On 13 August 1972 Parulkar, along with Malvinder Singh Grewal and Harish Sinhji escaped from a POW camp in Rawalpindi. Four Miles To Freedom is their story.Based on interviews with eight Indian fighter pilots who helped prepare the escape and two who escaped, as well as research into other sources, Four Miles is also the moving, sometimes amusing, account of how twelve fighter pilots from different ranks and backgrounds coped with deprivation, forced intimacy, and the pervasive uncertainty of a year in captivity, and how they came together to support Parulkar's courageous escape.

    It covers a range of items from the political integration of India to the making of Indian constitution, the history of Indian sports, economy, movies, science, among other topics. Through this exciting train journey we will meet the various historic characters - Nehru, Patel, Ambedkar, Tendulkar, VP Menon, Kalam, Homi Bhaba, Narasimha Rao. The first 9 chapters of this 18 chapter book focus on the darker side of the history - wars, accidents, disasters and deaths. The second 9 chapters focus on the brighter side of the history - the various achievements India has made in foreign policy, economics, science and art. We will start with the distant past history that led to 1947 and we will end with the recipes for the future.

    Singh has been a formidable civil servant, an empathetic politician, a keen chronicler of India’s socioeconomic history and the quintessential academic that academia never got. His life’s work, as chronicled in this book has indeed been intertwined with the progress India has made. In many such cases, Singh has been not just an active contributor but has also given shape to those many momentous decisions—whether through the use of diplomacy or the rigours of understanding the mechanism of the levers of power or, for that matter, by consensus building.Portraits of Power is not just an autobiography of a man, who for several decades has played an active role in India’s march towards becoming a formidable economy; it is indeed, on multiple levels, a book that profiles myriad institutions that work in harmony to make things happen. And in everything that N.K. Singh has done, so in this book too, there is both incisive clarity and insightful anecdotal heft.This book helps readers navigate the vast complexities of India but in a way that is stark and yet elegant.From personal happenings to national movements, Portraits of Power covers it all.

    The impossible task of knowing God's mind...

    It is published by Mula-Mutha Publishers. The book has 392 plus 28 preliminary pages and 12 art pages (432 pages in all), 27 pictures and 22 maps with the narrative. The book has 36 chapters divided into five sections. Besides maps and illustrations, it has a timeline, genealogies, introduction to principal characters, appendices, references, bibliography, glossary and an index.

    Born into a family with eleven children and limited means, where she was one of the first to attend university, she takes us through her journey to Presidency College, Delhi School of Economics and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.She chronicles her career as a young policy economist fighting against the Indian economic orthodoxy that underpinned the license-permit-quota Raj, as an institution builder leading the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), one of India’s leading economic think tanks for over a decade, and also her most recent role in focusing attention on the challenges of urbanization in India.Narrated with candor and from the heart, this is also a story of a woman balancing career and family, and trying to stay close to her roots as her life path takes her through the power corridors of New Delhi, both through her own career, and through a 50-year-marriage to Montek Singh Ahluwalia. An outsider to Delhi, who ultimately became the consummate insider, Breaking Through is an account of a remarkable life that was witness to remarkable times.

    Twenty-one Sikh soldiers. One epic battle. On 12 September 1897, 21 soldiers of 36th Sikh Regiment stood undeterred as they guarded the post of Saragarhi against the onslaught of almost 10,000 Afghan tribesmen a battle for the ages that ended in them laying down their lives in a final hand-to-hand confrontation. The unparalleled heroics of these 21 men have, however, been long forgotten by history. What led to the Battle of Saragarhi? What was the socio-political scenario at the time? Who were these tribesmen and why did they attack an outpost in such great numbers? Who were the 21 soldiers and how were they able to keep the enemy at bay against all odds? Based on colonial era records and information provided by the 4th Sikh Battalion, the legatee unit of 36th Sikhs, 21 Kesaris attempts to answer these questions while paying homage to the brave soldiers who defended the Kesari flag depicting their Khalsa heritage with their last breaths.

    Forty Indian soldiers are dead. But when the NIA probes the bombing they hit one dead end after another. Who were the actual masterminds of this audacious strike? It seemed impossible to find out. In this thrilling and deeply reported book, The award-winning author and journalist Rahul Pandita tells the story of how a team of extraordinary NIA sleuths cracks the case one jigsaw piece at a time. Against all odds, they manage to connect the dots between a seemingly routine troublemaker put in preventive detention at the time of the abrogation of article 370, a mobile phone full of lustful messages recovered after an encounter that killed a terrorist and the pulwama attack itself. The sinister roots of the strike, they would discover, are several decades deep and can be traced to one man – Masood Azhar – and the empire of terror he created in Kashmir. In this book we enter the terrifying world of radical Islamists and secret militant operations, of intelligence agencies and elite counterterrorism units. With never-before-published details about the Pulwama case, the resultant Balakot strike and the arcane world of terror groups, this is one of the most significant works on Kashmir and terrorism in recent times.

    In this autobiography the author provides an honest and sincere account of his childhood memories, his life as a school-goer with a batch of cousins and relatives in Cuttack, his formative years of intellectual development as a promising student of Presidency College in Calcutta, his quest for spiritual enlightenment and his experiences as a student at the prestigious Cambridge University. The autobiography also throws much light on Bose’s indomitable spirit in the freedom movement of India.

    

    Troubled times engender a longing for the grip on India's affairs that Patel had. How he acquired that grip is part of PATEL's story.A quarter-century after the selection of India's first premier, C. Rajagopalachari recalled the event and wrote: "Undoubtedly it would have been better if Nehru had been asked to be Foreign Minister and Patel made the Prime Minister."Why did Nehru, with Gandhi's support, become Premier, and not Patel? Was Vallabhbhai anti-Muslim? What were his relationships with Maulana Azad, Nehru, Subhas Bose and the Mahatma? Why did he clash with the socialists?How did he unify India? Why did he accept partition? Why, much earlier, did he exchange a life of comfort and riches for the struggle at Gandhi's side? These are only some of the questions answered as PATEL's diligently researched and frank narrative unfolds. Inquiring into Vallabhbhai's times as well as his life, PATEL becomes a segment of history.

    It also examines some vital aspects of cultural transformation in modern India.Candidates of many competitive examinations, but especially those of the civil services, will find this book worth reading.

    Sharad Pawar. The book is a rich, insightful and remarkably frank memoir and a valuable document of the country's recent political history. Sharad Pawar is one of India's key public figures. Through his five- decade-long career, during which he has never lost an election, he has served as chief minister of Maharashtra four times and as India's defence minister and minister for agriculture. On two occasions he came close to becoming the country's prime minister. He has often bucked the trend, preferring policy and pragmatism over populism, and won admiration for his administrative acumen and consensual politics. Eyewitness-at the highest levels-to India's and Maharashtra's history since the 1960s, he shares in this memoir his reflections on coalition politics, the loss of democracy in the Congress Party (with which he began his political life), the state of agriculture and industry in the country, and the absolute necessity of social harmony and a liberal, inclusive ethos for India's future. As he does this, he also gives us rare information about many crises and turning points: Emergency and its impact on national and regional politics; the fall of the Chandrashekhar government in 1991; the signing of the Punjab Accord between Rajiv Gandhi and H.S. Longowal; the Babri Masjid demolition; the Mumbai bomb blasts of 1993; the devastating earthquake in Latur; the controversy over the Enron power project; and Sonia Gandhi's dramatic decision to give up the chance to occupy the country's highest office. Throughout, the narrative also contains candid and fascinating assessments of some of the biggest names in Indian politics, among them, Indira, Rajiv and Sonia Gandhi, Y.B. Chavan, Morarji Desai, Biju Patnaik, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Chandrashekhar, P.V. Narasimha Rao, George Fernandes and Bal Thackeray.

    Ambedkar's most prominent speeches on caste and the Indian Constitution. "In the fight for Swaraj, you fight with the whole nation on your side. In fighting caste system, you stand against the whole nation—and that too, your own." Annihilation of Caste is one of Ambedkar's best works in putting together how caste as a system has been eating up the roots of a rich cultural melting pot like India. "Bhakti in religion could lead to salvation. But in politics, Bhakti is a sure road to eventual dictatorship." The Grammar of Anarchy reflects Ambedkar's ideas on how we need to pave the way for Independent India. It reflects his deep love and aspirations for India and its people. "...the sub-divisions [of caste] have lost the open-door character of the class system, and have become self-enclosed units called castes." Castes in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development is an in-depth study of how classes went on to become castes and sub-castes to dot the Indian social system. This powerful narrative is a radical eye-opener.

    From her treatment in the US and the wonderful care provided by the oncologists there to how she rebuilt her life once she returned home, the book takes us on an emotional roller-coaster ride through her many fears and struggles and shows how she eventually came out triumphant.Today, as she completes six years of being cancer-free, she shares her story-one marked by apprehensions, disappointments and uncertainties-and the lessons she learnt along the way. Through her journey, she unravels cancer for us and inspires us to not buckle under its fear, but emerge alive, kicking and victorious.