The Second Silk Net

Name: The Second Silk Net
Price: 111.35 AUD
Availability: OutOfStock
ISBN: 9789377944186

Ports, Rail, and the Politics of Corridors

Nikhil Baroukh

$130.95 $111.35

Paperback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

Availability Information

We source books from suppliers in Australia and overseas. For books we don't currently have in stock, the time it takes to get them from our suppliers can vary widely - from a few days to a few months - so we check each book with each supplier to determine the expected time it will take to be supplied to us.

We will update you on expected arrival time to us. If this delay is too long, please let us know within 2 business days and we can give you options regarding cancelling or adjusting your order. More details on cancelling your order can be found in our Terms of Trade.

To find out the anticipated arrival time for specific items prior to ordering, please contact us by phone or email:

Phone +61 2 9264 3111, or 1800 4 BOOKS (1800 4 26657) if outside Sydney:
option 1 Abbey's Bookshop (Crime, History, Science, Kids & more) • info@abbeys.com.au
option 2 Language Book Centre (ESL & Foreign Languages) • language@abbeys.com.au
option 3 Galaxy Bookshop (Sci-fi, Fantasy, Romance, Graphic Novels) • sf@galaxybooks.com.au

QTY:

English

Vij Books
30 May 2026

Development studies; Politics & government; Development economics; Management & management techniques

A corridor is supposed to shorten the distance. Yet the most consequential distance is often political: between the promises made at signing and the control that accumulates during operations. Across modern history, ports and railways have been used to bind markets together and to bind governments to terms that are hard to escape. The question is not whether infrastructure can enable growth, but how particular deals decide who sets the rules when conditions change.

The Second Silk Net treats corridors as systems built from steel, finance, and governance. Nikhil Baroukh shows how port governance models, rail operating regimes, and the fine print of concessions shape outcomes more than the headline cost or ribbon-cutting symbolism. He follows the levers that endure: contract term leverage through step-in rights and termination payments; standards interoperability as a source of lock-in and switching costs; and throughput forecasting as a political document that can turn optimism into guarantees and guarantees into crisis. With comparative cases and clear typologies, the book explains why some projects become engines of local capability while others become channels for dependency, debt pressure, or strategic leverage.

Written for students, general readers, and policy and industry analysts, this is a guide to reading infrastructure power in plain sight. Readers finish with a practical framework for locating control points across a corridor, tracing incentives through cash flows, and distinguishing ownership from operational authority. Instead of treating corridors as either benevolent development or pure geopolitics, The Second Silk Net shows how influence is designed into institutions - and how it is reproduced, contested, and sometimes renegotiated over time.

By: Nikhil Baroukh
Imprint: Vij Books
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 21mm
Weight: 494g
ISBN: 9789377944186
ISBN 10: 937794418X
Pages: 372
Publication Date: 30 May 2026
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Nikhil Baroukh is a nonfiction writer focused on how infrastructure shapes political power over time. His work sits at the intersection of political economy and strategic analysis, with a consistent interest in the institutional details that decide outcomes long after ceremonies and communiques fade: who sets the tariff, who controls dispatch, what triggers a renegotiation, and how technical standards quietly become foreign policy.Baroukh writes in an editorial voice that treats grand geopolitical narratives as hypotheses to be tested against operating reality. He is drawn to the places where sovereignty becomes procedural - port authority offices, rail timetables, customs interfaces, and the clauses that define default and cure. Rather than assuming that connectivity is automatically beneficial, he asks how benefits are distributed, how risk is priced, and how dependency can be created without overt coercion.A recurring cultural and historical thread in his thinking is the Indian Ocean world, where older layers of empire, trade, and migration still appear in today's logistics corridors and security debates. That long view informs his emphasis on durability: the idea that infrastructure is never only concrete and steel, but an argument about the future written into governance systems. The Second Silk Net reflects that approach, offering readers concepts they can carry across regions and eras, and a way to read infrastructure deals with intellectual rigour and political realism.