India and Bilateral Investment Treaties: Refusal, Acceptance, Backlash by Prabhash RANJAN. Oxford/New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019. ix + 344 pp. Hardcover: £44.99; available in Oxford Scholarship Online. doi:10.1093/oso/9780199493746.001.0001

The book contains nine well-written chapters which examine India's approach to foreign investment and IIAs under three phases, namely “refusal”, “acceptance”, and “backlash” using the orthodox dichotomy between the private interests of the foreign investors and the public interests of the host state as the moot point. While adopting a critical attitude towards the country's reactive measures in this respect, Professor Ranjan observes that all the treaty-based investment claims brought against India, thus far, challenged the abuse of its exercise of public power in relation to investors rather than confronting public welfare regulations such as in the famous investment treaty claim brought by Philip Morris against Australia and Uruguay. The fundamental thesis of the book, accordingly, supports the idea of reconceptualizing the investment treaty regime as a normative (legal) framework within which states should exercise their sovereign or public power with respect to foreign investors, ensuring that the regime serves the fundamental purpose for which it was created without imperiling a state's right to regulate in the public interests.