Monthly Archives: May 2018

The book is a collection of papers by well known authors who are acknowledged experts in their fields of interest. The editors, Anita Weiss and Zulfiqar Gilani, have done excellent editorial work to bring out the basic problems that beset Pakistani society.

Diplomatic Divide co-authored by two eminent diplomats of India and Pakistan, in a mere 138 pages, brings out in a very readable form, numerous anecdotes, incidents and behind the scene activities which has also influenced, even if momentarily, the crucial phases of India’s relationship with Pakistan.

One of the major achievements of the organized working class in the market economies of the world, where wages are settled between employers and employees through collective bargaining, is its right to obtain compensation in wages from time to time by an agreed rate of dearness allowance for a given rise in cost of living.

To very few would a person like L.K. Jha require any introduction. Having joined the Indian Civil Service in 1936, he held top economic posts in the Government of India. Apart from being the Secretary to two Prime Ministers, he held posts of Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, Ambassador to U.S.A., Governor of the International Monetary Fund and Governor of Jammu & Kashmir.

The author Edward Duyker was attached to Griffith University at Brisbane and to the University of Sydney. Presently he is a full time writer. The book deals with one of the most politically turbulent periods of recent Indian history with particular reference to West Bengal.

The Non-Aligned summit in New Delhi in 1983 gave an impetus for several intellectual enterprises in India. Some have proved to be durable, like Namedia, a centre for the study of the mass media in the non-aligned countries, and others have turned out to be transient, like a quarterly magazine entitled. The Non-Aligned World, which was launched under the editorship of Professor M. S. Rajan, a good scholar with sound intellectual commitments.

Escott Reid was high commissioner of Canada in India from 1952 to 1957. These were the years when, with Conservative governments in Britain and Dulles making policy in Washington, Nehru found a more sympathetic hearing in Ottawa and formed a cordial personal relationship with St. Leurent, the Canadian prime minister.

Like its forerunners, the fifth volume in the second series of Jawaharlal Nehru’s, selected works makes delightful reading. If, in some ways, it is even more absorb¬ing than some of the preceding volumes, the reason is that it deals with a period closer to our times which also happened to be a crucial, indeed climactic, one. During it the nation suffered the trauma of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination at the hands of a Hindu fanatic, the Kashmir war dragged on, relations with Pakistan hovered on the brink and myriad pro¬blems of national integration and econo¬mic development cried out for attention.

What is termed as Indo-Anglian poetry has been having a long innings with P. Lai’s Writers’ Workshop acting the role of a midwife, as it were, for a whole lot of poets, good, bad and indiffe¬rent during the last 30 years.

For the first time ever in a decade and more, the NCERT, the apex body advising the Government of India on educational matters, has woken up from its hibernation and brought out a book that is something worthwhile possessing or presenting to the younger generation. For here is a beautiful book to behold, to feel and to read. Ever since Dr. Malhotra migrated from the Vocational Education set¬up to NCERT, there has been a noticeable sea-change. This book is true evidence.

Everyone is aware of the fact that service in banks, especial¬ly nationalized banks, has deteriorated over the years in our country. Many attribute this to job security, which nationalization has given to the bank employees. It is this confidence in job security we thought, that infused a great deal of arrogance and indiffe¬rence among them. But a reading of the book under review shows up vast areas of hitherto unknown, behind-the-scene activities of bank personnel.

For about two decades now, there has been a very lively and often acrimonious debate on the questions of ‘free and balanced flow of information’, Freedom of the Press, the right to sources of news, the right to know, the right to privacy, protection against exploitation via media, distor¬tion, bias and misinformation, selective exposure and so on. The Third World’s demand for a New World Information and Communication Order has emerged from this debate.

This compact volume with an introduction by Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, former Chairman, Joint Chief of Staff, United States, consists of three essays. In the first one Geoffrey Kemp discusses ‘Maritime Access and Maritime Power, The Past, the Persian Gulf and the Future.’ The second by Admiral Robert J. Hanks and Alvin J. Cottrell deals with ‘The Strait of Hormuz: Strategic Choke-point’ and the third on ‘A Permanent Naval Presence in the Indian Ocean’ by Admiral Moorer and Alvin J. Cottrell, as is clear from the title, presents the case for a perma¬nent US naval presence in the Indian Ocean area.

According to a study con¬ducted by a United Nations Commission (1980), women form one-third of the total world labour force and do most of the unpaid work. But they receive only ten per cent of the world income and own less than one per cent of the world property.

Shahryar Khan, formerly Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary and Ambassador in France, Jordan etc., and presently Chief of the Pakistan Cricket Board, is an old friend. This is his late mother’s autobiography.

The book under review, Social Transformation in Rural India, consists of 15 essays which are grouped into three sec¬tions. The first section mainly deals with theoretical and methodological issues. The second section, which is entitled ‘The State and the Rural Poor’, focuses atten¬tion on socio-economic changes in rural India.

The book under review is authored by the winner of the prestigious V.K.R.V. Rao award for social sciences this year. It is a collection of papers grouped into four parts but displaying continuity and unity of discourse because the issues under discussion relate to various dimensions linking politics and social structure.

The book under review is a collection of nine essays by a German academic of the Heidelberg University (FRG). Rothermond’s interest in social, economic and modern Indian history is an on-going affair since he has written books which include The Phases of Indian Nationalism & Other Essays, Government, Landlord and Peasant in India and Agrarian Relations under British Rule 1865-1935.

In this volume the Editors have put together a number of research papers and personal memoirs relating to ‘the various phases of the armed and militant movement in our country, aimed at the over¬throw of the system represent¬ed by the oppressive British and other vested interests.’

Dr. Sarup Singh makes it clear right from the preface to his book that in the plays he has chosen to discuss, his primary concern will lie not with structure or language or detail of craft. He says: ‘My sub¬ject is the ‘life’ that the play¬wrights treat of—certain basic human relationships as deter¬mined or influenced by the problems of larger social rela¬tions. I see the situations in these plays more or less as I would see similar situations in real life’.