Field glasses to make you think

Aiming at a grand strategy for India through multiple strategic scenarios of net assessment, this book argues for an imaginative calculation of our various futures

The Long View From Delhi: To
Define the Indian Grand Strategy
for Foreign Policy;
Raja Menon, Rajiv Kumar
Academic Foundation
Pp 182; Rs 990

The title alone is enough to excite massive institutional and cultural teeth-clenching in India’s corridors of power. For when has New Delhi ever taken a “long view” of anything? It seems preternaturally predisposed to looking inward, to pass its views of India’s place in the future and its interests in possible alternative worlds through a set of powerful cultural filters that favour restraint, incremental movement, and long debates over competing alternatives. This at a time when the world around India is changing rapidly, with more actors flexing, converging or colliding strategies in pursuit of often antithetical objectives while boasting powerful capabilities. India’s half century of strategic introspection is a poor vista from which to address these challenges.

Institutional capacity for thinking “big” or “long” or “detailed” exists in only a few places in India’s sprawling bureaucracy. As Ashley Tellis notes, its few senior leaders, often diplomats, base their decisions about the world largely on intuition received from limited general education and good family ties, bereft of the kinds of special knowledge and training necessary for understanding today’s complex strategic dynamics. Moreover, the Berlin Wall that exists between the civilian and military sectors of Indian society discounts a critical mass of focused intellectual power that possesses strategy in spades, an anomaly among modern states with integrated security and strategic planning. Military people almost by definition draw sustenance from an appreciation of why and how states compete, and of their ability to harness power—a distinctly uncomfortable notion in New Delhi—to achieve objectives.

Full report here Outlook 

REVIEW: From Unipolar to Tripolar World

REVIEW

From Unipolar to Tripolar World
Arvind Virmani
Academic Foundation
Rs. 995.

Pp 352

ISBN - 978-81-7188-799-6

Hardbound

Blurb
Developed country experts on international affairs and the global economy have consistently underestimated the speed with which China’s economy and power would rise relative to Germany, Japan and the USA. They are now similarly underestimating the speed at which India’s economy will close the economic size and power gaps. This book shows, why and how a tri-polar global power structure will emerge from the current confused system variously described as ‘multipolar’, ‘apolar’, ‘pluripolar’, ‘West and the rest’ and ‘unipolar with an oligopolistic fringe’. The Book goes on to draw out the implications and consequences of this evolving global power structure and makes suggestions on the policy options that need to be explored and pursued to increase the possibility of a peaceful transformation .

Review
And now, a tripolor world Hindu
After holding some key positions in the country — such as Chief Economic Adviser, Ministry of Finance; Principal Adviser, Planning Commission; and Director, Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations — Arvind Virmani has moved to the International Monetary Fund, where he is serving as Executive Director.

The first two chapters of this book, he says, summarise the analysis done during 2004-05 and 2005-06 on the “economic foundations of a nation's global power.” They spell out the author's notion of the power of nations using an index he has developed — Virmani's Index of Power, VIP for short. In the rest of the chapters, barring two, there are repetitive elaborations and restatements of this theme. In fact, the volume is just a compilation, without careful editing, of papers presented by him over a decade.

Of the two exceptions, the chapter on China's socialist market economy is a self-contained piece, having some bearing on the main theme. However, the other, on “proliferation by nuclear weapons states and NNWS NPT partners”, provides an account of Pakistan's explorations into the nuclear arena, and is at best only tangentially related to the theme.

REVIEW: Reservation Policy...

REVIEW

Reservation Policy and its Implementation Across Domians in India
Niranjan Sahoo
Academic Foundation
Rs. 595
Pp 112
ISBN - 978-81-7188-759-0
Hard-back

Blurb
India runs the world's oldest and one of the most comprehensive affirmative action policies in the form of reservations or quotas for its disadvantaged sections. Ever since its adaptation, this critical public policy remains the most controversial and polarising public policy that the Independent India has adopted as yet. While much of the national preoccupation over reservation have been devoted to debate its necessity and relevance in addressing exclusion and inequality, the country still seems to lack a data-based understanding of its enforcement across different domains. How earnestly state and its agencies have enforced the reservation policies? We know less about the trends of implementation in different domains and how or what percentage of population among these social groups have benefited from it. Fact is there are very few credible research studies on the issue of affirmative policies in India. This publication is an attempt to fill some of the void by compiling data on key domains of reservation policy apart from flagging crucial issues relating to linkages among the three key domains of reservations, namely, higher education, employment, and political representation. A comparison of all three domains in terms of implementation of reservation policies, across different time periods (e.g., pre- and post-Mandal phases) and among different regions, provides useful insights about these linkages. In doing so, the work throws some critical insights on the processes at work, and identifies areas for further research.


Review
Reservation: policy and implementation Hindu
This slim volume is an attempt to assess the seriousness with which the Indian state has implemented programmes of affirmative action. The emphasis is on detailing the various components of such programmes and examining their effectiveness through published data. While the aim is laudable, it needs to be said at the outset that the work has fallen between two stools — its analysis is not incisive enough to hold the interest of an informed reader, nor does it serve as an introduction to the interested but essentially lay audience.

Data
First, let us see what the book's strengths are. There are data on a spectrum of issues relating to affirmative action such as the status of the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes, and the Other Backward Classes in political institutions from the local bodies to the StateLegislatures and Parliament, and in relation to parameters like literacy, education, and employment. The information is collated from authentic sources. In this sense, it will be useful for any student who wants to have a quick access to data. Of course, there are other such books. But this indeed is a positive feature.