Ever since the emergence of the unmanned phenomenon, the warfare has never been the same. Starting from their very humble beginnings of giving the war-fighter the marginally incremental capability to ‘look around the corner and over the hill’ the Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) have come to impact every dimension of war fighting today.

In the Name of the Nation: India and its North East, authored by Sanjib Baruah interrogates the interaction of North East India with the territorial conceptions of the post colonial nation-state and state sovereignty. The North Eastern Region consisting of small language communities, tribes and sub-tribes offers the picture of opaque multiplicity. By contextualising the continuities and discontinuities between colonial and post-colonial state institutions, the author posits that the political process has reinforced a relation of hierarchy and a centre-periphery interactional dynamic.

India is at the cusp of metamorphosing from a regional player to one with global clout. As India’s geo-political and economic ambitions grow, it needs to develop robust indigenous manufacturing capabilities and ecosystem to secure its ambition for self-reliance in the Aerospace and Defence industry.

Bashir Assad’s book comes at an appropriate time, as it provides an insider and subaltern view of Kashmir. He has firsthand experience of the developments in Kashmir for the past 30 years. In his own words, he has lived the ideology of Maududi Islam for 3 years, after he passed class X. He has been associated with PDP founder Mufti Mohammad Syed. And he has been following the events in Kashmir, as a journalist, columnist and social activist.