In September of 2022, India's GDP crossed that of Britain to make it the world's fifth largest economy. For a country that had been struggling with slow growth for decades, it was a significant moment. The tipping point-that moment when a process of change is initiated which will transform how we think, behave or live-came in the summer of 1991 under the leadership of someone considered the person least likely to launch such a change. The government of P.V. Narasimha Rao, who had just turned 70, announced a series of measures that have today placed India among the top economies. This was not all. The five years of his prime-ministership, from 1991 to 1996, were marked by several other changes whose impact continues to be felt. Alongside devastating events like the Babri Masjid demolition and tackling bitter politics in a divided Congress party. S. Narendra was a close associate through this period and sheds light on many key events and the internecine rivalries and politics that Rao had to counter to be able to function. He was a cog in the wheel of bigger things but perfectly placed to see what happened in the grey area between policy-making, administration and politics, and to explain, at least in part, the actions of the man at the centre of it all. This is a first-hand, indispensable account of history in the making.

The Elusive Tipping Point: China-India Ties for a New Order is a timely foreign-policy-relevant book. This insightful book delves deep into the reasons for frequent diplomatic and strategic crises between Asia's two dynamic ancient civilisations with post-modern capabilities. Set in the context of seventieth anniversary of China-India diplomacy, the spotlight is turned on their complex search for neighbourliness and global good. Often a mirage, the positive tipping point in their state-to-state relations is traced through the past, the present and the potential future. A controversial missed opportunity in the past and a collective-win approach for the present are explored. For Beijing and Delhi, imaginative all-weather dialogue is the best option if they wish to stabilise their engagement for the uncertain future. Despite their major military crisis, PRC and India are expected to shape a realistic post-COVID world order.

This book sketches the history of political forces in modern India. It begins defining these political categories of left, right and far-right with the usual reference to French Revolution (for want of an indigenous equivalent), and discusses movement of forces towards left, or towards the right from the balance of socio-political forces or status quo at a point of time in India. It recalls historical facts, uses chronological order for clarity and leaders’ names and political parties, their world view and ideas of nation, social groups they represented, and their movements. It progresses by reopening only a few windows to modern Indian history and looks at periods like, the 1920-30s, and 1970-80s, when there were significant movements and consolidation of socio-political forces to the right and far right. At the late 1960s and early 1970s, there were a series of policy proposals, legislations to nationalize assets and launch direct attacks on poverty that marked a sharp turn to the leftist ideology in Delhi (the central government of the time). Following these, a coalition of mostly right-wing forces rose to challenge the government at the centre and succeeded. This occurred in the context of heated Cold War geopolitics. Taylor and Francis does not sell or distribute the print editions of this book in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Explores the possibilities and limits of the international legal architecture and its expert communities in shaping the world of tomorrow.