Increasing political violence in India is challenging the governments ability to resolve conflicts democratically. Combining scholarship with professional experience as a police officer for more than three decades, author K.S. Subramanian sketches the growing crisis of governance in two ways: by assessing the Central Governments police organizations and through case studies of regions and communities bearing the brunt of political violence. The author is thus able to take the reader behind the sceneswhether it is on police partisanship in communal riots in Gujarat, the Home Ministrys approach to the Naxalite problem, the violence against Dalits, or the violation of human rights in Indias NorthEast. His is a plea for reconciling the modernizing impulses of civil society and the democratic urges of political society.