India Briefing: Takeoff at Last? (review)

538Book Reviews chapters. The normative environment of world politics clearly has changed over the last few decades, and Southeast Asia's leaders are being forced to confront this, even if it is only to reject it and retreat into costly, self-destructive isolation, as Burma has done. However, by its own admission this is not a book that is necessarily seeking to transform debates about Southeast Asia, but to introduce students to them, and the factors that have underpinned them in this highly distinctive region. Apart from the usual glaring absence of any substantive discussion of the region's underlying economic structures, circumstances, and prospects — "international relations" scholars still seem to think such issues are peripheral despite events like the Asian financial crisis and its implications for intra- and inter-regional relations — this book provides a sound introduction to the region. Mark Beeson School of Political Science and International Studies University of Queensland Rrisbane, Australia India Briefing: Takeoff at Last? Edited by Alyssa Ayres and Philip Oldenburg. Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 2005. Softcover: 285pp. "India Rising" has been the constant refrain in the global academic, policy, and strategic communities. The past decade has been momentous in terms ofIndia's robust economic and industrial growth, its burgeoning knowledge capital and industrial capabilities — a new confidence in its foreign policy and diplomatic initiatives and an assertion ofits strategic and military capabilities that had come with the 1998 nuclear tests and an expanding versatile profile of its maritime power. Globalization has been the pivotal force of India's social and economic transformation that has unshackled its potential. The paradigm shift from its autarkic economic process to a liberalized competitive process has been crucial in the realization ofW.W. Rostow's conception of the "takeoff" stage of economic robustness. India Rriefing is a project of the Asia Society, New York. It has been a systematic, coherent, and rigorous commentary on India's promise and performance. Articulated on an annual basis as a review of the country's systemic performance, it comprehensively assesses the rising Asian power's political capacity, social cohesion, economic viability, Book Reviews539 strategic autonomy and operations, technological capabilities and its knowledge capital. The volume entitled India Rriefing: TakeoffatLast?— the eleventh publication in the series of annual reviews that has been eloquently written with rigour, factual substance, and analysis by several eminent authors brings to focus the vicissitudes of India with its glowing and promising performance of a credible takeoff curve that has been convincing. The editors of this volume, Alyssa Ayres and Philip Oldenburg have structured the thematic organization of this book predicated on the changing contours of Political India and Economic India as the primary pillars of India's transformation. India Rriefing: Takeoff at Last? commences with an Introduction that is a review of India in retrospect. The editors analyse the issues of significance of India that have furnished the rationale to label the subtitle Takeoff at Last. Niraja Gopal Jayal sketches the essay "Politics: The BJP Falls from Power" based on the analysis of the political narratives of democracy and coalition governance in India. It analyses the causal symptoms of the BJP-NDA alliance (Bharatiya Janata Party-National Democratic Alliance) defeat in the 2004 General Election and the nuances of coalition government formation and performance in India. The essay is diachronic in scope in that it analyses the various events of the NDA coalition, its policy profile, its governance styles, and its public image and perception. Jayal analyses the BJP-NDA coalition's poll debacle and follows it with the challenges and issues facing the Congress-United Progressive Alliance and its governance. She analyses the issues of governance in the context of economic and public policy and how the various issues ofgovernance and public policy have been synthesized as a compromise for the sake of coalition government stability. The Indian economy has been portraying a consistent profile of performance notwithstanding the changes of government and the demands of coalition governance. Isher fudge Ahluwalia narrates the promise and performance of structural reforms in the Indian economy in his essay "Indian Economy: New Pathways to Growth and Development". The analysis rigorously examines the pathways ofIndia's experiment and experience...