Want to know what books Kaushik Basu recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Kaushik Basu's favorite book recommendations of all time.
1
On the morning of October 31, 1984, as she walked through her garden, smiling, with hands raised and palms pressed together in the traditional Indian namaste greeting, Indira Nehru Gandhi was assassinated by her own bodyguards. She died as she had lived, surrounded by men, yet isolated. It was a violent end to a life of epic drama.
Here is the first popular biography of one of the world's most influential leaders, India's third prime minister. Brought up during an era that saw the rise of Indian nationalism, Indira was raised to be what her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, called "a child of... more On the morning of October 31, 1984, as she walked through her garden, smiling, with hands raised and palms pressed together in the traditional Indian namaste greeting, Indira Nehru Gandhi was assassinated by her own bodyguards. She died as she had lived, surrounded by men, yet isolated. It was a violent end to a life of epic drama.
Here is the first popular biography of one of the world's most influential leaders, India's third prime minister. Brought up during an era that saw the rise of Indian nationalism, Indira was raised to be what her father, Jawaharlal Nehru, called "a child of revolution" - destined to play a political role in the creation and governing of an independent India. Despite her early reluctance to embrace this role, Indira eventually presided over a huge, complex, religiously riven, and male-dominated country. She was born to a wealthy, westernized family, but she had a gift for connecting with the poor of the countryside and the urban slums, the illiterate, the dispossessed - so much so that "Indira is India" became a familiar slogan. Throughout childhood, love, marriage, imprisonment, motherhood, and a sequence of personal and family tragedies, her personal hopes and desires were continually subsumed by the historical and political imperatives of her country.
In this beautifully written book, the acclaimed biographer Katherine Frank draws on unpublished sources and more than a hundred interviews to create a rich, balanced portrait. INDIRA captures in full color the personal and political fate of the leader of the world's largest democracy - the woman who played a dominant role in the history of the twentieth century and who, when it ended, was voted Woman of the Millennium by the BBC. less 
Kaushik BasuThis is a real page-turner. It’s really an account of Indira Gandhi as a person and her complexity as a leader. (Source)
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2
A visionary look at the evolution and future of India
In this momentous book, Nandan Nilekani traces the central ideas that shaped India's past and present and asks the key question of the future: How will India as a global power avoid the mistakes of earlier development models? As a co-founder of Infosys, a global leader in information technology, Nilekani has actively participated in the company's rise during the past twenty-seven years. In Imagining India, he uses his global experience and understanding to discuss the future of India and its role as a global... more A visionary look at the evolution and future of India
In this momentous book, Nandan Nilekani traces the central ideas that shaped India's past and present and asks the key question of the future: How will India as a global power avoid the mistakes of earlier development models? As a co-founder of Infosys, a global leader in information technology, Nilekani has actively participated in the company's rise during the past twenty-seven years. In Imagining India, he uses his global experience and understanding to discuss the future of India and its role as a global citizen and emerging economic giant. Nilekani engages with India's particular obstacles and opportunities, charting a new way forward for the young nation. less Kaushik BasuHe says that he is an incorrigible optimist and that comes out. The book is teeming with little ideas that India can do. (Source)
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3
The fact that our global economy is broken may be widely accepted, but what precisely needs to be fixed has become the subject of enormous controversy. In 2008, the president of the United Nations General Assembly convened an international panel, chaired by Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and including twenty leading international experts on the international monetary system, to address this crucial issue.
The Stiglitz Report, released by the committee in late 2009, sees the recent financial crisis as the latest and most damaging of several concurrent crises—of... more The fact that our global economy is broken may be widely accepted, but what precisely needs to be fixed has become the subject of enormous controversy. In 2008, the president of the United Nations General Assembly convened an international panel, chaired by Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and including twenty leading international experts on the international monetary system, to address this crucial issue.
The Stiglitz Report, released by the committee in late 2009, sees the recent financial crisis as the latest and most damaging of several concurrent crises—of food, water, energy, and sustainability—that are tightly interrelated. The analysis and recommendations in the report cover the gamut from short-term mitigation to deep structural changes, from crisis response to reform of the global, economic, and financial architecture.
The report establishes a bold agenda for policy change, that is sure to be the gold standard for understanding and contending with the international economy for many years to come. The Stiglitz Report is essential reading for anyone concerned about a secure and prosperous world. less Kaushik BasuThis is one of those rare books where the focus is on what the financial crisis has done to the poor. (Source)
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4
A Nobel Laureate offers a dazzling new book about his native country
India is a country with many distinct traditions, widely divergent customs, vastly different convictions, and a veritable feast of viewpoints. In The Argumentative Indian," Amartya Sen draws on a lifetime study of his country's history and culture to suggest the ways we must understand India today in the light of its rich, long argumentative tradition.
The millenia-old texts and interpretations of Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Muslim, agnostic, and atheistic Indian thought demonstrate, Sen reminds us, ancient and... more A Nobel Laureate offers a dazzling new book about his native country
India is a country with many distinct traditions, widely divergent customs, vastly different convictions, and a veritable feast of viewpoints. In The Argumentative Indian," Amartya Sen draws on a lifetime study of his country's history and culture to suggest the ways we must understand India today in the light of its rich, long argumentative tradition.
The millenia-old texts and interpretations of Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Muslim, agnostic, and atheistic Indian thought demonstrate, Sen reminds us, ancient and well-respected rules for conducting debates and disputations, and for appreciating not only the richness of India's diversity but its need for toleration.
Though Westerners have often perceived India as a place of endless spirituality and unreasoning mysticism, he underlines its long tradition of skepticism and reasoning, not to mention its secular contributions to mathematics, astronomy, linguistics, medicine, and political economy.
Sen discusses many aspects of India's rich intellectual and political heritage, including philosophies of governance from Kautilya's and Ashoka's in the fourth and third centuries BCE to Akbar's in the 1590s; the history and continuing relevance of India's relations with China more than a millennium ago; its old and well-organized calendars; the films of Satyajit Ray and the debates between Gandhi and the visionary poet Tagore about India's past, present, and future.
The success of India's democracy and defense of its secular politics depend, Sen argues, on understanding and using this rich argumentative tradition. It is also essential to removing the inequalities (whether of caste, gender, class, or community) that mar Indian life, to stabilizing the now precarious conditions of a nuclear-armed subcontinent, and to correcting what Sen calls the politics of deprivation. His invaluable book concludes with his meditations on pluralism, on dialogue and dialectics in the pursuit of social justice, and on the nature of the Indian identity.
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William DalrympleIt’s definitely not the first book you should read on India, it’s for someone who knows the country well, but it’s a wonderfully erudite, discursive, witty, clever book. (Source)
Kaushik BasuDepending how you count, almost any nation could be portrayed as argumentative. But he uses this central theme to range over an amazing breadth of scholarship (Source)
Pankaj MishraThe book does a tremendous job of giving you a sense of the many, many layers of history, of identities, that constitute this society. (Source)
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5
A magisterial account of the pains, the struggles, the humiliations, and the glories of the world's largest and least likely democracy, Ramachandra Guha's India After Gandhi is a breathtaking chronicle of the brutal conflicts that have rocked a giant nation and the extraordinary factors that have held it together. An intricately researched and elegantly written epic history peopled with larger-than-life characters, it is the work of a major scholar at the peak of his abilities... more A magisterial account of the pains, the struggles, the humiliations, and the glories of the world's largest and least likely democracy, Ramachandra Guha's India After Gandhi is a breathtaking chronicle of the brutal conflicts that have rocked a giant nation and the extraordinary factors that have held it together. An intricately researched and elegantly written epic history peopled with larger-than-life characters, it is the work of a major scholar at the peak of his abilities... less Kaushik BasuAs a book on recent India, it’s one of the best, maybe the best, that I’ve read – a mammoth amount of information, put together in a way that anybody can read. (Source)
Pankhuri PathakIf I were only allowed...
One cuisine: Mughlai
One author: J K Rowling
One musician: Jagjeet Singh
One season: Monsoon
One city: Varanasi
One game: Tekken 3
One book: India After Gandhi by Ramchandra Guha
One movie: PS I Love You
One colour: Black
How about you? https://t.co/yG0cfCzRBj (Source)
Patrick FrenchIt gets right inside that period of the first few decades after independence in a way that I don’t think any other book does. (Source)
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