About the Book

Battlefield India is a chronicle of the near past which tells us how the cycle of chaos repeats itself. The story starts in 1997 on the eve of India’s 50th year as an independent nation, and ends in 2022 as free India celebrates its 75th birthday. The political, economic, and social events of the last 25 years are recounted through the voices of people the author has interviewed over the years. These voices include many who shall go down in the history books as legends of this period in India’s long history: among others, the man behind the Green Revolution and a member of independent India’s Constituent Assembly C Subramaniam, the former President of India R. Venkataraman, the eminent agronomist Dr M S Swaminathan, the acerbic cartoonist Abu Abraham, the inimitable political commentator Cho Ramaswamy, and the ever eloquent MP Shashi Tharoor.

About the Author

Shobha Warrier has been a journalist and writer for over forty years, during the course of which she has been witness to and chronicler of the many seismic shifts within India. Currently the Senior Editorial Director of Rediff.com, she has been associated with Rediff.com from its inception in 1996. Prior to that, her writing, on a variety of subjects, has featured in the Sunday Observer, The Independent, The Hindu, The Asian Age, and Eve’s Weekly. In addition, she is a prolific and award-winning author, having been awarded the Lalithambika Antharjanam award for Best Young Woman Writer in 1996 for her book Jalavidya. She has published three short story collections in her native tongue Malayalam (Ramakundam, Meghana, and Jalavidya). Her short story was featured in the anthology of short stories by women writers from Kerala, titled The Inner Spaces. Battlefield India is her fifth book in English; the others being The Little Flower Girl and Others, His Days with Bapu, Dreamchasers: Entrepreneurs from the South of the Vindhyas, and Dreamchasers: Women Entrepreneurs from the South of the Vindhyas. As an interviewer, Shobha has established a reputation for her gentle yet incisive style of questioning, which often brings out aspects of the interviewee that are otherwise missed and draws out thoughts that are otherwise left unsaid.