Shashi Tharoor, Pranab Bardhan, and more for PS Read More

India Is Broken, by Ashoka Mody; The Fractured Himalaya, by Nirupama Rao; and more The PS Say More Newsletter | [View this message in a web browser]( [PS Read More]( In this week's edition of PS Read More, we share recommendations from Shashi Tharoor, an MP for the Indian National Congress. We also highlight a recent work by Pranab Bardhan, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. And don't miss recommendations from New America CEO Anne-Marie Slaughter and Shlomo Ben-Ami, Vice President of the Toledo International Center for Peace. Shashi Tharoor Recommends... [The Truth Pill: The Myth of Drug Regulation in India]( By Dinesh Thakur and Prashant Reddy This new book examines how the failure by national and state drug regulators to do their jobs properly enables some Indian pharmaceutical companies to get away with making and selling sub-standard drugs. Thakur and Reddy dismiss as unverified the claim – made in the 2016 national drug survey conducted by the National Institute of Biologicals – that only 3% of the drugs manufactured in India are sub-standard. In fact, they point out, the same survey established that 10% of all drugs supplied to the government, and even more to the military, are sub-standard and unsafe. If India’s government and armed forces are being given such pharmaceuticals, what are the chances that we ordinary consumers are faring any better? [India is Broken: A People Betrayed, Independence to Today]( By [Ashoka Mody]( Princeton economist Ashoka Mody offers a detailed, richly resourced, and highly readable study of India’s economy since the end of colonial rule. He is unsparingly critical of every Indian leader, from Jawaharlal Nehru to Narendra Modi, and paints a vivid picture of millions of Indians struggling with high unemployment and living on the margins of a society where public goods are lacking and institutions are woefully ineffective. His arguments will not be universally endorsed, but they offer a sobering corrective to some of the current hype about the world’s fastest-growing major economy. [The Fractured Himalaya: India, Tibet, China 1949-62]( By Nirupama Rao This is a remarkable work of scholarship by a professional diplomat. Rao offers a well-researched and highly readable account of the origins and nature of the tensions that today dominate relations between China and India. Though it ends in 1962, Rao’s account, by combining historical fact with considerable diplomatic experience and insight, gives the serious reader an unparalleled understanding of how cultural tradition, unfounded assumptions, rosy illusions, and policy missteps put the two Asian powers on a slippery slope to war. Understanding this history is more important than ever, because it forms the background for the conflicts that continue to beset the bilateral relationship. Don't miss Tharoor's recent Say More interview, in which he assesses prevailing Indian perceptions of the Ukraine War, criticizes India’s continued wariness of security pacts, touts affirmative-action programs that guarantee outcomes, not just access to opportunities, and more. [Read now](. By a PS Contributor [A World of Insecurity: Democratic Disenchantment in Rich and Poor Countries]( By [Pranab Bardhan]( Bardhan says: "In A World of Insecurity, I analyze the socio-economic and cultural forces behind the widely-discussed democratic backsliding that has occurred in both rich and poor countries in recent years. I explain why rising insecurity is a major driver of this trend – more so than soaring inequality – and that this insecurity is not only economic, but also cultural, including manufactured victimhood and wounded cultural pride stoked by demagogues of majoritarian nationalism. The book then shows that other, more tolerant forms of nationalism and civic forms of community pride are possible. It goes on to discuss a range of policies that would boost economic security within the framework of a rejuvenated form of social democracy. For example, it champions efforts to amplify the voices and increase the bargaining power of workers in corporate governance, not least to promote more labor-empowering patterns of innovation. The book also includes a detailed discussion of why the lure of the Chinese model of authoritarian capitalism is ultimately hollow." Could the “Chinese Century” Belong to India? In a recent PS Big Question, we asked Bardhan, Brahma Chellaney, Pinelopi Koujianou Goldberg, and Yi Fuxian whether India’s rising star will soon outshine China’s. [Read now](. More Contributor Recommendations Anne-Marie Slaughter Recommends... [Klara and the Sun]( By Kazuo Ishiguro This novel has gotten a lot of well-deserved attention. I found it absolutely revelatory. I am not a big science fiction fan, so the idea of a story told entirely from an android’s perspective did not appeal. After reading it, however, I would advise anyone who wants to think about a future in which human and artificial intelligence intertwine to forget the countless non-fiction books and articles on the subject and read this book instead. I came away from Klara and the Sun with a far better sense of how artificial entities – beings? – learn. I pondered the deep ethical dilemmas that will confront us. I mused on the interdependence of emotion and reason. If Ishiguro’s great novel The Remains of the Day is about a man who behaves like a robot, Klara and the Sun is about a robot who behaves like a human. Both invite us to consider the essence of our humanity. (From 2022) --------------------------------------------------------------- Shlomo Ben-Ami Recommends... [Trotsky: A Biography]( By Robert Service Having read Deutscher’s exceedingly adulatory three-volume biography of Trotsky years ago, I have finally had my trust in the subject restored. Service’s book is a masterpiece of critical and overwhelmingly documented scholarship. Great leaders – Trotsky was a central figure in the Soviet revolution and the architect of the Bolsheviks’ victory in the civil war – are never infallible. But in Trotsky’s case, character flaws, intellectual arrogance, and indifference to political conditions were his downfall. In his struggle for leadership against Stalin – an unscrupulous master politician who knew exactly how to control a party machine – he didn’t stand a chance. In essence, Service’s narrative bridges the gap between Trotsky’s extraordinary intellect, oratorical talent, and organizational skills and his exceedingly poor political judgment. It turns out that Trotsky’s self-imposed inhibitions, rooted in his Jewishness, played a considerable part in his downfall. (From 2022) [PS. 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