Synopsis BUILDING A NATION is a collection of ESSAYS ON INDIA written by Professor YOGESH ATAL, a sociologist of international renown. The conceptual framework of Insulators and Apertures that Professor Atal developed to analyse the dynamics of nation building in his famous Gandhi Memorial Lecture, delivered at the University of London in 1972, provides a connecting thread between the essays dwelling on different aspects of the Indian Society. Professor Atal forcefully argues the case for an effective communication strategy for purposes of national integration. He does not narrowly define communication as mass media but takes a broader view of it encompassing the whole range of transaction flows of men, materials, and messages. Utilizing this framework he deals with the problems of caste, linguism, unemployment, and poverty, and suggests the role that elites and mass media ought to play to curb insular tendencies and open out adequate apertures as a part of the process of nation building. These essays on political sociology relative to India should interest not only sociologists and political scientists, but also all those concerned with the problems of nation building and national integration.