Until recently, fiscal policy and government budgets were thought to be matters that had no differential impacts on the lives of women and men. Dr. Lekha Chakraborty has been at the forefront of scholarship that has challenged this notion. In the last two decades, Chakraborty has generated a formidable amount of research on gender-aware fiscal policy, specifically the design and implementation of a public finance management tool called gender budgeting. I had the pleasure of interacting with her early in her journey, when we were both instructors in the 2004 training workshop of the “International Working Group on Gender, Macroeconomics and International Trade” (IWG-GEM) at the University of Utah (U.S.)—she on public finance and I on international economics.

Chakraborty’s book is a compilation of her contributions on the plausibility of incorporating gender concerns in public finance, drawing evidence from the Asia Pacific region, with special reference to the Indian context. Gender budgeting (GB) is an innovation that seeks to guide fiscal policy by evaluating public expenditures, public revenues, and transfer of tax revenues to states through the lens of gender. GB was initially adopted as a tool for promoting gender equality by feminist researchers and advocates in Australia, South Africa, and the Philippines, but now has been widely embraced, including by international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

The book starts from the premise that women and men are differently situated in the economy, and women, in particular women of lower-income or lower-status ethnic, caste groups may be disadvantaged relative to their male counterparts. These disadvantages are often invisible to fiscal and monetary policymakers, principally because standard macroeconomic models do not count the unpaid work of caring for family members in the labor force and raising the next generation. When a large domain of economic life is statistically invisible, policy may exacerbate gender inequalities is society. Chakraborty provides a comprehensive study of GB efforts to show how this tool has been (or may be) implemented in the Asia-Pacific to address gender inequalities.

Chakraborty’s deep expertise is on India, where she was instrumental in getting the government to adopt gender budgets to earmark expenditures either exclusively or primarily to improve the well-being of women and girls. The book engages in cutting-edge debates concerning public finance in India from a gender perspective. She highlights the challenges of budgeting and cautions how even well-intentioned policy interventions to address women’s disadvantages through public budgets may miss their targets due to inefficiency or corruption.

Chakraborty presents insightful analyses to illustrate the role of fiscal policy (paired with GB) to address persistent disadvantages faced by women and girls in India. In the particularly accessible Chapter 4, Chakraborty reports results of her analysis of India’s first national time-use survey of 2019. She documents the wide gaps in unpaid work hours of women and men in rural and urban areas, nationally, and in 6 selected states. She estimates the monetary value of women’s unpaid work to be between 23 and 41 percent of the gross state product in 6 selected states, which is many times higher than the value of men’s unpaid work (3 and 12 percent, respectively). Chakraborty argues that fiscal policy can address intrahousehold inequalities by reducing the time allocation of women to unpaid work through public infrastructure investments. Focusing on public water infrastructure, she provides new evidence that improving water infrastructure is associated with less unpaid labor, rise in school enrollment of girls (who will spend less time fetching water) and would also increase women’s employment. Chakraborty suggests that the smartest and fastest way to increase GDP of a country is to reduce gender inequality in education and increase women’s labor force participation rates by designing programs to alleviate their care burdens using GB.

For Chakraborty, human development, not solely GDP growth, is the goal of macroeconomic policy. Her analysis in Chapter 5 indicates that GB may be effective in girls achieving parity with boys in school enrollments. She further argues for the use of GB as a potential public policy tool to address the worsening the relative life chances of girls compared to boys in many Indian states. She rightly argues for the use of the state’s child sex ratio (0-6 age group) as one additional criterion in determining the allocation of tax revenue from the central government to the states, so as to encourage states to take discrimination against girls seriously.

The book is an inspiring read on groundbreaking research on GB. It is timely as many governments are preparing post-pandemic fiscal policy strategies and gender budgeting is an appropriate public finance management tool to address the mounting inequalities.

Book: Fiscal Policy for Sustainable Development in Asia-Pacific: Gender Budgeting in India

Author: Lekha Chakraborty

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

The reviewer is teaching at Utah University, and is a scholar in international macroeconomics and gender studies

I thought only Aamir Khan and Shah Rukh Khan had to keep proving their bonafides every now and again, and confirm that India is indeed very dear to them. Now, it looks as if Santa Claus, too, will have to pass that test. If he flunks, we may well see the red suit replaced by pyjama-kurta and achkan or, if he ventures south, a lungi. Okay, things have not gone quite that far yet, but we certainly have got on to the slippery slope.

That’s why I wasn’t too surprised when Jerry Pinto and Madhulika Liddle mustered a group of people of whom most (but not all) are Christians to give us Indian Christmas. If it didn’t look like a book, I could have sworn it was an application for anticipatory bail lest someone discovers that putting up a Christmas tree is a nefarious, anti-Indian activity.

I will come back to the probable ideological reasons behind the book a little later. First, the book itself: it is like Christmas cake, rich in plums and assorted goodies, with a charming, home-baked air about it. Obviously, it’s been made by bakers who had a walloping time on the job, and hope their bubbling delight would become contagious. The anthology takes you from the dimly lit but enchanting nooks and crannies of the northeast to the more familiar stomping grounds of Kerala and Goa. I didn’t know there were so many Christmases, and the best part is that there is no SOP. If you are doing it with gaiety, you are doing it right.

Anthologies call for skillful orchestration, and Pinto and Liddle make fine conductors. Pinto is Mumbai’s ex-officio poet laureate, a poet even when he is writing prose. His disarming, friend-next-door tone is a delightful sleight of hand. The felicity is, I suspect, the product of painstaking effort. (On a larger canvas, and possibly at a higher level, I can think of only Khushwant Singh who would wear his erudition so lightly.)

Liddle has established herself as one of the country’s leading women writers. There are other too - like Mudar Pathereya – Kolkata do-gooder, advertising maven, and most relevant here, a buster of the Muslim stereotype. There is a choir maestro, unflagging and inspirational, students, housewives, poets … all of them chip in with a level of enthusiasm that moves even a card-carrying cynic like me to sentiment.

Much of the book consists of reminiscences – with the inevitable undertone of melancholy, as if looking back at a golden age that is lost forever. But surely that’s not what festivals are all about. This festival is supposed to be about miraculous birth, joy, magic and infinite possibilities. What then explains a sense of foreboding? It’s possibly the ‘patriotism test’ casting its dark shadow over the Christmas party.

That is sad, because it strikes at the heart of what makes our country special, and unravels our much-wonted unity in diversity. I see communalism, provincialism and other ‘isms’ as the first steps to an unstoppable ‘othering’. To stop the virus in its tracks, we need to celebrate our differences, not cancel them. So, while I deplore the political and social circumstance that seems to have occasioned such a work, I applaud the effort. Read this gentle and lovely book to reboot the Christmas spirit and stretch it deep into the new year.

Title: Indian Christmas

Publisher: Speaking Tiger

Pages: 193

Price: Rs 295

Latin America and India have been emerging as significant trade, investment and political partners to each other since the beginning of the new century. The old assumption that these two are marginal to each other because of distance and other barriers is no longer valid.

India exports more to the distant Guatemala than to the nearby Cambodia. Brazil takes more exports from India than Thailand or Japan. Latin America is the destination for one third of India’s global exports of vehicles. Mexico is the second largest market for India’s car exports while Colombia is the number two destination for motorcycle exports. India’s trade with Latin America was 45 billion dollars in 2021-22 and is poised to reach 100 billion in the next five years. India was the third largest market for Latin America’s exports in 2014 and was the seventh in 2021. A Mexican company Cinepolis is the fourth largest operator of multiplexes in India and another Mexican firm Grupo Bimbo is one of the top bread makers in India. UPL, the largest Indian agrochemical company does more business in Latin America than in India. Latin America and India have many common development challenges and aspirations. The two sides work together on many global issues of interest to each other.

But the Indians and Latin Americans have been getting information and opinion about each other through western media such as CNN, BBC, New York Times and Financial Times as well as through books and article of western authors who give biased and condescending picture. There is need for direct study and exchange of opinions about each other. It is in this context, I welcome the book India from Latin America: Peripherisation, State Building and Demand-led Growth by Manuel Gonzalo, the Argentine author and Professor of Development Economics. Gonzalo gives a Latin American perspective of the history of India’s economic development.

This is the first academic work of its kind. Gonzalo has seen India with his own eyes and read Indian books. He has direct experience of having lived in India and working with Indian scholars. He was visiting researcher at the Centre for Development Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Kerala. Gonzalo’s book has a Foreword from Dr. K.J. Joseph Director, Gulati Institute of Finance and Taxation and President of Globelics, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala.

Gonzalo’s view of India is shaped largely based on the Latin American Structuralist theory of a fellow Argentine economist Raul Prebisch, who was also known for the Dependence Theory of the 1950s. Gonzalo has looked at India from three angles: Peripherisation, State Building and Demand-led growth. He has narrated the development path of India comprehensively with extensive research and detailed data. He has placed the economic development within the context of historical, political and social history as well as the foreign policy of India.

Peripherisation

Centre-Periphery divide is the essence of the Latin American Structuralist theory with focus on the consequences of the external sector constraints: the relevance of terms of trade, the structural inflation dynamic and “import” inflation and the challenge of achieving industrial competitiveness.

India was the second-most important manufacturer with 25% share of global manufacturing and the main textile producer of the world. The British reduced India into a periphery during the colonisation. But since independence, India is moving steadily back to the centre with increasing emphasis on manufacturing. On the other hand, Latin America has been turned peripheral since its independence by a process of forced peripherisation. India’s per capita endowment of natural resources is extremely low unlike Latin America which has pursued an export-led model of growth

During colonisation, the European powers had structured the global trade network determining the peripheral role of the Southern Hemisphere in line with their financial and trade needs. They inserted Latin America into their global trade network as a mineral exporter. These minerals went first to Europe but were then re-oriented in the form of bullion to Asia, to pay for the Chinese tea and porcelain and the Indian textiles. it was silver from the Americas that greatly contributed to the making of Asian trade. The Spanish conquest had made silver cheaper in Europe than in Asia. These events, together with the almost inexhaustible demand for silver from India, made it possible to continue the purchases of Asian goods until the mid-eighteenth century.

State Building

The second part of the book analyses the emergence of the Indian state and the Indian National System of Innovation.  These are divided into three phases: Nehruvian phase, Indira Gandhi’s phase and the third by her son, Rajiv Gandhi. 

The author has highlighted the direct interest taken by Nehru in science and innovation. Nehru had created the Ministry of Scientific Research and Cultural Affairs in 1948 and took on the portfolio himself. The building of Science and Technology infrastructure with new universities, science agencies and national laboratories came under the control of this ministry. Nehru had used his annual full-day attendance at the Indian Science Congress every year to strengthen his association with the scientific community. Some of the main science agencies created and expanded were the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), with a network of 38 national laboratories in physical, biological, mechanical, and chemical sciences; the Department of Atomic Energy; the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), the Indian Space Research Organisation and the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs). Gonzalo says, quoting some experts, that such large number of institutions for science and technology had no rival in the third world and even among several developed countries.

Demand-led growth

The third part deals with the period since liberalisation of 1991. The author has done a scholarly analysis of the different dimensions of India’s higher growth based on consumption, global capital inflows and government and private investment in infrastructure factors. He has also highlighted the revolution in the IT and Telecom sectors and their contribution the economy.

More India-Latin America studies

Gonzalo’s book is an eye-opener for Latin American policy makers and academics to see India based on their own experience and perspectives. It would be good if it gets translated into Spanish and Portuguese to reach out to a larger audience. I hope this book would inspire more Indian books on Latin America and vice versa. India and Latin America, faced with many common developmental problems have much to exchange experience and learn from each other. For example, India could learn from Brazil’s success with the use of sugar cane ethanol as fuel and the country’s iconic firm Embraer which has become the third largest passenger aircraft manufacturer in the world. Latin America could get inspiration from India’s space research and IT success.

Global South

Gonzalo hopes that his book will help not only to a better understanding of India by Latin Americans but will also contribute towards the development of a common economics development research agenda oriented to the Global South. The Ukraine crisis has highlighted the need for a louder neutral voice of the Global South in these days of repolarisation of the world by US, Europe, China and Russia. The election of Lula in Brazil and India’s G-20 presidency are timely for the Global South to advance its own agenda.

The author is an expert in Latin American affairs

Jas Kohli’s book is a guidebook to Ludhiana – not about the touristy parts of the city, how to get there or what to do. You can Google all such trivia. Rather, this book is about people - the city’s inhabitants, or, more precisely, the richer part of the populace. Except for the protagonist, nobody would want to be seen in anything less than a Merc or a BMW. The hearty, almost compulsive good cheer, seems viral. In sum, Kohli’s Ludhiana is paradise with Punjabi subtitles, flashy, loud and intensely brand-conscious, with everyone intent on being as larger than life as possible.

It is the story of Kushal and Reeti. He is rich – but not rich enough for his wife. She is beautiful – so beautiful, her husband says, that when she walks on the road, motorists get distracted. That should have been good enough for the couple to pull on till a beautiful forever. Nevertheless, the serpent enters paradise in the shape of an ex-flame threatening to stage a comeback, and the action starts.

At the beating heart of the novel is a wedding reception. That’s because weddings are not where boy and girl are united in holy matrimony – that’s almost a sidelight. A wedding is a reality show, a brand-building advertisement for the stature of the parties involved. Or, to call a spade a spade, it tells you what the guests are dying to know, viz., how much money the parents have stashed away, and are prepared to spend. Apart from an index of income, weddings are also the platform for both hosts and guests to flaunt their, ahem, other assets. So, women compete fiercely for attention, and the men willingly yield to their instincts for whisky, wit and voyeurism.

Alas, Kohli’s Ludhiana is populated by stereotypes. All the wisecracks about Punjabis that you have ever heard in your life, find their way into the book, fighting off other, less sturdy stereotypes. So, you have a character ‘gulping down five large pegs of whisky every evening and trying to balance them by walking five kilometres in the morning.’ At parties, guests are expected to ‘shake a leg, high on a peg’. Green as Punjab is, every good household is expected to look for greener pastures. ‘If a family in Ludhiana doesn’t have a family member settled across the seven seas, they are labeled lethargic’.

As for the plot, you get most of it in the blurb at the back. So, while the suspense is taut, it is about who will be wearing the cutest lehenga. The most calamitous disaster to strike a wedding party is for two guests to discover that they are wearing the same outfit. As for the raging questions of the day, they are along the lines of: Will he, won’t he roll up in a new car.

Is all this for real? Of course not, it was never meant to be. Caricature must suffice as portrait. We may like to find the truth behind the bluster or look for subtle nuances of character. But that would have to wait for another day, another novel. Ballycumber is the Shashi Tharoor way of describing a book that remains half-read. Well, that’s the one thing that Lights! Wedding! Ludhiana! won’t be. You will read it because it asks for little effort from you. All you need to do is, like the guests at the wedding reception, go with the flow and live life Ludhiana size.

Lights! Wedding! Ludhiana!

Author: Jas Kohli

Publisher: Rupa

Pages: 193

Price: Rs 295

This was a historical event during our own lifetime. The Arab Spring, as the Western media called it, was a wave of people's movements in 2011, which started in Tunisia, and swept across the Arab world—Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The uprisings against their respective governments toppled an old guard of leaders like Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi. It was seen as a wave of democracy sweeping through the Saharan and Arabian deserts.

Though most consumers of news read about the big developments like the toppling of leaders, storming of presidential palaces, and the exodus of expatriates and citizens from these prosperous economies, most have little idea of the genesis of these uprisings. And with the interest having waned after the first news dispatches, many of us today do not even know what a regime change meant in these countries.

K.P. Fabian, a former officer of the Indian Foreign Service, in this book, delves deep into the histories of these countries, and the events that led to the uprisings in 2011. Fabian has immense knowledge of this part of the world. He was posted in Iran in 1979 at the time of the Iranian Revolution. Then, during the Kuwait war, he was in the ministry of external affairs' team for coordinating the evacuation of over 1.76 lakh Indians. After his retirement from the service, he was on the faculty of the Gulf Studies Center of Jawaharlal Nehru University.

Fabian's book goes into back histories of these countries, and gives a detailed account of what really happened in each of their individual revolutions. He discusses the role of the West, and raises questions on just how much they helped topple dispensations. In the case of Gaddafi, he notes that the leader was willing to surrender, but that is not what the French wanted.

The author the explores the aftermath of the uprisings. Has this part of the world become more democratic post 2011? What is the state of human rights in the countries now. Has the West lost a golden opportunity to bring about a new change, or was that even the intention, ever?

An interesting book for those who are interested in the region.

Title: The Arab Spring That Was and Wasn't

Author: K.P. Fabian

Publisher: Macmillan Education

Price : Hardcover - Rs 1,650, Paperback- Rs 685

Pages: 308

In a year of unprecedented shows of patriotism, Subhash Chandra Kushwaha’s book Colonial Justice on Chauri Chaura is perhaps one of the most relevant books to be published.

This is Kushwaha’s second book on the subject. The first, English translation being, Chauri Chaura Revolt and Freedom Struggle (the Hindi book was out in 2014 and its translation in 2021). While the first dwelt on how a neglected incident of our freedom struggle was planned and its aftermath, his second book delves into archival material on the incident.

Chauri Chaura has been a neglected and deliberately overlooked chapter in our history. Despite it being the reason for the Non-Cooperation Movement being called off, it has merited no more than a sentence and a half in most history books. The only other writer who has penned a fascinating account of the incident and of how ‘approvers’ were made is Shahid Amin whose Event, Metaphor, Memory: Chauri Chaura was published in 1925.

Yet, in the last year Chauri Chaura became political currency. The revolt of the little people—mostly poor peasants of the humbler castes—was sought to be reclaimed and refurbished by the government as part of the Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav celebrations. This when, many of the names of the martyrs at the Chauri Chaura memorial are also faulty and the dates on which 19 freedom fighters were hanged are lost.

Kushwaha’s first book shone a light on many of these lapses. For instance, the hangings took place at different dates in different jails and not on one date as previous material had noted.

Kushwaha’s biggest strength is his persistence. Hence in the current book he presents a wealth of archival material which he has accessed even from overseas to give a glimpse into how the powers of the day perceived the event.

One of the most fascinating reads in the book is the chapter titled, ‘Story of the Chauri Chaura Revolt: In Judge Theodore Piggot’s Words’. Piggot was the High Court judge who handed out the sentences. He was presented with a case from the Sessions Court that had condemned 170 peasants to death.

That Piggot must have been deeply conflicted by the sentence which came up to him is borne out by his words, ‘…the widest possible amnesty must be extended to their (the leaders and organisers) deluded followers, coupled with earnest investigation of the grievances, whether real or imaginary, which had roused them to action’.

The action being referred to is the burning of a police thana on February 4, 1922 wherein 22 policemen and village guards were killed. In another chapter of the book which reproduces the High Court’s verdict, one notes that despite the despicable reputation that the peasants of Chauri Chaura achieved, there was just cause for the sequence of events. The verdict reads, ‘…If their (the volunteers) resolution had failed them and they had scattered, after suffering a number of casualties from the muskets of the Police, the fact that they carried no weapons would no doubt have been used to support a story of the wanton massacre of peaceful demonstrations by the agents of a ruthless Government’. But of course, the volunteers did not disperse for they had cause to believe that the police would harm them, and hence the tragedy that followed.

Other vital documents reproduced in the book include the verdict of the Sessions Court and international reaction, the appeal in the High Court and the debates in the House of Commons (UK).

The appendix of Kushwaha’s book has two pages of thumb impressions of the martyrs of Chauri Chaura. It is a numbing sight. Just as numbing as the certificates of death of executions.

Kushwaha’s book must be read with its predecessor. Both are important books that shed light on an almost forgotten incident which led to huge repercussions on the course of the freedom struggle. It is also important as it brings to us the many unsung, unknown heroes of our struggle for independence. They came from the weakest, poorest sections of society and hence their stories have not merited much attention- except of course when political exigencies demanded that the story of the ‘little people’ be appropriated for electoral gains.

Kushwaha deserves praise for his persistence and expansive research. His books on Chauri Chaura are a valuable contribution to understanding the true nature of this country’s fight for independence.

Colonial Justice on Chauri Chaura

Publisher: Authors Pride Publisher

Pages: 196

Price: Rs 300

“My grandmother told me once, if you have to hit someone with a chappal, wrap it in a shawl,” says Captain G.R. Gopinath. “I've actually wrapped a fine pashmina shawl!” he quips.

The man who pioneered low-cost aviation in the country with Áir Deccan then adds seriously, “You should criticise, but also admire the good things.''

By now, the good captain must have mastered the art of saying exactly what he wants without ruffling feathers. Not only is the book Our India his second collection of essays, his long years of serial entrepreneurship where he's brushed shoulders with the high and mighty should stand him in good stead.

Luckily, that has not stifled his innate sense of asking the right questions, in the most lucid manner possible. “The most difficult thing to achieve is simplicity in writing,”he says, adding, “like bureaucrats, who can make even the simplest thing complex.”

While bureaucrats are at the receiving end of Gopinath's pen, their political masters rightly take the lion's share. The essays are those Gopinath contributed to various magazines and newspapers over the past three years, and touch upon topics ranging from China relations to Tata to GST to the pandemic.

“I wove it with my personal experiences, what I have seen of business people, villagers, people I have talked to plus my own experiences,”he says about the book. “Every article has a personal anecdote.”

Beside his utterly unputdownable recounting of the agonising days when he sold off Air Deccan (disguised for some strange reason as a take on the Air India sell-off), Gopinath is at his incisive best when he talks about politics and Indian society – and the dramatic changes sweeping through both. From being posted at the nation's borders in the army to running businesses from aviation to agritech and even dabbling in politics for a while, his sense of passion and objectivity form a uniquely dextrous combination, and they come through by posing the right questions and calling out the wrong answers.

The book is divided into four parts—enterprise (on business), society and governance (on courts and social flux), politics (from China to intolerance) and musings (primarily personality recounting as well as feature highlights). The best part is that the essays are short, crisp and eminently readable.

Interestingly, though they were written in the backdrop of a particular event or issue for a periodical, they don't appear dated at all. Instead, with the value of hindsight, they form an opinionated, and incisive, 360-degree viewpoint on the whole issue.

Our India: Reflections on a Nation Betwixt and Between

By Captain G.R.Gopinath

Published by: HarperCollins Publishers India

239 pages; Price: Rs 599/- (Hardbound)

Gold, Oil and Avocados: A Recent history of Latin America in Sixteen Commodities—this is the title of a book by Andy Robinson, published in August 2021. Robinson is a fan of the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano who wrote Open veins of Latin America, a legendary book (published in 1971) which was a bible for the Latin American leftists and nationalists.

Galeano wrote about how the export of Latin America’s natural resources generated wealth for Europe and US while exacerbating poverty for Latin Americans. One of his famous quotes was, “We Latin Americans are poor because the ground on which we tread is rich.” Galeano had given illustrations to the Dependency Theory of Latin American development economists which was about the flow of resources from the periphery of poor and underdeveloped countries going to enrich the core of wealthy nations at the expense of the former.

Robinson is an ardent fan of Galeano. He says, “I felt inspired once again, as I had been in my youth, by the young Galeano’s desire to write about political economy in the style of a novel about love or pirates”.

In this book, Robinson has written about the contemporary “Neoextractivism” practiced even by the Pink Tide governments of the twenty-first century besides the multinational corporations and their local counterparts. After all, the success of the pink tide governments was partly due to the high international prices and demand (especially from China) for Latin American commodities. Robinson says, “ I witnessed fierce debates between those appalled by the pink-tide governments’ embrace of “neoextractivism” and those who dismissed the anti-extractivists as romantic.

Robinson’s choice of the sixteen commodities are: gold, diamond, silver, copper, lithium, niobium, iron, coltan, beef, oil, soy, avocado, potatoes, banana, quinoa and hydropower. He has travelled extensively in the remote areas of mining, cattle ranches, plantations and indigenous areas. He has undertaken arduous and courageous journeys through the Amazon forests, Atacama desert and dangerous territories controlled by drug cartels and illegal mining mafias. He has revisited some of Galeano’s iconic destinations of colonial plunder and pillage such as Potosí, Minas Gerais, and Zacatecas. Robinson has met local activists, farmers and miners and given a graphic image of the situation on the ground. So his impressions, analysis and comments are valuable to understand the issues at both micro and macro levels.

He has brought out the links between the extractive interests and the coups, protests, assassinations and overthrow of democratic governments by the US. He has given examples of the American regime change operation in Brazil for iron ore, Chile for copper, Guatemala for bananas and the attempts to overthrow the government in Venezuela for oil. He has pointed out the hypocrisy of Canadians who pose as one of the global champions of sustainable development while their mining companies exploit the gold and other resources of Latin America unscrupulously with the least concern for environment or for local inhabitants.

Robinson has juxtaposed the miserable conditions of the places of extraction with the end use of those raw materials in a world of conspicuous consumption and excesses. The diamonds extracted by the Brazilian garimpeiros in an inferno of mud and violence, processed in Surat, India, and bought in swanky Swarovski stores in Dubai. The prototypes of hypersonic missiles assembled in California or Shenzhen with the niobium extracted in the primitive areas of amazon. The conversion of potato, the sustenance to the great pre-Columbian civilizations in the Andean highlands, into addictive potato chips of Frito-Lay (PepsiCo), and its contribution to an epidemic of obesity in Latin America. Mexico and Central America, with the highest obesity rates in the world, are the worst hit by the cross-border invasion of salty and crispy snacks. A global fashion of guacamole that has turned the Mexican region of Michoacan, cradle of the Purepecha Empire, a more complex society than the Aztec’s, into a monoculture of avocado run by organized crime.

Robinson has brought out the dilemma which confronts the region and its second Pink Tide: how to generate equitable growth and reduce poverty and inequality while avoiding the curse of dependence on export of raw materials which affect the environment. He calls for a new development model in Latin America with a radical change of philosophy, beyond the simple extraction of raw materials. But it is a tough call and a long road for some of the Latin American countries to get over the easy and short term gain from extraction and export of raw materials. This is evident from the case of Bolivia which has one of the largest reserves of lithium but unable to get it off the ground since the government has stuck to its policy of not allowing export of raw lithium and insistence that factories should be set up in the country to produce batteries.

The multinational companies, who have the bargaining strength with their capital and technology have avoided entry into Bolivian lithium sector and focused on other business-friendly countries with lithium such as Chile, Australia and Argentina. Bolivia’s large iron ore deposit in El Mutun is stuck in the ground for the same reason. The Bolivian government’s condition that the iron should be used to make steel within the country is not acceptable to the companies. So the Latin American governments need to be realistic and pragmatic in their policies of ‘resource nationalism’.

The author is an expert in Latin American affairs

Counter-intelligence wars are often more gripping than conventional wars when penned down by spies who have fought them at times and places, neither seen nor heard of, except in passing references with wry smiles and innocuous code words known only to a handful who walk the shadowy corridors of secret spy buildings in the national capital.

These wars are fought during the daily hustle and bustle with no newspaper headlines screaming victory the next day. Who emerges as 'the ace of shadows'? Only the enemy knows his defeat, and that is the victory.

The Ace of Shadows authored by Balakrishna Kamath, a former Intelligence Bureau officer, is a gripping account of secret spy operations. It takes the readers to this battlefield, where there are no weapons and operations are less about valour and more about stealth, thrill, suspense and grit as the game turns perilous for the agency's operatives who pit their wits against the relentless Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence.

It is set in the 1989-1990 period, when espionage and intelligence collection still overwhelmingly relied on human intelligence. The ISI team is desperate to execute its military doctrine - to bleed India with a thousand cuts and the high stakes game of smoke and mirrors, is centred around the ace Indian spy Yashwant Narayan Godbole, who draws up an unconventional and risky plan. The plan is to allow a suspected ISI agent escape from Agra jail, only to bust one of the biggest and most sinister plots of the ISI - Mission Blackrock - that could have had ominous internal and international ramifications for India.

Kamath, who spent close to four decades in counter-espionage, leaves readers spellbound for most part of the book when Godbole sets off on his mission, criss-crossing through several Indian cities on a thrilling, long and hot chase that takes him to the most unlikely places, only to realise how ISI's network has penetrated deep into the tiny bylanes where a regular tailor or a sweet shop owner could be part of a murky terror plot.

The counter-intelligence operation led by some of the most powerful yet unassuming sleuths uncovers some of the deep dark secrets of the ISI officers browbeaten by the Pakistan Army Brigadiers who rap them for ''brash streaks of adventurism'' .

''When it comes to serious operations against India, the ISI are led by an inflated sense of hubris rather than realistic and calculated actions. They have put this nation to great embarrassment on many occasions,'' said Major General Mohammad Ghafoor, who is the handler of the spy Damji Bhai Savla, a tailor in Agra.

But was Godbole's action of freeing Savla from Agra jail a calculated risk? Was Savla a dispensable Pakistani agent or a bigger asset of the ISI? To know more about Godbole's extraordinary skills as a spy and Kamath's rare insight into counter-espionage operations, go for The Ace of Shadows. It is a must-read for those who love fiction based on spy and intelligence operations, and cherish racy writings. Kamath's first novel The Velvet Gloves, a thriller published in 2018, was a big hit and is being adapted into a web series.

Says Kamath, “Deception is one of the most potent weapons in security and intelligence manoeuvers. To make it look real, you have to play along with perfection. A small sacrifice for a big cause.''

''When it comes to appreciating the essence of espionage and counter-espionage in our part of the world, there cannot be a better canvas [than the Indo-Pak rivalry],” he writes. Rightly so, both sides will agree.

The Ace of Shadows

By Balakrishna Kamath

Published by Leadstart

Price Rs 349

Pages 310

In the grisly aftermath of the Noakhali massacre, Gandhi was reportedly approached by a grieving father who had lost his little boy in the conflagration, burnt alive by the ‘others’. The Mahatma’s advice: ‘Beta, go out and adopt a child of the same age from the ‘other’ community. You will then overcome your sorrow and hate and find a reason to love.’ As antidotes to trauma go, it is top-drawer stuff. Question is how many of us have the moral fibre to take such strong medicine. So, lesser mortals must look for other ways to sublimate rage.

It has not been such a long time since bloody sectarian violence overran large parts of Punjab. So, it says a lot about the endearing large-heartedness and native ebullience of the Sikh character that the community has by and large been able to move on from anger and despair. But while the inferno may have been doused, with every change of the political climate, the old embers flare up. The quest for what social psychologist Arie Kruglanski called ‘closure’ continues, therefore, to be relevant.

Novelist Arjun Raj Gaind essays an answer by tracing the story of 8-year old Himmat, a Sikh boy who witnessed violence and humiliation at close quarters. Before his eyes, his childhood hero, his grandfather, shrivels into abject ordinariness, and gushing admiration turns into contempt.

Gaind does not dwell on the larger causes of what drove asunder two fraternal communities bound for decades by kinship and friendship. That has already been done to death by a gaggle of writers, sociology pundits and retired army officers. Within five months of Operation Bluestar, for instance, a fusillade of five books hit the stands, and many more followed, including by Khushwant Singh and Kuldip Nayar. Almost all of them blame the usual suspects—fire-breathing demagogues, self-serving netas and, of course, the British. Few have dared to suggest that perhaps the fault lies in ourselves that we are so easily carried away. As Max Beerbohm once pointed out, all that Hitler did was to ‘amplify the secret murmurings of the German soul.’

The blurb tells us that the incidents in the novel are based on facts. One presumes this refers to the events described in the first part of the book. In the latter part, one can allow for greater artistic licence as a traumatised Himmat decides to put physical and mental distance from the events he witnessed. He runs away from battle and takes refuge in England. But he cannot run away from his mind, and so the battle remains part of his baggage. In England, the young man tries the predictable remedies—alcohol, sex and wilful amnesia. Equally predictably, none of them deliver.

Gaind knows how to tell a story, and the pages keep turning almost by themselves. He is an explorer of inner worlds and is at his best describing events from mid-distance, and then graphically re-playing them in the protagonist’s troubled mind. Most of the incidents in the narrative are deeply felt and the lines singed by self-loathing, doubt, despair and, most of all, fear.

Gaind is less sure of his ground when he has to describe his characters conversing with each other in Punjabi, and make it sound natural. It is a slippery stretch where the best of writers have floundered. In Sita—Warrior of Mithila, for instance, Amish Tripathi had the protagonist express surprise with a trendy “Gosh!” Gaind, in turn, has a rustic police inspector sounding like the head boy in a convent school play, as he tells Himmat’s grandmother: “Do not force me to undertake a course of action that we will both regret.” Luckily, beyond Punjab, Himmat is speaking largely to himself.

Books that move from trauma to redemption travel a familiar route. It is like boarding a tourist bus at a safari park. You know where it is all headed, and can more or less anticipate the sights on the way. Yet, the journey is worth the ticket, and so is The Anatomy of Loss.

The Anatomy of Loss

By Arjun Raj Gaind

Published by Bloomsbury

Pages 251

Price Rs 599

Fifty personalities, many of them intrinsic to the Indian political arena and some of them having influenced the polity while not being integral to politics. But all of them have left a mark on the popular imagination. The lives of these 50 remarkable people form the substance of eminent journalist and author Rasheed Kidwai's latest book.

Leaders, Politicians, Citizens: Fifty Figures Who Influenced India's Politics provides more than a sneak peek into these 50 extraordinary lives that have left an indelible mark on the post-Independence years. The book is in fact a unique exercise in recollecting the life and times of these public figures in the style of obituaries.

The anthology of 50 personalities chooses the obit style but goes beyond the usual biographical sketches to provide an insight into the exceptional lives through anecdotes and observations. It brings to the fore their role, motivations, strengths and weaknesses as public figures and also delves deeper to take an empathetic look at the personal vulnerabilities or doughtiness of these eminent people.

Among the leaders and influencers whose lives are retold in brief in this book are the likes of Indira Gandhi, Jyoti Basu, Rajiv Gandhi, J Jayalalithaa, Sheikh Abdullah, Dilip Kumar, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Bal Thackeray. Almost all of these names provide material and reason enough to write full length books dedicated only to them. However, Kidwai has succeeded in tweaking the obit genre to focus on some fascinating nuggets from their lives rather than stick to the cradle to grave format.

The presence of personalities such as the controversial godman Chandraswami or bandit queen Phoolan Devi or the Bachchan matriarch Teji or Dev Anand as the cinematic superstar who failed to recreate the same magic in the political arena add variety to the mix.

The anecdote about Chandraswami's meeting with Margaret Thatcher in London before she became prime minister is priceless. Told through the recollection of former union minister Natwar Singh, who has made a first hand account of it in his book Walking With Lions: Tales From A Diplomatic Past, the incident is about Thatcher, in her pre-prime ministerial years, falling for Chandraswami's prophecy about her political success. Incidentally, the prediction made by Chandraswami that she would become prime minister did come true.

There is also an endearing account about Phoolan's visit to Paris, when her host arranged a six-door Mercedes limousine to take her around the city. And she had fun, Phoolan style. She persuaded the chauffeur to connect her to her sister Munni in Delhi on the satellite phone and had a long chat with her. Then, she noticed a roadside fruit shop selling muskmelons and asked the chauffeur to bring one to her. The shocked French chauffeur watched Phoolan squatting on the leather upholstery of the limousine, cutting pieces of the melon with his swiss knife as drops of the fruit juice fell on the seat and the floor.

Kidwai excels in bringing to the fore the human side of the larger than life figures.

Leaders, Politicians, Citizens: Fifty Figures Who Influenced India's Politics

By Rasheed Kidwai

Published by Hachette India

Price Rs 499

Pages 348

A short anecdote in diamond baron Govind Dholakia's autobiography Diamonds Are Forever, So Are Morals gives us an incisive insight into the psyche of this small-town guy from Gujarat and his resolve and sense of purpose and destiny in the grand scheme of things. On his first visit to Mumbai with friends during Diwali 1968, Govind 'kaka', as he is called, spotted a huge building with a great dome near the majestic Gateway of India. A passerby informs him it is the 'big and splendid' Taj Mahal Hotel, before snidely adding, “You people cannot go there. Looking at your clothes, the watchman won't allow you to enter the premises of the hotel.”

Curious and determined, 'Kaka' and friends get industrious – they call a taxi, even though the hotel was just across the street from where they were standing at the Gateway of India. As the car dropped them at the portico -- the guard opened the door to let them in!

However, the guard was watchful enough that he approached them and escorted them out the door. Though humiliated at the rudeness, it wasn't the end of the endeavour – listening to their dialect, a Gujarati contractor working in the hotel building on some repairing project identified them as 'apnewala' and encouraged them to enter the hotel from the back-door service lane, from where they went to the restaurant and had tea.

“Sitting there, we felt like princes,” Dholakia recounts in the book. “Everything there – the furniture, the tablecloth, curtains, lights – was like some palace we had never even imagined.

Never one to cower down in front of the status quo, however small it may be, this minor incident is but a harbinger of what was to happen in the coming years for this young man, a multi-decade life saga that would raise the prestige and power of India's diamond craft business from beyond being just the downstream 'factory' for the global gems and jewellery epicentre in Belgium.

Dholakia founded Shree Ramkrishna Exports (SRK) which is one of the biggies in Surat's diamond trade, changing the face (and fortune) of the Gujarat town. While the book details his setting up of the business right from his first visit to Mumbai (with its foray into the Taj hotel) to coughing up money to pay for the diamonds for cutting, impressing merchants and moving up the value chain, it is evident in the tone and tenor of the book that, for him, there is something more important than amassing riches or expanding business. As the title says, diamonds are forever, but equally important are morals. This blinkers-on emphasis of morals and values is what sets this book apart from being another recounting of a successful life, looked back in satisfied reflection.

Even PM Modi is impressed. In his praise to the book written by a fellow-Gujarati, he said, “The simile between morals and diamonds in the title of the book itself sets the tone. The emphasis on morals is particularly relevant to modern times, especially for our youth.” Scientist-writer Arun Tiwari, better known as the co-writer of late President APJ Abdul Kalam's bestseller bio Wings of Fire does a decent job of putting to paper the recollections of the diamond tycoon, along with Dholakia's longtime associate Kamlesh Yagnik.

Referring to diamonds, ''fireballs of trapped lights'', as his God in physical form, Dholakia reiterates his belief in the power of destiny throughout the book. “There is nothing I am quite sure about, except that more than I was living my life, life was living through me,” he says, before adding in his favourite life philosophy, “You are nothing, but you can do anything.”

Diamond Are Forever, So Are Morals: An Autobiography of Govind Dholakia

As told to Arun Tiwari & Kamlesh Yagnik

Published by Penguin Enterprise (An imprint of Penguin Random House)

Price: Hardbound Rs 699, paperback Rs 520

338 pages

The India-Pakistan War of 1971 was the third round between the two South Asian neighbours, but this war was different in many ways from the earlier conflicts. It was not a long-drawn slugfest as the three services operated together in perfect sync in what was a lightning campaign that ended with a clear victory for India and the liberation of Bangladesh. It was a victory made possible by the contributions of all arms and services.

As the war started on December 3 with the pre-emptive strikes by the Pakistani Air Force, Air Defence Gunners were the first to fire.

Throughout the fourteen-day campaign, the air defence artillery played a vital role, from ensuring the defence of strategic assets to defend the field formations from enemy air attacks. While several books have been written on the India-Pakistan wars, the new book titled Air Defence Gunners at War: India-Pakistan War 1971, written by Colonel Mandeep Singh (retd), gives an anecdotal description of air defence artillery as it looks at its performance and highlights both its achievements and failings. Author Col Mandeep Singh, a veteran Air Defence Gunner, is a prolific writer and has authored five books on air defence artillery, including its history during World War II and the India-Pakistan War of 1965. His other works include the Anti-Aircraft Artillery in Combat 1950-1972, Air Defence Artillery in Combat 1972 to Present and History of Indian Air Defence Artillery, 1940-1945.

The book on the 1971 war mentioned that during the Kashmir War of 1947-48, the Indian Air Force lost 17 aircraft of which seven were to lost anti-aircraft fire. Similarly, of the total 59 IAF aircraft lost during the 1965 India-Pakistan War, 11 were shot down by Pakistan anti-aircraft fire while 14 others were lost to PAF. Pakistan, on the other hand, lost a total of 43 aircraft of which 25 were shot down by Indian anti-aircraft artillery and 18 were claimed by IAF.

The writer pieced together his work from official histories, regimental records, accounts of the air wars and a large number of secondary sources but it also draws on oral histories of the war. Moreover, a large number of veterans shared their personal experiences.

Starting from a battery raised in Coloba, Indian anti-aircraft artillery soon expanded to over 34 regiments for India to have the second-largest concentration of anti-aircraft defences outside Great Britain.

At one time, India had more anti-aircraft regiments than field artillery.The first anti-aircraft(as air defence was then called) artillery unit in India was the 8th AA (anti-aircraft) Battery, Royal Artillery, that arrived in India on November 9, 1926, and was located at Peshawar in northwest India. It was an independent battery and was equipped with eight 3-inch 20cwt AA guns, organised into a battery headquarters with four sections of two anti-aircraft guns each and had a war establishment of 221 of all ranks.

The writer claims that the choice of Peshawar may seem odd today but then the AA battery was meant to defend the north-west frontier from a possible attack by the then Soviet Air Force, should the threat of a Soviet invasion of India became real.

However, it was only after two decades that the threat from the Japanese expansion made India finally realise how ill-prepared its anti-aircraft defences were.

The author penned another book—History of Indian Air Defence Artillery- 1940-1945—in which he writes about the India anti-aircraft gunners that served in varied battlefields with honour, both during defeat and victory." If they were in Singapore as the fortress fell, they kept the Japanese air force at bay when Allied forces retreated from Burma, and later formed part of the vanguard when the Allies returned to Burma in triumph," Col Singh writes.

Indian anti-aircraft regiments served in Singapore, Malaya, Burma, Maldives, Aden and Iraq and they were truly representative as all regiments comprised of varied races and castes.

Anyone with pretensions to culture would have heard of Kanak Rele – diva, dancer extraordinaire, winner of high national honours, and a celeb with the good fortune of passing from fame to legend in her own lifetime. But, despite all that we know, there is much that we don’t. There are nooks and corners in her life where light has still not shone. Me & My Mohini Attam fills some of the blanks with authenticity and aplomb. It is a biography that has been assiduously curated by Rele’s niece Radha, and tells the extraordinary story of a child with an almost prenatal sense of ‘taal’ evolving into a master of the art.

Born Kanak Divecha, she married into a Maharashtrian family and rather than stick to the straight and narrow, she ventured where few had gone before. She first took to Kathakali (vintage Kerala), and then jumped ship to mohiniyattam (even more vintage). It is a dance that has an engaging past. In the early 1930s, it was banned for being erotic – probably irresistibly so for the watchdogs of public morality who stalked the land (nonsensical censors were as active then as they are now). It was left to Kerala’s legendary poet Vallathol to rehabilitate the so-called ‘dance of the devdasis’ and induct it into the institute that he founded on the lush banks of the Bharathappuzha. Since then, many dancers, including the redoubtable Kalyanikutty Amma and others of her ilk, have put mohiniyattam on the national stage.

But, arguably, nobody has helped the dance skip over ethnic boundaries as lightly as Rele. Here she was – a young dancer from Mumbai turning the provincial into the national. As with region, so with religion. While classical Indian dances were recognised as being aesthetic, they were still considered somehow ‘Hindu’. Rele’s Nalanda Dance Research Centre erased these dividing lines by getting the venerable Cardinal Gracias of Mumbai to grace the arangetram of one of her Christian pupils. In its own way, all this was a quiet affirmation of the unity, so often elusive, that underpins our noisy, quarrelsome diversity.

The book does not pretend to be what it can’t. Don’t look for inner monologues or layered meanings. This is a guileless narrative which aims for beauty through simplicity. It gives us the details of the danseuse’s life – her many successes and her equally numerous struggles. For sure enough, Rele had encountered her share of disappointments. In life, very few of the battles that are worth winning are easily won.

Rele had to contend with the usual cabal of critics who sniped at her style and poked holes in her doctoral thesis. When all else failed they resorted to the time-tested insinuation – Kanak had got to where she was because she is an attractive woman. She braved it all, and the fools who came to mock remained – if not to applaud – at least to maintain a grudging silence.

Apart from a historical account of the rise of the danseuse, parts of the book can also be read as a treatise for students. There are illustrations on the various movements that the dance involves and their aesthetic significance. The book also carries tributes from Rele’s gurus, her contemporaries and culture experts – although one could argue that with all those accomplishments under her belt, she hardly needs endorsement.

The narrative sometimes follows chronological order and sometimes yields to the tempting flight path of a butterfly. That’s because Rele and Radha wanted to put in every detail they could think of – her infatuation with God’s Own Country, the college romance with husband-to-be, her spats with fellow dancers and her path-breaking professional ventures. Details make Me & My Mohini Attam a mine of information for researchers as well as readers keen to learn more about a beguiling dance and its equally enchanting exponent.

Title: Me & My Mohini Attam

Publisher: Purple Peacock Books

Pages: 332

Price: Rs 650

It is often said cancer is not fatal. It is the fear of cancer that kills because it comes in the way of detection and treatment. Logically, this makes perfectly good sense. The sooner you diagnose an illness, the better your chances of recovery. But as in so many things in life, logic doesn’t always work. Most people opt for the ‘ignorance-is-bliss’ therapy. We would rather not know – or at least postpone knowing. We would also rather not talk about it, and if we do, only in hushed whispers. B. Ketan Rajaram hits all this pussy-footing and timorous pretence for a six in a remarkable book paradoxically titled ‘Not a Cancer Survivor’.

Ketan says he is not a cancer survivor perhaps because ‘survivor’ suggests one who is somehow eking out a precarious existence. He would, instead, like to live life to the full and do all the things he was accustomed to while continuing his job as a communications professional. The clinical tone of the book is admirable. Even while dealing with medical conditions most people would do their best to forget, Ketan is as matter-of-fact as a general planning a military operation, confident of eventual victory.

The book interleaves medical science with spiritualism, yoga, mind-healing and a lot more. In the anecdotal style favoured by many self-help gurus, the book is rich in references to a wide arc of disciplines. There are illuminating extracts, for instance, from the teachings of Ramana Maharishi on overcoming pain. When asked whether he felt any pain while undergoing an operation without anesthesia, the sage is supposed to have replied: ‘It hurt my body, not me.’

From Ramana Maharishi we move to famed Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl to Maharashtra’s saint-poet Sant Tukaram to an unlikely source – viz., leadership lessons from the US Navy SEALs. Obviously, a lot of research has gone into the book. Equally obvious, there is no single line of treatment that is touted. When the stakes are so high, we do not have the luxury of a single right answer.

There are no simple solutions, no miracle cures being peddled. Instead, Bondre suggests that the road ahead is hard but the journey is worth the effort. The message of the book extends beyond cancer to all those facing extreme situations. In a perceptive foreword, Member of Parliament Dr. Vinay Sahasrabhuddhe says that the book tells us ‘not just how to survive but why to survive’. That indeed is the core of the story.

The language of the narrative could have been sharper and the proliferation of the definite articles ought to have been curbed. Also, a little more attention to proof-reading would have helped. I saw Lord Curzon described as ‘Voice-roy’, and came across ‘full-proof’. But these are human blemishes in a book valiantly written by an author as he is battling extreme pain.

In its honesty, courage and its central message of hope triumphing over adversity, this is a book that holds out a beacon of light for all those who find themselves having to confront extreme situations. It reminds us once again of something we tend to forget: some of life’s biggest battles are fought and won through some of our oldest virtues – faith, optimism and steely resolve.

Title: Not a Cancer Survivor

Publisher: HiranyaReta Publishers

Pages: 120

Price: Rs 349

The remarkable thing about Capt. Krishnan Nair of Leela Hotels was not that he dreamt opulently but that he also dreamt sequentially. When one dream began to lose its shine, he turned to another and yet another. It wasn’t a walk in the park, of course, for in between turning grandiose plans into lavish reality, Nair ran smack into setbacks – sometimes acts of God and sometimes acts of bureaucrats (as omnipotent as the almighty in certain respects). But Nair saw them all off, and lived to tell the tale. That tale is now told to us by columnist, author and literary curator Bachi Karkaria in Capture the Dream.

As in every rags-to-riches story, our hero was born into humble circumstances in a village near Kannur, north Kerala. But there was something about the man from Malabar that set him apart. All through his life, he was the right man at the right place at the right time. It happened so often it couldn’t be coincidence. Obviously, Capt. Nair could make serendipity do his bidding. With Lady Luck as his unfailing consort, he re-invented himself as a freedom fighter, soldier (twice over) and garments entrepreneur before pushing himself at age 65 to the front ranks of India’s hoteliers. It could all have been a fairytale except that debt and overreach made the sunset less than roseate.

Karkaria captures Capt. Nair’s many-splendoured life in her signature, genre-defying style. Conventional corporate biographies are expected to be mandatorily boring. Bachi – much like her subject in this book – tells convention to take a walk. To the usual sedate, somewhat somnolent notes of the Gregorian chant, she adds some foot-tapping folk to make what could have been a sepia-toned documentary into a trendy south Indian hit, replete with colour and spectacle.

And what’s a Bachi book without puns? You expect wordplay from her the way you expect controversy when Kangana Ranaut opens her mouth. So, when the garments exported by the Nairs help Gloria Vanderbilt with their jeans, she can’t help saying: ‘no ifs or buts – only butts’. And when a yesteryear Hollywood celebrity buys Leela’s furnishings, the chapter is titled: ‘Curtains for Gregory Peck’.

In the book, she acknowledges that writing non-fiction is like working at an archaeological site. If you dig deep, you come up gems. Some of the factoids she has dug up are widely known, others less so: Capt. Nair played a part in giving Kannur its airport (well known); much earlier he had paved the way for the old subway near the town’s railway station (less known); he introduced appam to Mumbai (it has since been copied by many Mumbai restaurants and sadly become an anaemic shadow of its original fluffy self). Many pages open up the mouth-watering world of Malayali cuisine. (Only thing Bachi, the accompaniment to a meal is not koottan but kootaan).

Biographies come in many hues. Some deal up close with the blood, sweat and tears that form the subtext of many success stories. But Bachi is determined to look on the bright side. Her book doesn’t go where the subject wouldn’t want to enter. When Walter Isaacson completed his authorised biography of Steve Jobs, the ailing computer visionary asked him if the book contained anything that he would not be happy to read. When Isaacson truthfully said it did, Jobs nodded and said: ‘Good, then it won’t look like an in-house job.’ ‘Capture the Dream’ would not pass the Isaacson filter for it has nothing that the Capt.’s sons Vivek or Dinesh would not like to read. But then Bachi sees herself as a chronicler of good cheer rather an investigator of the inconvenient.

This feel-good biography may not make it to the best business books of the year or be studied as a manual on the perils of debt. Instead, it serves a more useful purpose for most readers – it shows how positive thinking works in real life situations. So, if you want a racy read on how to overcome obstacles with ebullience and turn joi-de-vivre into a competitive advantage, this book is a must-read.

Title: Capture the Dream – The Many Lives of Capt. C.P. Krishnan Nair

Publisher: Juggernaut

Pages: 253

Price: Rs 799

William Neuman, who had spent four years from 2012 to 2016 as The New York Times correspondent in Caracas during the peak of the Venezuelan crisis, has diagnosed correctly the reason for the Venezuelan political and economic collapse. He says, “It’s not so much that Venezuela produced oil; it’s that oil produced Venezuela.” Oil has played not only an economic role but has also shaped the politics and culture of Venezuelans, which has led to the current crisis.

Before the discovery of oil in 1914, the country was relatively obscure except for the fact that it was the land of Simon Bolivar, the liberator of South America. By 1928, Venezuela was the world’s top oil exporter and the second-biggest oil producer, after the US. Since then, the Venezuelans lived off oil and have neglected other areas. The country has so much of fertile land, mineral resources, hydroelectric potential, beautiful beaches and pleasant climate. These resources are sufficient to be a prosperous nation, even without oil.

But when the easy money from oil started coming, the Venezuelans abandoned all the other resources and started living exclusively on oil income. During high oil prices, middle-class Venezuelans used to go for shopping to Miami and freak out on purchase of luxury goods. At the same time, the government also went on a spending spree and borrowed money recklessly from international capital markets. The corrupt politicians cleaned up the treasury and took money abroad in collusion with businesspeople.

When the oil prices went down, the governments struggled to pay foreign debt, cut down developmental and welfare budgets and imposed austerity. At these times, people rose in protest, leading to change of governments through elections or coups. Even Hugo Chavez repeated the same cycle and got the country into a large Chinese debt trap. He and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, mismanaged the economy, causing chaos with hyperinflation, currency changes and exchange value depreciations.

Neuman has visited many parts of the country and interviewed ordinary Venezuelans from different walks of life. He has filled up most pages of his new book—Things Are Never So Bad That They Can't Get Worse: Inside the Collapse of Venezuela—with the tragic stories of the misery and suffering from poverty, shortage of essential items, electric power cuts, crime, violence and corruption. These are, of course, well known at the macro level. Neuman has given names and faces to the victims of the Chavista misrule and mismanagement.

But Neuman gives new details on the self-proclamation of Juan Guaido as interim president and Guaido's involvement in the attempt to invade Venezuela from the sea with a bunch of mercenaries in 2019.

According to Neuman, Guaido’s proclamation as president was not based on the consensus of the opposition groups nor was it done properly. It was done by one of the opposition groups in a hasty collusion with the American officials. The proclamation should have been done in the National Assembly after proper notification. But it was done as a surprise in an outdoor event. Some of the lawmakers were taken by surprise and asked, “Why hadn’t the swearing-in been discussed and approved in advance by the full assembly? Why was it done on the fly, in the street instead of in the legislature?”

Within minutes of Guaido’s swearing himself in, the White House issued a statement from president Donald Trump, recognising Guaido as interim president. President Ivan Duque of Colombia, President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, and Chrystia Freeland, the Canadian foreign minister, were at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland; they called an impromptu news conference and, together, recognised Guaido as Venezuela’s president. A South American diplomat told Neuman that Washington’s insistence on going first put its Latin American allies in a bind, exposing them to criticism that they were doing the White House’s bidding when they recognised Guaido. The diplomat said, “People are going to say that they led us by the nose”. Guaido wrote in an op-ed in The New York Times a week later, “It was not of my own accord that I assumed the function of president that day, but in adherence to the Constitution.” But that argument failed to acknowledge the intense debate within the opposition about what to do and that there were other options under consideration, which were ignored under pressure from the neocon elements of Washington DC.

Neuman has interviewed US officials and Venezuelan opposition leaders and brings out details of the invasion attempt to overthrow President Maduro. According to him, the coup leaders signed a contract on October 16, 2019, to invade Venezuela. According to the contract, Silvercorp, a security company of an American mercenary, would be paid $213 million “to capture/detain/remove Nicolas Maduro” and, in his place, “install the recognized Venezuelan President Juan Guaido”. The contract—which was kept secret at the time—spelled out rules of engagement and identified targets (Maduro and others) that could be “neutralized”. It required foreign fighters to wear Venezuelan uniforms and cover their faces “to protect the face of the project as Venezuelan only”. The contract was signed by Goudreau, an American mercenary, and Rendon, a Venezuelan who was identified as the high presidential commissioner for general strategy and crisis management, as well as a Venezuelan legislator close to Guaido named Sergio Vergara, who had been working with Rendon. It was also signed by Guaido.

Goudreau made an audio recording of a videoconference he had with Guaido, in which they discussed signing the contract. In the recording, Goudreau asked Guaido if he had any concerns. Guaido gave a nervous laugh and responded, in English, “A lot of concerns, but we’re doing the right thing for our country.” There was discussion of the need to sign two copies of the document, in its English and Spanish versions, and to scan and send the signed contracts. At the end of the recording, Guaido has denied signing the contract. But it was negotiated and signed by his representatives and it would have had no validity without his signature—he is the only person named in the document as a party to the contract (his name appears twice).

But shortly after it was signed, the deal fell apart. The contract required the Guaido government to pay Silvercorp a $1.5 million retainer within five days of signing. They never paid it. Goudreau insisted on being paid. Rendon said that he gave Goudreau $50,000 to string him along. Finally, in early November, there was a blowup. Rendon said that he met with Goudreau and presented him with a letter cancelling the agreement. (It’s worth asking why the contract needed to be cancelled if Guaido had never signed it.) He said that Goudreau refused to sign the letter and stormed out. Goudreau accused Guaido and Rendon of backing out of their deal and he went public, providing images of the contract, with Guaido’s signature, to a Miami-based Venezuelan journalist named Patricia Poleo, who posted them online.

While Neuman has given a full account of the omissions and commissions of Chavez, he has ignored the fact that Chavez was a creation of his predecessors and opposition leaders. During the election campaign in 1998, Chavez asked, “Venezuela is a rich country thanks to oil. Why are so many millions… poor?” The poor voted for him and the middle class also supported him, desiring change.

The two large, traditional oligarchic political parties, which were in power for about fifty years, were routed completely. Thereafter, the opposition boycotted the elections, fearing certain defeat and getting discredited. This enabled Chavez to get a majority in the assembly, change the constitution and get away with so many authoritarian decrees and decisions, in the absence of effective opposition. The opposition ran away from electorally challenging Chavez and instead tried all kinds of unconstitutional and undemocratic means and conspiracies to overthrow Chavez in collusion with the local oligarchy and Americans.

In 2002, the opposition carried out a massive strike, stopping the production and exports of oil, endangering the vital oil revenue for the government and causing shortage of petrol and diesel. Chavez retaliated by sacking over 15,000 PDVSA staff and filled the position with loyal Chavistas. The opposition succeeded in removing Chavez from power through a coup in 2002. Many businessmen and oil company executives supported the coup. But the coup plotters mismanaged the post-coup settlement and cut out the military from the share of the spoils. So some of the generals did a counter-coup and brought Chavez back to power, releasing him from the island jail where he was imprisoned.

Chavez went on a spree of revenge. He started systematic destruction of industries and businesses and imposed controls and restrictions to teach a lesson to the business community. He placed military officers in civilian positions and allowed them to make money. The military became an accomplice and a stakeholder in the Chavista regime of chaos, corruption and control. When Chavez died of cancer, the Cubans influenced him to appoint Maduro as president. Maduro, who had political training in Cuba during his youth, was considered as a controllable asset by the Cubans. Maduro had no charisma or grassroots support. He could not control the different Chavista and military factions who were more powerful than him. So he could not take decisions or implement any policies effectively. This led to economic disaster with hyperinflation and devaluation of currency.

Juan Guaido has lost credibility now. He and his friends, along with American lawyers and lobbyists, have helped themselves to hundreds of millions of dollars of the Venezuelan government funds in the US banks seized by the US government. The American attempts for regime change have completely failed. Their ruthless illegal economic sanctions have worsened the suffering of Venezuelan people. The US government has even announced a bounty (ridiculous and outrageous even by American standards of arrogance and bullying) on the heads of President Maduro and other political leaders and military officials. But the Cubans have trained and helped the Venezuelans on how to survive the Yankee sanctions and isolation and CIA conspiracy attempts. Some of the western governments have started resuming dealings with the Maduro government and even the US sent an official delegation recently to Caracas for loosening of the oil embargo since the high oil prices have hurt US consumers.

The Venezuelan economy has turned the corner. The hyperinflation has come down to manageable proportions. The IMF has projected a 1.5 per cent GDP growth in 2022, after consecutive GDP contractions from 2014 to 2021.

So I believe that the worst is over. Venezuelans can expect improvement in their situation in the coming years. Of course, Venezuela needs a better government and that should be elected by the people themselves, and not imposed by Gringos or their lackeys.

The author is an expert in Latin American affairs.

Tarika Roy and Soumya Gupta are both bureaucrats, the former with the Indian Railway Accounts Service, the latter in the Indian Foreign Service. Together, they've brought out the essence of everyday India in this book. Just about every urban idiosyncrasy gets a chapter here. There is one on how “adjusting'' Indians are, and another on how to identify a married Indian lady. The thalis of India and the turbans of India. Stereotyping people and mainstreaming bribing.

Each chapter is not more than two or three pages and rather complete in itself. Which makes this book an easy read. You can open onto any chapter and pick up reading. An ideal book to take along on a journey, specially an Indian one, given that so much of the book is dedicated to Indian travel behaviour.

The Indian reader will find the everydayness of the book rather appealing, a coming home to kind of feeling. The foreign backpacker will get an understanding of the chaos around. Why are random men addressed to as bhaiyya for instance. It could also help them navigate through the complexities of Indian food, which make up several funny chapters.

Title: Mad(e) in India

Authors: Tarika Roy and Soumya Gupta

Publisher: Om Books International

Pages: 261

In the 1962 Lok Sabha elections, the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, the progenitor of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), was itself a nascent party. A flour mill owner Suraj Lal Verma approached Jan Sangh leaders in Lucknow for a ticket from the Sitapur constituency. Asked why he wanted to contest the elections, he said an astrologer had predicted his victory in the polls.

The party leaders burst into laughter, but later agreed to give Verma the ticket if he contributed five jeeps and Rs 25,000 in cash to five assembly candidates. The party needed a candidate from Sitapur to contest against Congress' Dinesh Pratap Singh, the Raja of Kasmanda. It also needed funds and resources. But the Jan Sangh failed to check Verma's claim about his assets. After all, he only owned a modest flour mill. Angry party workers snatched Verma's jeep and gave him a mild beating. A rattled Verma went into hiding in Lucknow while the Jan Sangh campaigned for him, often referring to his surname while seeking votes. The Congress ignored Verma as an unimportant candidate, but the people wanted someone from their midst and not a 'Raja'. Verma won by 3,377 votes!

The anecdote is rich in the elements that elections in India are made up of – the reasons for which a person can hope to get a ticket, the importance of caste and community, the voter having the power to belittle the high and mighty and the reliance on astrological predictions.

This is one of the numerous stories narrated by authors Anil Maheshwari and Vipul Maheshwari as they write on the humungous topic of elections in India in their book The Power Of The Ballot – Travail And Triumph In The Elections.

Another example of using an anecdote to bring out the peculiarities of elections in India is the description of the practice in Haryana to weigh candidates against coins. By the 1980s, every candidate, including independents with little chance of winning, was getting weighed against coins. Most of the shows were stage-managed, meant to hoodwink the electorate. An innovative candidate went a step further and got himself weighed against country liquor, which was later served among the audience. Another candidate was weighed against laddoos, which were also distributed amongst the gathering. And a senior minister in the Bansi Lal government is said to have been weighed against stones by angry voters in a village.

The book brings out the colour and the drama involved in Indian elections even as it provides a comprehensive look at the various issues concerning polls in the country – the problem of criminalisation, the role played by money, the doubts expressed about electronic voting machines and the need for electoral reforms.

The Power Of The Ballot – Travail and Triumph In The Elections

By Anil Maheshwari and Vipul Maheshwari

Published by Bloomsbury

Price Rs 699

Pages 381