The Hindu On Books

Most of us would remember the sudden shortage of semiconductor chips during the pandemic – how it affected automobile manufacturing, delaying deliveries, and in many cases, even caused manufacturers to deliver cars without some features. But semiconductors form an integral component of not just cars but almost any high tech device we use today – from smartphones and laptops to televisions, satellites and, of course, all kinds of advanced military hardware.

As nations jockey for geopolitical dominance, in addition to traditional factors such as military capabilities and economic power, technological prowess has become another, and perhaps most critical factor. Control over the manufacture and availability of the most advanced semiconductors is a key element of geopolitical security and strategic autonomy.

And yet, geopolitics and semiconductor supply chains have mostly figured in separate debates. A new book, titled ‘When the Chips are Down’, by Pranay Lotasthane and Abhiram Manchi brings the two parallel discourses together, and also presents a framework for understanding where India fits into the picture.

We speak with the authors Pranay Kotasthane and Abhiram Manchi. 

What are black holes? Mainstream physics sees them as Universe’s ultimate agents of death; afterall, what crosses over beyond the rim of the black hole – or its event horizon as it is known – disappears forever. Even all pervasive light cannot escape it. Science also shows that the universe is littered with billions upon billions of enormous black holes, capable of swallowing entire galaxies. But are they really the Universe’s cosmic executioners? Not necessarily, suggests Carlo Rovelli, one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists and prolific author of extremely accessible and thoughtful popular-books on modern physics. In his latest book, ‘White Holes', Professor Rovelli, discusses, well, so called ‘white holes.’ They may be the yin to the black holes’s yang, or as Rovelli describes it in Tolkienisque terms --the transformation of ‘Gandalf the Grey to Gandalf the White.’ In this podcast, we also talk about the role of scientific speculation, how scientific progress requires abandoning comforting assumptions, how new universes may be born, and whether we need to re-evaluate our commonly held notions of past and future. 

Did you know that women were barred from public gallery of the British Parliament. Some 245 years back in 1778 women were thrown out of the public gallery of the House of Common. Fighting against their exclusion, the women began to listen in to the proceedings sitting close to the to the ventilator-shafts of the Parliament. And they continued to do this for 56-years, till the British Parliament was burnt down in accidental fire, a in the new Palace of Westminster, a ladies gallery was constructed. Women had to fight a long battle in Britian for voting rights. We in India take pride, that we have always had universal franchise. But has it been really that simple? Especially for the women politicians. We discuss the trials and tribulations of women in politics with author Nidhi Sharma who chronicles the life of 17 women leaders in her book - She, The Leader: Women In Indian Politics. 

This week we are discussing "Empire Building-The Construction of British India 1690-1860. The book traces the journey of East India Company, from 1690 when they occupied Calcutta to 1860 a little after the great uprising that led to their demise. There have been several books on the East India Company, but what sets this one apart is the emphasis on the granular details and taking a closer look the changes company brought both in terms physical infrastructures and intellectual outlooks. Listen in, for more details on the first Indian author to publish in West. On the first cantonment, the first hill station and many other firsts for the Indian subcontinent. 

Author and journalist Samrat Choudhury’s third book comes at the time Manipur is front and centre of the national conversation. The current fault lines between hill and valley, ethnic loyalties that transcend borders inherited from the colonial state, attacks and reprisals are all a bequest of what he says are larger historical issues that have remained unresolved. 

Northeast India — A Political History is a “simple, readable, popular history” of the region that maps its long journey from isolation to integration.

In this episode, we are discussing the new book "The Importance of Shinzo Abe: India, Japan and the Indo Pacific", a collection of essays, edited by Sanjaya Baru, examining the legacy of the former Japanese leader who was the country's longest serving Prime Minister in history. Abe stepped down in 2020 citing health reasons, and his shock assassination in 2022 stunned the world. In this podcast, we discuss Abe's impact on Japan, its relations with India and the world. How did Abe transform Japan's security profile? What role did he play in the region embracing an Indo-Pacific strategy? Beyond his undeniable global role, what were some of the darker aspects of his legacy at home?

A lot of people love travelling. Typically, people travel for three reasons: to see new places, to experience new cultures, and to get away from their daily routine. There is a fourth kind of traveller, who is not talked about much -- the one who travels to eat animals and birds they’ve never eaten before, to drink brews and beers they’ve never drunk before, and then, to tell the rest of the world where and how to go about eating and drinking life forms they’ve never consumed before. As professional travel writer, Zac O’ Yeah belongs to the fourth category, but his latest book also offers much more than traveller’s tales – it is a hilarious take on the evolving food cultures and literature and travel in India, and is brilliant in the way interweaves books and writers with hotels and bondas.

Zac O’ Yeah’s ‘Digesting India: A Travel Writer’s Sun-continental Adventures with the Tummy (A Memoir a la Carte)’ comes in the wake of several works of non-fiction and fiction, including the famous Hari Majestic trilogy that the Swedish-Indian writer is most known for in India.

In this episode, we chat with Zac about his impressions, experiences and discoveries on his literary-culinary romp through the sub-continent.

(00:00) Introduction

(06:19) Travel writing 

(14:40) Bengaluru bookstores

(18:31) Love-hate relationship with bondas

(24:39) Experience in Bundi 

(27:53) The room in Rohet Garh 

(32:15) Encounter with RK Narayan

(36:20) Kongunadu cuisine

(41:57) Street food in Delhi

(44:40) Best places for beer in India

In 2022 Uttar Pradesh assembly elections, Bahujan Samaj Party that originated from a rare Dalit movement in North India in 1984, reached its lowest ebb winning just one seat and garnering merely 12.9 percent votes. With the general elections less than a year away, it raises an important question, what is the future for BSP and Dalit politics in Uttar Pradesh. In this episode, we speak to the authors- Professor Sudha Pai and political scientist Sajjan Kumar about their new book - Maya, Modi, Azad- Dalit Politics In The Time of Hindutva. The book analyses the reasons for the BSP's decline, whether and why Dalit voters are attracted to the BJP. It also raises the all-important question - are we in a post-BSP phase in Uttar Pradesh and what is the future of Dalit politics in the state?  

In this episode of On Book Podcast with The Hindu, we are joined by Arati Kumar-Rao, an artist, photographer and author of 'Marginlands', a book that chronicles a decade of travels to fringes of the subcontinent that journalism often leaves unexplored: the mangroves of the Sundarbans, the Thar desert and the tidepools of Goa. 

In this podcast, Kumar-Rao talks about how she discovers a desert full of water, about the 40 names for clouds the people of the Thar have, how Tagore and Satyajit Ray inform her work, and her form of slow journalism.

We are living through an era of immense political and social turmoil. People have thought the same in many past eras too. But still, the enormity of the present is something that we cannot overlook.Assumptions about our collective self that evolved over decades have been challenged, and we seem to be in the search for alternative organizing principles. This is true for India, as is for the whole world. Professor Bhargava’s writings in the recent years, seek to address some fundamental questions about how we see ourselves and relate to one another. For Professor Bhargava, the Constitution of India represents the distilled wisdom of the founders of the nation. And it offers a moral compass as well as the institutional framework to create what we call Unity in diversity. 

In this episode, we are joined by Rajeev Bhargava who is one of the finest thinkers and political philosophers of our time. He is familiar to the readers of the Hindu, as a regular writer in our op-ed pages. 

We discuss with Professor Bhargava his faith in the Constitution, which he considers sacred and why he remains optimistic, regardless of the sectarianism that surrounds us all.