Bookshelf - August 2026
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The economist Reetika Khera examines how social policies shape everyday life, and asks why social protections, considered essentials in many countries, are often dismissed as handouts in India. Drawing on field research across rural India, from anganwadi workers and school meals to the Public Distribution System, maternity benefits, pensions, public healthcare and the MGNREGA, the book traces India’s welfare architecture.
Speaking Tiger, Rs 599, 408 pages
In 1595, Chand Bibi, queen-regent of Ahmadnagar, defended the Deccan against Mughal imperial expansion, becoming one of the most formidable political and military figures of sixteenth-century India. History preserves her only in fragments. Drawing from archival research and oral histories, Sarah Waheed reconstructs her life while opening a larger inquiry into how history itself gets written: through evidence, contradiction, memory and myth.
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