Review of Shastri’s Learning Across Continents: My Academic Odyssey | P. S. Jayaramu

Book Review:

Learning Across Continents: My Academic Odyssey,
by Sandeep Shastri
Writers Choice Publications Pvt Ltd. New Delhi, 2026, Pp.158, Price: Rs. 495. ISBN : 978-93-49389-26-7

Prof. Sandeep Shastri , who is a well known academician writing for decades on electoral poitics, federal relations and about the functioning of India’s democratic institutions has penned a book about his academic assignments across the continents from 1993 to 2022. He refers to them as his academic odyssey. The book is a result of the copious notes he maintained, something which many academicians, including this reviewer, seldom do. The result is an extremely readable book on the cardinal topics covering his visits, which were predominantly on Constitution drafting, relations between the federal and state governments, challenges in conducting elections and more importantly the perspectives he gathered from scholars across continents drawn from the Developed West to the Developing Global South.

In the words of Dr. Rupak Chattopadhyay who has written the Foreward, ‘ what unites these diverse journeys is Sandeep’s belief that democratic federalism and decentralisation are tools for managing diversity, fostering inclusion and enabling responsive governance’ as drawn from his comparative surveys like the Global Barometer Survey and the State of Democracy Studies. The book reminds us that ‘federalism is not simply a Constitutional solution but a democratic ethic resulting in a willingness to share power, to respect differences, to negotiate rather than dominate and to remain open to learning’. Sanguine feelings of a writer observed more in breach than in reality in a world where even electoral democracies are turning into electoral autocracies, as Prof. Yogendra Yadav reminds us.

True to his belief in federalism as a panacea for national problems, Sandeep Shastri’s first visit abroad was to Salzburg in 1993 as a Fellow at the famous Salzburg seminar on Perspectives on Federalism where European, Canadian US and Indian participants shared their perspectives. The focus was rightly more on the regions than the centre.

The author’s visits to the United States began as an International Visitor (IV Provram) under the invitation of the US Government, which was followed by many more visits laid the foundation for forging academic partnerships with focus more on Comparative Democracies. The differences between the Western and Eastern/Third world Democracies were glaring, sadly with not many meeting points.( This reviewer too had the privilege to attend Salzburg seminar and the IV program in the United States, though on different themes relating to International Relations).

In contrast to the developed West which the author covered during his several journies, his visits to South Sudan brought into sharp focus the problems it faces in Constitution Making and Decentralisation. But as the author himself observes, poverty and underdevelopment characterised the nation in general. Sadly, South Sudan remains an authoritarian country even today under the garb of a transitional Presidential ‘Republic’.

I must make a reference to the innumerable visits Prof. Shastri made to Myanmar in his capacity as the leading resource person as part of the Forum of Federation’s Capacity Building Programme for Transition to Democratic Decentralisation. He was also a senior adviser to the said Forum. He says that Myanmar had a unique decentralisation structure with regions and the states.(P.96) His and others’ job was to sensitise the trainers to provide balanced perspectives on critical issues in national development. But the capacity building exercises notwithstanding, Myanmar is still miles away from Democracy and genuine decentralisatio. Of course Prof. Shastri expresses his disappointment at the ‘backsliding that has occurred there (P.110) and remains hopeful of better days in self-governance at all levels.

Sandeep Shastri’s odyssey took him to many countries in Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia, the Gulf, China etc,. He gained interesting and diverse insights into the functioning of the political systems of those countries. As he says in the end, his voyage of discovery yielded nine key lessons in learning, leading to the realisation that history is not a story of monuments and historical sites, rather, it is in the cut and thrust of everyday lives of people.(P.150).

As a reviewer, I must say i enjoyed reading the book. I recommend it to fellow academicians and the general readers. But, having said that, I must say that, unfortunately, most of the democratic nations he visited are witnessing a backsliding, which is the unfortunate ‘new normal’.well, that has nothing to do with Prof. Shastri’s scholarship.

A word about the Publishing House. Writers Choice Publications Pvt. Ltd. has brought out the bookin an elegant and extremely readable manner in shortestest possible time, as I understand. Kudos to them.

(Reviwer: Dr. P. S. Jayaramu is former Professor of Political Science, Bangalore University and former Senior Fellow, ICSSR, New Delhi)