Editor's Pick | Books and Monographs 2025

Curated by Malancha Chakrabarty and Stelin Paul

In a year shadowed by China's border provocations, AI-driven energy surges, and cascading global crises, ORF's books and monographs delivered unflinching foresight—arming readers with strategies for health resilience, youth diplomacy, sustainable tech, agile partnerships, and existential choices. From nearly 100 publications, these five captivated audiences with their urgency and depth.

Transforming Health in India: The 2030 Innovations Agenda maps a decade-defining overhaul, fusing public-private forces to conquer malnutrition cycles, bridge access gaps, and fortify systems against ageing and climate threats.

The ORF Foreign Policy Survey 2024: Young India and the China Challenge reveals urban youth's pulse on Beijing's grey-zone aggressions—from LAC patrolling pacts to economic decoupling—gauging resolve amid trust fractures and neighbourhood encroachments.

The Consumption of Energy by Data Centres: Implications for the Global South dissects the AI boom's power hunger, questioning if Northern data hubs will spike emissions, fuel prices, and climate inequities—or if sovereignty and commerce open doors for Southern gains.

Triangular Partnerships: A Preferred Modality for a World in Crisis charts India's pivotal role in UN, US, UK, Japan, EU, and France collaborations, turning infrastructure, health, and Indo-Pacific hurdles into scalable SDG breakthroughs despite coordination snags.

The Reckoning: Regression or Renaissance? stares down climate havoc, endless wars, and tech races, rallying reforms in trade, AI sovereignty, counterterrorism, and finance to avert island submersion and mass despair.