Aditya Sinha Boeken

Pointing to the horizon where the sea and sky are joined, he says, 'It is only an illusion because they can't really meet, but isn't it beautiful, this union which isn't really there.' -- SAADAT HASAN MANTO Sometime in 2016, a series of dialogues took place which set out to find a meeting ground, even if only an illusion, between A.S. Dulat and Asad Durrani. One was a former chief of RAW, India's external intelligence agency, the other of ISI, its Pakistani counterpart. As they could not meet in their home countries, the conversations, guided by journalist Aditya Sinha, took place in cities like Istanbul, Bangkok and Kathmandu.On the table were subjects that have long haunted South Asia, flashpoints that take lives regularly. It was in all ways a deep dive into the politics of the subcontinent, as seen through the eyes of two spymasters. Among the subjects: Kashmir, and a missed opportunity for peace; Hafiz Saeed and 26/11; Kulbhushan Jadhav; surgical strikes; the deal for Osama bin Laden; how the US and Russia feature in the India-Pakistan relationship; and how terror undermines the two countries' attempts at talks.When the project was first mooted, General Durrani laughed and said nobody would believe it even if it was written as fiction. At a time of fraught relations, this unlikely dialogue between two former spy chiefs from opposite sides--a project that is the first of its kind--may well provide some answers.

Yashwant Sinha is one of the fiercest, bravest and most well-respected critics of the Narendra Modi government. A former finance minister, he has seen first-hand and steered the country out of several crises, including the East Asian Crisis of 1997 and the sanctions that the US imposed on India in 1998 after the nuclear tests. Sinha's tenure as finance minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government is celebrated as a golden period of economic reform and infrastructure building. In this book, he says the things that many are thinking but few have the courage to say. He looks back at the Modi government's economic and development track record and separates the truth from the PR spin. He also compares the political leadership and vision of Modi and Vajpayee. What emerges is a deeply troubling portrait of a prime minister and a government that have wasted a once-in-a-lifetime mandate.