What drives policy choices in the world’s largest democracy, and how do analysts shape decisions that affect more than a billion people?Bringing together leading scholars and seasoned practitioners, Policy Analysis in India maps the evolution of policy analysis since the country became independent and reveals how analysis is conducted across ministries, sectors and levels of government. Through rich empirical cases – from education, policing and international organisations to fisca...

FOUR BODIES.FIVE SUSPECTS.SIX MOTIVES.With a deadly pandemic reaching its peak across the country, the last thing Inspector Mona Ramteke, in Hyderabad training to be an ACP, wants is to be roped into a high-profile investigation. But when news arrives quite suddenly that four distinguished employees of a prominent media house have died in their office cabins on the same day, at around the same time, Mona is summoned...

Pointing to the horizon where the sea and sky are joined, he says, 'It is only an illusion because they can't really meet, but isn't it beautiful, this union which isn't really there.' -- SAADAT HASAN MANTO Sometime in 2016, a series of dialogues took place which set out to find a meeting ground, even if only an illusion, between A.S. Dulat and Asad Durrani. One was a former chief of RAW, India's external intelligence agency, the other of ISI, its Pakistani counterpart. As they could not m...

Srinagar in the winter of 1989 was an eerie ghost town witnessing the beginnings of a war dance. The dam burst the night boys from the separatist JKLF group were freed in exchange for the release of Rubaiya Sayeed, the Union home minister's daughter. As Farooq Abdullah had predicted, the government's caving in emboldened many Kashmiris into thinking that azaadi was possible. It was a long, slow haul to regaining control. From then to now, A.S. Dulat has had a continuous engagement with Kas...

Morning Analysis CEO Buster Das has been found dead in his office with his head bashed in.When unlikely detective duo Sandesh Solvekar and Mona Ramteke make it their mission to catch the reckless criminal, they find themselves knee-deep in Mumbai’s sordid world of dissolute starlets, business moguls and a sell-out media, even as they attempt to deal with a dysfunctional police machinery and their own secret lives. The list of suspects is also turning out to be a headscratcher: ther...

Vajpayee PMO member's account of the quest for peace in a troubled stateThere comes a day in one's life when one feels it should all be put down before memory fades. There are endless memories and I have carried a story with me for a long time. SRINAGAR IN THE WINTER OF 1989 was an eerie ghost town witnessing the beginnings of a war dance. The dam burst the night boys from the separatist JKLF group were freed in exchange for the release of Rubaiya Sayeed, the Union home minister's d...

The bestselling, "remarkable" (Marie Claire) memoir by the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, I Am Malala will make you believe in the power of one person's voice to inspire change in the world."I come from a country that was created at midnight. When I almost died it was just after midday."When the Taliban took control of the Swat Valley in Pakistan, one girl spoke out. Malala Yousafzai refused to be silenced and fought for her ...

Love history? Know your stuff with History in an Hour.Britain has invaded Afghanistan twice before in the nineteenth century. Both times tenacious Afghan fighters defended their country to humiliating British defeats. The Soviet Union also discovered what a tough enemy the Afghans are after nearly a decade of conflict from 1979 to 1989. When not fighting foreign invaders, Afghanistan was torn apart by Civil War from 1990 to 1996, resulting in victory for the Taliban.The Afg...

"It's all here-Islam, the family tree, a sea of oil and money to match, palace intrigue...This is high drama and an epic tale."-Tom BrokawThough Saudi Arabia sits on one of the richest oil deposits in the world, it also produced fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers. In this immensely important book, journalist Robert Lacey draws on years of access to every circle of Saudi society giving readers the fullest portrait yet of a land straddling the worlds of me...

From the award-winning co-author of I Am Malala, this book asks just how the might of NATO, with 48 countries and 140,000 troops on the ground, failed to defeat a group of religious students and farmers? How did the West’s war in Afghanistan and across the Middle East go so wrong?Farewell Kabul tells how the West turned success into defeat in the longest war fought by the United States in its history and by Britain since the Hundred Years War. It ...

Rahul and his friend Mona grow up in a turbulent time: development comes to the town they are in, and that means they must be displaced. Amidst a lot of politics and protests, fear-mongering and strict policies, they shift in pursuit of greener pastures. A time comes when Mona’s father makes a choice to take on a high-level job that pays him well, but Rahul’s father refuses the offer. Eventually, the two lives take different paths, one with affluence and one with poverty. Rahul finds himself ...

From a small group of religious students formed in 1994, the Taliban quickly grew into a national movement that occupied all of Afghanistan. Led by the mysterious Mullah Omar, the group established a theocracy based on strict observance of Sharia law. When the Americans overthrew the Taliban in 2001, the United States thought the regime had been defeated. Yet today, nine years later, the Taliban continue to wage a bloody insurgency.In this extraordinary and compelling account of th...