Pax Indica is the dummy’s guide to Indian foreign policy. It is a book that students, reporters and those trying to understand the new India will find useful. It is written in Tharoor’s trademark easy, lucid style. The book gives you a large sweep of India’s diplomatic challenges, beginning with a chapter that revisits Nehru’s India, and the shift to a more pragmatic foreign policy with a willingness to do business with all. The chapter effectively lays the ground for the ‘onion that is peeled’ next—as Tharoor puts it, beginning with Pakistan and then moving beyond.