BOOKS OF THE WEEK

THE NEW BIHAR
By - N.K Singh 

About the Book :
During the 1990s, Bihars development failed to benefit from the acceleration in Indias economic growth, principally because of a steep decline in the already low standards of governance.This changed dramatically after November 2005, when The Nitish Kumar government came to power. Within a short time, major initiatives were launched in improving governance, infrastructure, education, especially primary and for girl children, health and agriculture.
The last six years have shown that rapid economic development is possible in Bihar. To maintain the momentum of growth, the recent improvements in governance have to be consolidated and strengthened.
Eminent economists like Amartya Sen, Kaushik Basu, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, Meghnad Desai, Shankar Acharya and Arvind Virmani analyse the remarkable turnaround witnessed by Bihar. Experts Tarun Das, Deepak Parekh, Lord Billimoria, K.V. Kamath and Isher Judge Ahluwalia speak of the opportunities and challenges ahead.
This is a must read for anyone interested in governance and development.

About the Author :
N.K Singh is a politician, economist and former Indian Administrative Service officer. Currently a Member of Parliament in the Rajya Sabha, he was earlier the deputy chairman of Bihar State Planning Commission.
Nicholas Stern is a British economist and academic. He has made major contributions to the economics of public policy and to development economics.
 ISBN : 9789350296417                                                                 Price : Rs. 799.00 

BOOKS OF THE WEEK

America in The Asian Century
By - M. Rasgotra

About the Book : 
An incisive and sagacious compilation of essays by experts in the field of foreign policy and politics - scholars, senior journalists, writers - defining the role of the United States of America in Asia over the last decades and analysing its relevance and importance in the coming years.
These well-researched essays provide a significant and crisp analysis of the politics of the region and raise and answer questions like:
Will America be able to maintain its leadership in the global arena?
Will America have a role in shaping the 21st Century? Or will it be China's Century?
Will America's balanced relations with major Asian powers be the catalyst of stability and peace in the Asian Century?
Edited by one of India's most distinguished experts on foreign policy, former Foreign Secretary Maharajkrishna Rasgotra, this book attempts an assessment of the quality and extent of America's presence in and policies towards various regions of Asia - from Russia to Central Asia, the Arab countries, South and Sotheast Asia to East Asia.
About the Author
Maharajakrishna Rasgotra, a distinguished member of the Indian Foreign Service from 1949 to 1990, was India's Foreign Secretary from 1982 to 1985. At the time of the preparation of this book he was President, Centre for International Relations, at the Foundation, New Delhi. 
 ISBN : 9789381506288                                                                Price : Rs. 495.00 

BOOKS OF THE WEEK


INDIAN GARDEN FLOWERS
By - AMARJEET SINGH BATTH

ABOUT THE BOOK
This is a comprehensive manual discussing all the factors that make gardening a joyous affair and covers everything an amateur gardener needs to know in order to grow seasonal flowers. It is a delightful, comprehensive and scientifically accurate manual with 76 rich and colourful illustrations. It gives details from the conception of a garden to reaping its rewards. Brief propagation details along with post-planting care and usage of manure and fertilizers will forego dependency on the shallow knowledge of the local mali. Written in a lucid and concise style and complimented with beautiful real-to-life illustrations, this handy reference guide will prove to be extremely useful to a novice as well as an expert gardener.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Amarjeet Singh Batth served the Indian Army as short service commission officer in the Armoured Corps after completing his post-graduation from the Punjab University, Chandigarh. An avid traveller, he has travelled extensively various parts of the Indian sub-continent and South-East Asia. His travelling expeditions have been published in various columns in the print media. A gardener with a passion for photography, he has an exhaustive compilation of the jewels of nature - the flowers. This work is a collection of a segment of his treasure.
 ISBN : 9788172341442                                            Price : Rs. 595.00 

BOOKS OF THE WEEK

An Uncertain Glory: India and its Contradictions
By - Jean Dreze , Amartya Sen

About the Book
When India became independent in 1947 after two centuries of colonial subjugation, it immediately adopted a firmly democratic political system, with multiple parties, freedom of speech and extensive political rights. The famines that had been so common in the colonial era disappeared, and steady economic growth replaced the almost complete stagnation characteristic of the long rule of the Raj. The growth of the Indian economy, which has quickened over the last three decades, became the second fastest in the world. Despite a recent dip, it is still one of the highest among nations.
Maintaining rapid as well as environmentally sustainable growth is an important and achieveable goal for India. In AN UNCERTAIN GLORY, two of India's leading economists argue that the country's main problems lie elsewhere, particularly in the lack of attention paid to the essential needs of the people, especially the poor. The deep inequalities in Indian society tend to constrict public discussion in India's vibrant media to the lives and concerns of the relatively affluent.One of the biggest failures has been the very inadequate use of the public resources generated by economic growth to expand India's lagging physical and social infrastructure (in sharp contrast, for example, to what China has done): there is a continued inadequacy both of social services such as schooling, medical care and immunization, and of physical services such as the provision of safe water, electricity, drainage and sanitation. Even as India has overtaken a large number of other countries in the rate of economic growth, it has, because of these inadequacies, fallen behind many of the same countries - often very poor ones - in the progress of quality of life.
Because of the importance of democracy in India, addressing these failures will require not only significant policy rethinking by the government, but also a better public understanding of the abysmal extent of social and economic deprivations. The deep inequalities in Indian society tend to constrict public discussion in India's vibrant media to the lives and concerns of the relatively affluent. Dreze and Sen arguethat if there is to be more effective democratic practice, there has to be a clearer understanding of the severity of human deprivations in India. This book makes a powerful contribution to that understanding.

About the author
Jean Dreze has lived in India since 1979 and became an Indian citizen in 2002. He has taught at the London School of Economics and the Delhi School of Economics, and is now Visiting Professor at Allahabad University. He is co-author (with Amartya Sen) of Hunger and Public Action and India: Development and Participation, and one of the co-authors of the Public Report on Basic Education in India Amartya Sen is Lamont University Professor, Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Economics, at Harvard University. He won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1998 and was Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, 1998-2004. His many books include Development as Freedom, Rationality and Freedom, The Argumentative Indian, Identity and Violence and The Idea of Justice.
 ISBN : 9781846147616                                                                Price : Rs. 699.00