From Dependence to Self-Reliance

IN the 21st century, India is on a new growth path. Among the reasons behind the resurgence of confidence in India’s future is the implementation of economic reforms initiated in 1991, and the emergence of a majority-party government in 2014, ‘the latter making it feasible to initiate growth and reduce poverty as well as promote cooperative federalism between the Centre and the states’. In his new book ‘From Dependence to Self-Reliance’, former RBI Governor Bimal Jalan highlights some priorities the government can implement at present as well as in the future in light of past experience.

OVER the course of the last three decades, Rajeev Shukla met several people who have witnessed Partition and carried in their hearts the excruciating pain it caused. Some stories took him to Pakistan. In India, he interacted with people who were left with deep physical and emotional scars. This book captures tales of love, kindness, and perseverance of the human spirit. It is a collection of stories of love and friendship, heartbreak and struggle through protagonists such as former PM Manmohan Singh to Gauri Khan’s maternal grandmother Champa Tiwari, from Taimur Bande and Syyed Imtiaz Humayun to Avtar Narain Gujral.

WINNER of the prestigious Newbery Medal for her children’s book ‘The Girl Who Drank the Moon’, Kelly Barnhill’s new book — her first for adults — is set in the America of 1950s. In a ‘mass dragoning’, hundreds of thousands of ordinary women have sprouted wings, scales and talons and taken to the skies amid a blaze of fire and fury. Dedicated to the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford in the Brett Kavanaugh sexual assault case, one can well assume that the novel is a feminist take on women’s place in the world, but what will happen once the dragons inside them have been set free?