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India Briefing, 1989

Edited by Marshall M. Bouton and Philip K. Oldenburg
Reviewed by By Donald S. Zagoria
Spring 1990
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Edited by Marshall M. Bouton and Philip K. Oldenburg
Westview Press/New York: The Asia Society
1989
198 pp.
$33.95

The Asia Society's annual briefing book on current developments in India is again carried out in a skillful manner. There are solid chapters on Indian economics and politics, the ferment among women, the media and environmental problems. Lloyd I. Rudolph has a particularly penetrating essay on Indian domestic and foreign policy in which he highlights the growth of Indian military power (Indian armed forces now rank fourth after the Soviet Union, China and the United States). According to Rudolph, Australian and Indonesian defense analysts in particular now wonder about India's long-term intentions, and the author sees an unresolved tension between India's effort to be both a world military power and the nonaligned promoter of a nonnuclear, peaceful world.

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