Kanchan Gupta

The Bharatiya Janata Party is an idea that was seeded into the minds of nationalist Jana Sangh leaders when they began to envision India after Independence. Much like the very core the freedom struggle was built on, they saw India as a demographically, culturally and historically cohesive and unified nation - as Bharat. In this book, senior BJP leader and cabinet minister Bhupender Yadav and leading economist Ila Patnaik come together to trace the BJP's journey from its humble roots, through ups and downs and to eventually getting 303 seats in Lok Sabha in 2019 and becoming the world's largest political party. While focusing on the larger economics and political story, the book encapsulates many smaller, yet hugely significant stories of individuals and incidents, which brought the BJP to where it stands now. For the first time ever, The Rise of the BJP, tells us the inside story of how one of the most powerful political parties makes decisions, implements ideas and executes policy. Meticulously researched and immensely readable, the book shows us how the BJP fought competing ideologies, political assaults and catapulted to the centre stage of national politics.

In a frank expose of the Teresa cult, Hitchens details the nature and limits of one woman’s mission to the world’s poor. He probes the source of the heroic status bestowed upon an Albanian nun whose only declared wish is to serve God. He asks whether Mother Teresa’s good works answer any higher purpose than the need of the world’s privileged to see someone, somewhere, doing something for the Third World. He unmasks pseudo-miracles, questions Mother Teresa’s fitness to adjudicate on matters of sex and reproduction, and reports on a version of saintly ubiquity which affords genial relations with dictators, corrupt tycoons and convicted frauds.

"The New York Times is by far the most influential newspaper in the world and thus receives far too little journalistic scrutiny due to its power to affect careers. Any book that casts a critical eye on the Paper of Record's history, as this book does, is performing a valuable service." - Glenn Greenwald, Journalist & New York Times Bestselling Author Think a newspaper can't be responsible for mass murder? Think again. As flagship of the American news media, the New York Times is the world's most powerful news outlet. With thousands of reporters covering events from all corners of the globe, the Times has the power to influence wars, foment revolution, shape economies and change the very nature of our culture. It doesn't just cover the news: it creates it. The Gray Lady Winked pulls back the curtain on this illustrious institution to reveal a quintessentially human organization where ideology, ego, power and politics compete with the more humble need to present the facts. In its 10 gripping chapters, The Gray Lady Winked offers readers an eye-opening, often shocking, look at the New York Times's greatest journalistic failures, so devastating they changed the course of history. How its World War II Berlin bureau chief, a known Nazi collaborator, skewed coverage in favor of the Third Reich for over a decade.Its notorious coverup of the Ukraine Famine, a genocide committed by Stalin, showing that it was the newspaper's owners who directed the coverup in order to advance their own financial and ideological interests.The "1619 Project," a cynical, ideologically driven attempt to revise American history by rooting the nation's birth in slavery instead of liberty.The result is an essential look at the tangled relationship between media, power and politics in a post-truth world told with novelistic flair to reveal a uniquely powerful institution's tortured relationship with the truth. Most importantly of all, The Gray Lady Winked presents a cautionary tale that shows what happens when the guardians of the truth abandon that sacred value in favor of self-interest and ideology-and what this means for our future as much as for our past. "For 99 years-since a 1922 description of Hitler as someone 'actuated by lofty, unselfish patriotism'-it has labored under the shadow of its dynastic owners' triad of problems: capitalist guilt, Jewish self-hatred, and an ambition for power, wealth, and status. - Daniel Pipes, President, Middle East Forum

For the better part of seven decades after independence, the Nehruvian idea of India held sway in India's polity, even if it was not always in consonance with the views of Jawaharlal Nehru himself. Three key features constituted the crux of the Nehruvian way: socialism, which in practice devolved to corruption and stagnation; secularism, which boxed citizens into group membership and diluted individual identity; and non-alignment, which effectively placed India in the Communist camp. In the early Nineties, India began a gradual withdrawal from this path. But it was only in 2019, with Narendra Modi's second successive win in the general elections, that this philosophy is finally being replaced by a worldview that acknowledges India as an ancient civilization, even if a young republic, and that sees citizens as equal for developmental and other purposes. A New Idea of India constructs and expounds on a new framework beyond the rough and tumble of partisan politics. Lucid in its laying out of ideas and policies while taking a novel position, this book is illuminated by years of research and the authors' first-hand experiences, as citizens, entrepreneurs and investors, of the vagaries and challenges of India. This revised edition builds on some of the arguments of the earlier edition and brings things up-to-date.

The wave of liberalization in the 1990s changed forever the face of India. It bolstered the economy. It raised the stock index. It raised hem lines of skirts even more. It led to the growth of the fashion police And also the moral police. Numbered items became item numbers. To the twenty-two scheduled languages were added C, Cobol, Java. You were either watching sitcoms or starting dotcoms. News became entertainment. Entertainment became news. Terror struck the country-sometimes in the form of gunmen from across the border and sometimes in the form of Bollywood movies. To SMS-ize-'It wuz da best of tyms, it wuz da wrst of tyms' Having been a part of this chaotic revolution in popular culture, blogger Arnab Ray of greatbong.net takes a funny, sarcastic, politically incorrect and totally irreverent look at assorted random stuff including Bollywood C-grade revenge masalas, ribald songs of the people, movie punching, fake educational institutes, stubborn bathroom flushes, unreal reality shows, the benefits of corruption, opulent weddings, brains in toaster ovens, seedy theatres and pompous non-resident Indians.Nothing here is off-limits and no cow too holy.We guarantee it

Dr Samir Saran is the President of Observer Research Foundation (ORF), one of Asia?s most influential think tanks. Samir curates the Raisina Dialogue, India?s flagship platform on geopolitics and geoeconomics, and chairs CyFy, India?s annual conference on technology, security and society. He is a Commissioner of The Global Commission on the Stability of Cyberspace, member of the World Economic Forum?s South Asia advisory board and Global Future Council on Geopolitics. Akhil Deo is a Junior Fellow at the ORF. His research interests include India?s foreign policy and the impact of emerging technologies on society.