The Accidental Prime Minister

P. V. Narasimha Rao (or PV, as he was popularly known) has been widely praised for enabling the economic reforms that transformed the country in 1991. From the vantage point of his long personal and professional association with the former prime minister, best-selling author Sanjaya Baru shows how PV's impact on the nation's fortunes went way beyond the economy.

When P.V. Narasimha Rao became the unlikely prime minister of India in 1991, he inherited a nation adrift, violent insurgencies, and economic crisis. Despite being unloved by his people, mistrusted by his party, and ruling under the shadow of 10 Janpath, Rao transformed the economy and ushered India into the global arena. With exclusive access to Rao’s never-before-seen personal papers and diaries, this definitive biography provides new revelations on the Indian economy, nuclear program, and foreign policy and the Babri Masjid.

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. 

The Coalition Years begins its journey in 1996 and explores the highs and lows that characterized 16 years of one of the most tumultuous periods in the nation’s political history. It is an insightful account of the larger governance phenomenon in India - coalition politics - as seen through the eyes of one of the chief architects of the post-Congress era of Indian politics.

From being one of the earliest members of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, Vajpayee blossomed into a leading opposition MP by the late 1960s and went on to become External Affairs Minister in the short-lived Janata government and, finally in 1999, to head the first non-Congress government to complete a full term in office. That it was a coalition government made the feat all the more remarkable and testifies to the fact that though wedded to a right-wing political ideology, Vajpayee did not believe in the politics of exclusion.

As the world once again confronts an eruption of authoritarianism, Gyan Prakash's Emergency Chronicles takes us back to the moment of India's independence to offer a comprehensive historical account of Indira Gandhi's Emergency of 1975-77. Stripping away the myth that this was a sudden event brought on solely by the prime minister's desire to cling to power, it argues that the Emergency was as much Indira's doing as it was the product of Indian democracy's troubled relationship with popular politics, and a turning point in its history.

Former Minister in charge of External Affairs Kunwar Natwar Singh's autobiography, One Life Is Not Enough, is an honest, searing account of the veteran's life as a bureaucrat, politician, and cabinet minister. Natwar Singh talks about his experiences in Delhi's political corridors and sets the record straight on several events, including the Volcker controversy.

On 23 May 2019, when the results of the general elections were announced, Narendra Modi and the BJP-led NDA coalition were voted back to power with an overwhelming majority. To some, the numbers of Modi's victory came as something of a surprise; for others, the BJP's triumph was a vindication of their belief in the government and its policies. Irrespective of one's political standpoint, one thing was beyond dispute: this was a landmark verdict that deserved to be reported with intelligence and without bias. Rajdeep Sardesai's new book, 2019: How Modi Won India, does just that.

In the early 20th century, young Ganga Bhishan Agarwal, aka Haldiram, gained a reputation for making the best bhujia in town. Fast-forward a century and the Haldiram’s empire has a revenue much greater than that of McDonald’s and Domino’s combined. In Bhujia Barons, Pavitra Kumar manages to tell the riveting story of the Agarwal family in its entirety - a feat never managed before. It begins in dusty, benign Bikaner and traces the rise and rise of this homegrown brand which is one of the most recognized Indian brands in the world.  

The Turbulent Years opens in the 1980s. Sanjay Gandhi is dead under unexpected tragic circumstances; not many years later, Indira Gandhi is assassinated; Rajiv Gandhi, 'the reluctant politician', abruptly becomes India's Prime Minister. Pranab Mukherjee was witness to (and sometimes a participant in) the momentous events of the 1980s and the 1990s, a period that was indisputably the most turbulent in India's post-Independence history.

The RSS is the most influential cultural organization in India today, with affiliates in fields as varied as politics, education, and trade. This audiobook fundamentally addresses three key questions: Why has the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its affiliates expanded so rapidly over the past 25 years? How have they evolved in response to India's new socioeconomic milieu? How does their rapid growth impact the country's politics and policy?

The Indian subcontinent was the scene of dramatic upheavals a few thousand years ago. The Northwest region entered an arid phase, and erosion coupled with tectonic events played havoc with river courses. One of them disappeared. Celebrated as Sarasvati in the Rig Veda and the Mahabharata, this river was rediscovered in the early 19th century through topographic explorations by British officials. Recently, geological and climatological studies have probed its evolution and disappearance, while satellite imagery has traced the river's buried courses....

Drawing from a vast range of original archival documents across India and abroad, this biography in two parts - the first focusing on the years leading up to his incarceration and eventual release from the Kalapani - puts Savarkar, his life, and his philosophy in a new perspective and looks at the man with all his achievements and failings. 

There is perhaps no political figure in modern history who did more to secure and protect the Indian nation than Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel. The Man Who Saved India is a sweeping, magisterial retelling of Sardar Patel's story. With fiercely detailed and pugnacious anecdotes, multiple award-winning, best-selling writer Hindol Sengupta brings alive Patel's determined life of struggle and his furious commitment to keep India safe. This audiobook brings alive all the arguments, quarrels, and clashes between some of the most determined people in Indian history.

Srinagar in the winter of 1989 was an eerie ghost town witnessing the beginnings of a war dance. The dam burst the night JKLF boys were freed in exchange for the release of Rubaiya Sayeed, daughter of then Union home minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. As Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah had predicted, the government's caving in emboldened many Kashmiris into thinking that azaadi was possible. 'The price we will have to pay' were Farooq's prophetic words.