourers who had been coerced into generational servitude. It analyses the forms of their protests, and raises the question whether the transformation of these migrant agrarian communities working in conditions of unfree labour was proletarian in nature.
In our History section, Rs. 900, in hardback, xiv+390 pages, ISBN: 9789382381433

4 Aakars

Ideology Matters: China from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping by Manoranjan Mohanty from Aakar Books.

China's notable successes as well as the problems it has encountered have resulted from policy debates and choices made by the Communist Party of China from the time of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, to the less charismatic leaders Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and his successor Xi Jinping. The CPCs distinct style is to put the policy perspectives in fresh theoretical terms. These essays scrutinise the ideological statements to help understand Chinas reform strategy and the policy shifts.

One needs to know the contours of Maoism and its critical assessment by Deng Xiaoping to understand the reforms that he launched and the meaning of 'socialist market economy and the state-guided market process that has produced the high rate of growth in China. Deng's successor Jiang Zemin led China's accelerated growth with greater integration with the world economy and articulated his thinking as the 'Three Represents.

After him, Hu Jintaos decade of leadership, called by some as glorious decade by others a lost decade took China to become worlds second largest economy. How successful was he in addressing risings inequality and environmental degradation while practicing his scientific outlook on development? Xi Jinping after taking over in 2012 has given a stirring call for realising the Chinese dream and has initiated cautious measures on crucial issues.

In our Economics section, Rs. 550, in hardback, xx+208 pages, ISBN :9789350022658

Marxism as Scientific Enterprise by P. C. Joshi from Aakar Books.

In this collection of essays the eminent social scientist, Dr. P. C. Joshi, argues that Marxism needs to be extended beyond the traditional confines set by Lenin and Mao in order to remain relevant in societies in which individuals have freedom of political expression and which are witnessing gigantic strides in communication technology.

In democratic societies with a vibrant media, the Lenin-Mao inspired templates of conspiracy and peoples war carry far less traction than in autocracies where communism has been successful. Dr. Joshi argues that democracy is ingrained in the spirit and legacy of Marx and the two can be true partners in social development.

This require tapping into classes and strata not considered by mainstream Marxists such as intermediate classes, intellectuals and bureaucrats and harnessing the liberating potential offered by advances in technology.

In our Politics section, Rs. 295, in paperback, 223 pages, ISBN :9789350022757

Education, State and Market: Anatomy of Neoliberal Impact by Ravi Kumar from Aakar Books.

The volume looks at the nature of impact of neoliberal capitalism on education in India. It narrates the historical trajectory of shift from welfarism to neoliberalism; looks at how higher education as well as school level education has been impacted by neoliberalism. 

There are field-based narratives to document this impact while some chapters locate the language question as well as how disciplines like economics and legal studies are transformed within this context. It ends with discussing the possibilities to resist this onslaught of capital.


In our Education section, Rs. 595, in hardback, 309 pages, ISBN :9789350022818


When Godavari Comes: People's History of a River - Journeys in the Zone of the Dispossessed by R. Umamaheshwari from Aakar Books.

The book cruises through the length and breadth of Godavari (as much as possible), between years 2006 and 2013, into the villages to be submerged by the Indira Sagar Polavaram National multi-purpose Project of Andhra Pradesh-Telangana. Through an engaged first-person journal of journeys in these villages, the author records people's voices (and faces) and reflects on the issues, such as, historical past of Godavari region and its bearing on the present, idea of a river, forest and land and the male construct of a dam.

When Godavari comes, there is a churning that brings in new life, crops, on fields, marshes and wetlands and at the same time she also leaves some people stranded, manoeuvering their life's boat through, even as they are rendered at the mercy of the state. Yet, the destruction from a Godavari's coming is not permanent, nor an apocalypse, as a massive 'modern' displacement from 'development' is.

In journeying on Godavari, travelling with its flow, you meet these people- adivasi/tribal, dalits (and the other marginalised)- and hear their stories, their philosophies of life and of being reduced to a sunyam (zero). Indeed, a whole history is in the process of being written from above in this geographical-cultural-social space. This is the first book of this nature based almost entirely on people's voices from the submergence zone.

In our Ecology and Environment section, Rs. 1295, in hardback, 486 pages, ISBN : 9789350023082