Daily Archives: July 18, 2017

Modern liberal democracies see laws based on coercion as a feature of the ancient-medieval barbaric regimes of the past or the uncivilized ‘other’.

This massive volume is a great disappointment. Of the nineteen chapters, one is outstanding, four or five others are well done and generally informative. Apart from these few exceptions, there is little new information provided and the articles offer few if any insights into this critical period in modern Indian history.

Poetry must be raw, like a side of beef, should drip blood, remind you of sweat and dusty slaughter and the epidermal crunch and the sudden bullet to the head. —Mona Zote

When was the last time that one has come across a co-authored book that takes the form of an explicit debate? Among the qualities that make this book so stimulating, its genuinely dialogical structure must come first.

Women’s Studies (WS) in India emerged in the wake of the women’s movement of the 1970s and shared its transformative goals.

A city is not an onion that can be unpeeled to reveal its layers. It is a breathing organism shaped by the ideologies that create it.

With the surging idea of civic participation in affairs of governance in India, there cannot be a more opportune time for K.C. Sivaramakrishnan’s book which presents an informative and detailed background of the early efforts made in the area of urban development in the country.

Last year marked twenty years of the demolition of Babri Masjid, followed by a series of large-scale communal violence, clashes and riots in different parts of India, especially in the Bombay then and now Mumbai.

Climate change as a political issue has usually been on the backburner in India, coming forth for intense public discussion only around the time when Indian representatives are off to attend yet another round of negotiations.

With the dawn of an era of liberalization and globalization in India, rural and urban development cannot be strictly compartmentalized.

Kaushik Basu who has written the foreword for the book says ‘Taking advantage of this (2011) being the Golden Jubilee Year of the IES (Indian Economic Service), it was decided to bring out a book written entirely by the officers of the service.’