The articles in this book are written by various authors who deal with numerous aspects of the Government National Adult Education Programme of 1978. The book reads as though a group of people are discussing the means of transporting a doctor, some suggest that the doctor should be brought by road or by air and yet others are talking of the financial implications.
There is a common belief that books published by government departments are not worthy of serious evaluation because of the lackadaisical treatment they generally receive from their publishers. But exceptions are there and this book under review happens to be one.
When Jan Breman’s book was first published in 1974, Rural Sociology and Anthropology was going through an introspection: community development and Panchayat Raj had failed to bring about the peaceful revolution which would end .inequality and’ poverty.
An understanding of the period from 1830 when Raja Rammohan Roy took first faltering steps on the road to what later came to be known as the Indian Renaissance, to 1947, the year which became the culmination point for various socio-political processes, is essential for a correct appraisal of our present predicament.
Shiv K. Kumar made his name in the Indian literary world as a poet. He is also a highly successful member of academe as can be seen from the impressive string of appointments listed in the biographical note on the back jacket of his collection of short stories.
This book won considerable acclaim when it was first published (by Virago) in 1978 for its exposure of the terrible condition of Asian Women workers in Britain. This book is more a political document than a sociological monograph—while it is based on a series of interviews with Asian Women it is not so much a survey of conditions as demonstration of their nascent political unity.
Nobody may dispute that Jayaprakash Narayan, popularly called JP, has been an important factor in Indian polity for about half a century. Starting as a Marxist (while a student in the United States of America!), he became a votary of non-violence under Gandhi’s influence and took part in the various satyagraha movements launched by the Mahatma for the country’s freedom.
The collection of papers under review was first published in 1969, five years after they first felt the heat of discussion at a seminar, at the University of Wisconsin. The continuing demand for them and the response aroused by them are the reasons offered by the editor for the second edition.
‘Identity and Adulthood’ is the product of a month-long seminar organized by the Indian Council of Social Sciences Research in the year 1978, when experts such as Erik Erikson, basically a psycho-analyst was called upon to lead the discussion. Sudhir Kakar as the editor has attempted to bring together in this volume the views of experts from different fields on the growing up process in the Indian context.
Sugar has produced magnates, bosses, operators and lobbies. These have held the country to ransom. The phenomenon will make V.L. Mehta and D.R. Gadgil turn in their graves. The former, Minister of Finance and Co-operation in post-Independence Bombay state, had encouraged the growth of co-operative sugar factories with great enthusiasm.
Crime and Sex in Ancient India deals with the crimes and sexual aberrations prevalent in ancient India and the punishments meted out. The title is rather a misnomer as the volume does not relate crime and sex to each other even though one can gather when sex became criminal to our ancients.
In 1980 two outstanding books have appeared on South Indian History or more specifically Cola history. One is of course by Burton Stein, the veteran Indologist (‘Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India’, Oxford University Press, 1980). The other is the book under review. The traditional approach has been to study the so-called ‘village republics’ and the Chola ‘Byzantine’ State at two different levels without sufficient conceptualization thereby overlooking the obvious contradiction.
It is given to few to sow new seeds in their field of academic specialization and to even fewer to do so beyond the narrow confines of the groves of academe. Daniel Thorner was one of them. He’ did this with the generosity of effortless fecundity, perhaps with a fine carelessness and no thoughts to the profits of harvesting scattered pieces in the shape of such volumes as lesser academics produce.
Alfred Hitchcocks Psycho encouraged me to take cinema seriously as an art form with its own methods and a visual language distinct from the words being spoken by the characters on screen writes Jai Arjun Singh in Monsters I Have Known an engaging and expansive essay on the horror films that spoke to him in ways no film scholar could understand…
In his latest book, R.J. Moore traces the complicated course of the war-time efforts of Stafford Cripps to bring the Indian leaders into the Government and thereby behind the war effort.
2011
Daisy Hasans deeply atmospheric novel is set in Shillong in the North East. The central motif that runs like a thread in the novel is the attempt on the part of the characters to retrieve the sense of belonging to a place. Mas search for the elusive lover is also the search for ones homeland. A deep sense of betrayal haunts both the searches…
Pick up a travel guide to India. Look for any of the followingKakur Naichanpur Ikhar Davangere Azamgarh. Youd be lucky to find them mentioned in any detail. Even in cricket-centered talk these places dont ring a bell. A whole generation of cricket lovers have wallowed in the fandom of cricketing stars like Sachin Tendulkar from Mumbai…
Performance studies in India should be very pleased with the intervention made by Bishnupriya Dutt and Urmimala Sarkar Munsi. Taking the elements of search as well as identity quite seriously, the authors have managed to keep their work and explorations away from the theoretical closure that often accompanies such endeavours…
You might run across Damodar K.K. Ghanekar cycling in Panjim quite absent-minded and lost deep in thought. Without much ado and spending half-a-dozen years over the task Ghanekar recently put together Konkanis most ambitious dictionary one which spans over two thousand pages! To undertake a task of this scale perhaps one needs to be lost in a world of ones own!…
The state defines prison as a space for the isolation and reform of individuals not fit to live in society. Prisoners narratives of everyday life are jabs in this faade that bleed over the fabric of total spaces and stain it with its own fallacies. Mahuya Bandyopadhyays account makes a departure from the existing literature on Indian…