Raghu Rai is one of the greatest Indian photographers. Impressed by an exhibition of his work, Cartier-Bresson nominated him to join Magnum in 1977. In India Notes, Rai shares his vision of India, documenting its excesses and contrasts. These striking images are supported by Terzani's text - lyrical odes to a beloved country, which he has learnt to know intimately. Terzani was the Asia correspondent for Der Spiegel for 30 years. He is also the author of numerous books, including A Fortune-Teller Told Me: Earthbound travels in the Far East, published by Flamingo in the UK.

Notes from an Indian Conservative is a compilation of Jaithirth (Jerry) Rao's electric writings which regularly appear in The Indian Express. The book has been written for the 'Indians of today, both in India an in voluntary or involuntary exile who have a love for their fractured land and who have a sensibility derived from our adoption and embrace of the English language.

More than half the people who defecate in the open live in India. Around the world, people live healthier lives than in centuries past, in part because latrines keep faecal germs away from growing babies. India is an exception. Most Indians do not use toilets or latrines, and so infants in India are more likely to die than in neighbouring poorer countries. Children in India are more likely to be stunted than children in sub-Saharan Africa.Where India Goes demonstrates that open defecation in India is not the result of poverty but a direct consequence of the caste system, untouchability and ritual purity. Coffey and Spears tell an unsanitized story of an unsanitary subject, with characters spanning the worlds of mothers and babies living in villages to local government implementers, senior government policymakers and international development professionals. They write of increased funding and ever more unused latrines.Where India Goes is an important and timely book that calls for the annihilation of caste and attendant prejudices, and a fundamental shift in policy perspectives to effect a crucial, much overdue change.

Cracking IAS Prelims 2024 General Studies (Indian Polity) Quick Revision Notes With Practice MCQs. The most important source of Polity for UPSC is NCERT Books. Aspirants should read Polity from NCERT Books for UPSC to prepare for the IAS Exam. Taking notes is an efficient way to organise the study material for Quick Revision. UPSC candidates often find it difficult to find the right topics to focus on or may not have the time or resources at hand to take efficient notes. With this in mind, we at MYUPSC have developed a compilation of NCERT Notes for UPSC. As per the UPSC 2024 calendar, the IAS Prelims and main exams are scheduled to take place on May 26, 2024 and September 20, 2024 onwards respectively. Polity is an important part of the Prelims GS 1 paper of the Civil Services Examination. Important questions for UPSC from the Polity section are given here.

A social theory of grand corruption from antiquity to the twenty-first century. In contemporary policy discourse, the notion of corruption is highly constricted, understood just as the pursuit of private gain while fulfilling a public duty. Its paradigmatic manifestations are bribery and extortion, placing the onus on individuals, typically bureaucrats. Sudhir Chella Rajan argues that this understanding ignores the true depths of corruption, which is properly seen as a foundation of social structures. Not just bribes but also caste, gender relations, and the reproduction of class are forms of corruption. Using South Asia as a case study, Rajan argues that syndromes of corruption can be identified by paying attention to social orders and the elites they support. From the breakup of the Harappan civilization in the second millennium BCE to the anticolonial movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, elites and their descendants made off with substantial material and symbolic gains for hundreds of years before their schemes unraveled. Rajan makes clear that this grander form of corruption is not limited to India or the annals of global history. Societal corruption is endemic, as tax cheats and complicit bankers squirrel away public money in offshore accounts, corporate titans buy political influence, and the rich ensure that their children live lavishly no matter how little they contribute. These elites use their privileged access to power to fix the rules of the game—legal structures and social norms—benefiting themselves, even while most ordinary people remain faithful to the rubrics of everyday life.

This book, first published in 1975, is a comprehensive list of all the books on India, written in English before 1900. It is an invaluable reference source on India of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Apart from the work of professional writers, there are the writings of a cross-section of society from soldiers to scientists. We find dictionaries of obscure dialects written by government officials, descriptions of their travels by visiting clerics, homely details of everyday life by housewives, as well as technical and scientific works written by scholars.