As this historic, infamous, pandemic year ends, leaving the world drastically changed from when it began, looking-back and regaining our understanding of our changed realities becomes pertinent. To that end, and to better equip ourselves to face the new year, we have curated a list of non-fiction must-reads, handpicked by our scholars, here at Centre for Social and Economic Progress. Ranging from commentaries on the policy world to contextualising India’s relationship with the world, as well as climate change and lessons from the pandemic, take a look at what captured the attention of our scholars this year, and find your own end-of-the-year-reads, as we head into the new year, with food for thought!
Shivshankar Menon
The Loss of Hindustan; the Invention of India
by Manan Ahmed Asif
This is a fascinating exploration of political identity in the Indian subcontinent before the coming of the Europeans, when Asif says there was a shared understanding of being Hindustani. The story he tells is of how the European understanding of India in religious and caste terms replaced the earlier understanding of Hindustan as a home for all faiths. As we struggle through yet another reinterpretation and contestation over our contemporary political identity, this book should open our minds to the multiple possibilities and opportunities ahead of us.
China’s Good War; How World War II Is Shaping a New Nationalism
Rana Mitter
This book about the radical reinterpretation of China’s World War II experience in today’s People’s Republic is an excellent example of the political uses of history in China, which has a long tradition, and of the reinvention of tradition and even identity. History, nationalism and collective memory—and their interplay—come together in Mitter’s masterly telling. As China steps out into the world with growing power and agency, she reinterprets the past to support the idea of China as a creator and protector of the international order. The past as recalled and told is indeed prologue to the future in China’s case.
Time’s Monster; History, Conscience and Britain’s Empire
Priya Satia
I have often wondered how people who considered themselves good, moral, and god-fearing citizens perpetrated the monstrous crimes and atrocities that built and maintained the exploitative and violent British Empire. Satia’s book is the first satisfactory attempt to explain this phenomenon that I have seen. She demonstrates the role of the historical imagination in founding and enabling colonialism. And please do not think that what she tells us is only true of the past. Like all good history, this book makes one see the present differently.
Gazing Eastwards; Of Buddhist Monks and Revolutionaries in China
Romila Thapar
I have saved the best for last. This diary of the months that Romila Thapar spent in China in 1957 as a research assistant studying the Buddhist murals and sculptures in Dunhuang and Maijishan on the Silk Routes, where Indian and Chinese cultures intermingled, is fascinating in her perceptive observations of a China on the cusp of revolutionary change. She met Mao and Zhou, visited the major Chinese cities, and talked to academics, monks and ordinary people, enjoying a degree of access that has never since been repeated. The book is a useful reminder of the past that India and China shared, and that there is more to life than the focus on military and strategic affairs that fills the negative contemporary narrative on India and China. This is a book to savour.
Vikram Singh Mehta
A Promised Land
by Barack Obama
A perfect example of why one “should read nothing but biographies for that is history without theory” (I forget who said this). Beautifully written, A Promised Land is not just a catalogue of interesting public events leading first to Obama‘s dramatic run-up to the Presidency and then the twists and turns of securing the support of Congress for the financial bail-out in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, as well as the less successful efforts to pass Obamacare. It is also a description of the man behind the decisions, what motivated him, how did he reconcile good policy with good politics, while not compromising the principles that drove him to seek public office.
India figures marginally and not in language that would make us proud. Manmohan Singh receives praise as a wise and honest man, Sonia as a woman of dignity, and Rahul as lacking in depth or substance. The one sentence description of Rahul is damning.
It is a long book and at times the details surrounding American domestic issues are avoidable for a non-American reader, but it is a great read. Especially for those who wish to understand the complexities of policy formulation and the role of individuals in navigating policies through the hardware of democratic institutions.
Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World
by Fareed Zakaria
While the lessons, by themselves, may not be profoundly original, the language is outstanding. Every sentence reads well. What is interesting is the way Fareed weaves history and contemporary developments to provide insights into the world that was pre-COVID and the world that will be. Many of the lessons are relevant for all decision-makers, “people should listen to experts – and experts should listen to people”, “what matters is not the quantity of government but the quality” etc.
Have a wonderful holiday season and let us hope that 2021 buries 2020 well and truly into the past.
Sahil Gandhi
Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson
Acemoglu and Robinson present an interesting premise to explain why liberty has thrived only in a handful of nation-states and societies. They state that in the absence of a State, societies tend to create a “cage of norms” that is antithetical to liberty. These societies are also unable to provide critical services such as a free and fair justice system and other public goods that benefit the general public. A strong State with adequate capacity is essential for ensuring rule of law and providing public goods. However, in the absence of a strong countervailing force provided by the civil society, there is a strong chance that the unchecked State – which is referred to as a Leviathan – ends up becoming despotic and quashes individual liberty. Hence, the authors argue, liberty flourishes in the narrow corridor where a strong State can uphold the rule of law and a strong civil society is able to shackle the State to prevent it from turning despotic.
The authors provide examples from societies around the world, such as Europe, China, India, and across time to buttress their argument. It’s a great way to learn about the evolution of state capacity, economic history, and the role of social groups in civic life in places we may not have known much about before. One may or may not agree with this single, sweeping explanation to explain how some modern societies have emerged, but it will certainly give the reader a lot to think about.
Rahul Tongia
David Graeber
I would recommend almost everything by the late LSE anthropologist David Graeber. Many people do not realise that he was the one to coin a term that has been taken-up by protests worldwide: “the 1%”. While this is probably his most acclaimed scholarly work, he also has other groundbreaking views, like in his book Bullshit Jobs.
This book is a historical and cultural examination of not just debt but also the concepts of money and credit. Graeber shows that, contrary to popular belief, most societies didn’t have formal barter systems that evolved into money but had credit systems, often based heavily on relationships.
More importantly, as Graeber often writes about in his other works as well (especially in Utopia of Rules), a lot of formal systems are about power structures. He lays out the strong case that the so-called market isn’t a societal construct that allows them freedom away from the government but is one deeply embedded into the government as well as rules and norms. It’s more than a coincidence that the rules and norms reinforce power structures.
A very nice follow-on discussion is a short essay on the future of capitalism based on a discussion between Graeber and Piketty. Once you’re interested in rethinking concepts of money and debt, it’s worth reading about Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), especially Stephanie Kelton’s The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy. A very nice short essay on this issue by Richard Murphy, shows taxes aren’t about raising capital to do government’s spending – they are independent! Read “Macroeconomics, money and post-Brexit recovery, all in one Twitter thread.”
Leah Stokes
While the title suggests a very American focus, the larger premise remains more widely applicable, which is that clean energy and climate policy aren’t merely technical or even economic issues, but political ones, and ones where there are stakeholders who would be impacted asymmetrically by the energy transition. One could apply a lens of winners and losers for the transition and extrapolate many of the insights towards international positions and negotiations.
More than just the theoretical descriptive analysis of the past, the book also shows pathways of bottom-up action which appear to be as important, if not more, than just top-down international or national level policy efforts.
There are certainly some aspects that would appeal more to readers interested in the United States. Of course, what the United States does is extremely important for the world, not just because of the scale of impact from the largest GDP in the world but also because of its geopolitical and signaling aspects.
There are many other good books on the vast topic that is climate change. A unique one is a compilation of essays and poems by leading women thinkers and scholars, All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis.
Anit Mukherjee
Fateful Triangle: How China Shaped U.S.-India Relations During the Cold War
Tanvi Madan
Dr. Madan’s meticulously researched book on the India-U.S.-China triangle is one of the highlight publications of this year. She spent the better part of a decade conducting archival research across three continents and has come up with a very readable account untangling perhaps the most central geopolitical relationship of this century. Her book establishes China’s role, both in facilitating and inhibiting, the US-India relationship from 1949 to 1979. This is a welcome departure from most historical accounts of the US- India relationship which are over-determined by their obsession with the ‘Pakistan factor.’ In doing so, she reinterprets many aspects of India’s foreign policy including Nehru’s view on China and the pragmatic roots of Non-Alignment. This book is an invaluable resource not just for students and analysts but also for Indian and American policymakers as they grapple with forming a stronger relationship for our time.
Constantino Xavier
Animosity at Bay: An Alternative History of the India-Pakistan Relationship, 1947-1952
Pallavi Raghavan
How does a history of India-Pakistan cooperation seventy years ago matter to foreign policy today? Pallavi Raghavan’s book explains how despite the violent partition of 1947, the two states also worked together thereafter, from protecting minorities and evacuee properties to managing cross-border rivers and trade.
Even today, despite extreme rhetoric and a new low in India-Pakistan relations: in 2020, Delhi and Islamabad exchanged information on a devastating locust infestation to protect their farmers; their health experts met to discuss regional responses to the COVID-19 pandemic; and their diplomats agreed to establish the cross-border Kartarpur corridor for Sikh pilgrims.
Using a formidable range of new archival materials up to the early 1950s, Raghavan corrects the biased histories that have portrayed partition as being driven irrationally by Kashmir, ideology, or religion. Even in a context of political hostility and conflict, she shows how both sides – especially bureaucrats and technocratic elites – also engaged in pragmatic dialogues, collaborating to find policy solutions that were politically acceptable.
This book is an invaluable contribution to India’s new diplomatic histories and to understand how the drama of ideological politics can obfuscate the silent scenes of pragmatic policymaking.
The India Way: Strategies for an Uncertain World
- Jaishankar
While there is only one S. Jaishankar suggested by the title of the book – the strategist – its pages reveal a trinity of Jaishankars: the scholar, the diplomat, and the politician. Jaishankar, the Ph.D. scholar from Jawaharlal Nehru University, shows up in his commanding references to history and theory, from Japan’s Meiji restoration to Europe’s balance of power and Asia’s multipolarity. This book may not be deeply footnoted but it speaks clearly to the academic community.
Then there is Jaishankar, the diplomat, engaged in “forging convergences and managing divergences.” His chapters on India’s convergences with Japan and divergences with China respectively, reflect his contrasting experiences in Tokyo and Beijing, as well as his tenure as Foreign Secretary. This helps understand Delhi’s different postures towards these two fellow Asian civilizations.
Finally, there is Jaishankar, the politician. He dismisses India’s strategic past as an accumulation of dogmas with a defensive mindset. After 2014, the minister proclaims, India is now more realist, “more Bharat.” His chapter on India’s native strategic culture in the Mahabharata is clearly an attempt “to capture Indian nationalism in policy terms.”
With the help of time and scholarship, we will be able to discern whether there really is a new “India way” to international affairs, from trade negotiations to the use of force. Until then, we are left with this elegant and useful book to understand how the current External Affairs Minister sees India on its way to navigate an uncertain world where “the shelf life of old normals has expired.”
Rajesh Chadha
Trading for Development in the Age of Global Value Chains: World Development Report 2020
Caroline Freund and Aaditya Mattoo (World Bank) and Pol Antras (Harvard University)
The release of the World Development Report 2020, in November 2019, incidentally, coincided with the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. It states, “GVCs can continue to boost growth, create better jobs, and reduce poverty provided that developing countries undertake deeper reforms and industrial countries pursue open, predictable policies.” It further states that “GVCs can boost trade, incomes, jobs and prosperity” and “national policies can boost GVC participation”. China has been the most dominant player regarding its integration in the Global Value Chains (GVCs). However, the year 2020 has brought to the fore fragility and risks of dependence on China. There has been intense discussion about diversifying the fractured GVCs with many multinational enterprises considering shifting their production platforms away from China. India could have participated actively in GVCs but did not. Indian industry, as well as the government, have been quite keen to play a significant role. India needs to adopt policies enabling active participation in GVCs.
CSEP Recommends
Future of Coal in India: Smooth Transition or Bumpy Road Ahead?
Edited by: Rahul Tongia, Anurag Sehgal, with Puneet Kamboj
Listed in Bookauthority’s top Energy Policy reads globally for 2021, this anthology is amongst the most comprehensive in-depth accounts of India’s energy needs in a changing energy eco-system. Across 18 chapters, various experts look at numerous aspects of the future of energy transition in India, away from coal.
Want to know more? Read this extended blog that summarises many issues and insights from the book, here: https://csep.org/blog/future-of-coal-in-india-smooth-transition-or-bumpy-road-ahead/
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The Centre for Social and Economic Progress (CSEP) is an independent, public policy think tank with a mandate to conduct research and analysis on critical issues facing India and the world and help shape policies that advance sustainable growth and development.