truly wild to me

hmmmm this is a bit tough because I haven’t read much contemporary Indian history per se, but some books which you might find interesting:

The Indian Ideology by Perry Anderson

Utsa Patnaik’s stuff in general - she’s very good on the history of agriculture & political economy in India (The Republic of Hunger and The Long Transition)

Dispossession, Deprivation, and Development by Arindam Banerjee & C.P. Chandrashekhar

India Since Independence ed. Bipan Chandra (Bipan Chandra in general is also good)

India’s Villages in the 21st Century: Revisits and Revisions ed. Surinder S Jodhka & Edward Simpson

No Free Left by Vijay Prashad

Khaki Shorts & Saffron Flags: A Critique of the Hindu Right

The Oxford Companion to Politics in India

Ramachandra Guha can be woefully centrist (besides revealing himself to be a bit of a spineless coward after 2020′s anti-CAA protests) but a) he along with Madhav Gadgil are the best historians on India’s ecology/environment & environmental movements and b) he does have good stuff to say about contemporary Indian political history on the whole

The North East as a whole is woefully underrepresented here but I recommend looking at Sanjoy Hazarika’s two books Strangers of the Mist and Strangers No More and In The Name Of the Nation by Sanjib Baruah for basic postcolonial background