Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

The book is the outcome of the proceedings of the Annual Sessions of the SLEA in mid-2004 and includes 10 Chapters, which are divided into six Parts. Each Part links Human Development to a specific area of economic progress, viz., poverty, growth, services (financial), education and health, technology and productivity, and competitiveness.

Some of the questions that Omar Khalidi has raised in his latest book relate to the economic condition of Muslims in India in the beginning of the new millennium. He compares their present condition with the not so distant past. He then goes on to document the record of colonial and post colonial policies vis-à-vis Muslims and their economic profile as compared with the majority community and other minority communities.

This is an interesting and valuable book, though the choice of the word nationalism seems a little loose. I suspect the word “national- isms” for a decade and more, has had such currency, that people are unwilling to let go of it, even though globalization has undercut the view on nationalism more severely than one had imagined. Kathleen Morrison analyses the relationship between the tribals as foragers and the spice trade for the Western Ghats.

Successful management of irrigation goes well beyond the manage- ment of the infrastructure, by encompassing management of human relations, institutional and organizational dimensions and irrigation policies. The recent three decades have also seen sweeping socio-economic and environmental challenges that have significant impact on irrigated agriculture and the management of irrigation systems in Asia.

This is Dr. Sonjoy Dutta Roy’s second volume of poems. If his earlier work The Absent Words was good, delightful poetry, the present one is more so. It is maturer, sadder, more intimate, more lyrical. The poet who teaches at the department of English, University of Allahabad, has used myth, legend and fable, weaving them into a beautiful mosaic which give his work an epic dimension.

Even at the height of the boom in Indian writing, it is strange how the detective novel or thriller has remained an unexplored genre. In the West, the detective novel attracted some of the best minds and eminent writers (T.S. Eliot and George Orwell, to name just two) to write brilliant essays on this genre to give it the academic respectability it so richly deserves.

This volume on Chinua Achebe is part of a series of literary encyclopedias on a wide range of writers ranging from Emily Dickson to William Faulkner, to Toni Morrison. In his preface to the volume, Keith Booker acknowledges the life long role that the veteran Nigerian writer has played in the “rise of the African novel as a global cultural phenomenon” (xvii). Africanist Professor Simon Gikwandi further elaborates upon the ‘transformative nature’ of Achebe’s creative genius in a concise foreword.

This book is about the history of a women’s college and about aspects of the women’s movement in the nationalist period. It is also a book about dreams, aspirations and desires, among young women who sought higher education, their fathers and elders who allowed them to do so, the stalwarts at the forefront of women’s education in India, both women and men, and about colonialism and its legacy, in the curriculum it bequeathed women’s education, in its zeal for civilizing and modernizing the submissive and passive native.

In the Global Village, ‘India’ Today Is a Movie. The ‘core problem’ with Hindi cinema continues: it is too simplistic, too vulgar, too loud, and too popular. In a word, it is too ‘foreign’ for the denizens of academia – in Mumbai, Delhi, Amsterdam, Leiden, London, as much as Los Angeles.

A veteran actress with a career that stretched over fifty years, both before and after Independence, Durga Khote (née Laud) lived and worked through some of the momentous phases in India’s artistic history—the zenith of the Marathi theatre, the coming of the talkies and of colour in the cinema among others.

Not too many of us may remember the journalism of the early seventies. In part because those were tumultuous and troubling times a world apart from the current obsessions with India shining or as a superpower in the making. Even as the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, was consolidating her image as a left of centre, populist and nationalist politician – via garibi hatao, bank nationalization, abolition of privy purses and, above all, inflicting a resounding defeat on Pakistan and helping the birth of Bangladesh – there were magazines that struck a critical and contrarian chord.

In recent decades, scarcity of water has been experienced due to an increasing trend in competing demands of the different stakeholders in different countries leading to a number of conflicts within the basin, between the basins of the state and between the states and countries. It has now been aggravated manifold due to the demand from different users like agriculture and industry besides domestic water supply.

Privatization of State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) increasingly dominated the policy canvas for the better part of a decade until the coming of the UPA coalition. The previous BJP-led government made sweeping privatization of non-core SOEs its mission, with fair number of sales, until its denouement with the HPCL/ BPCL controversy. Thereafter, Manmohan Singh’s government pulled back the privatization reins.

With the Indian economy rebounding strongly, there is no doubt whatsoever that this provides a favourable conjuncture to tackle its fiscal challenges decisively. GDP growth of 8.1 per cent last fiscal and a 7 percent plus trajectory in prospect in 2006-07 and beyond does provide a context for lowering the government’s fiscal and revenue deficits and reducing public debt levels relative to output.

The central issue addressed by this book, using six Indian case studies, is the impact of micro-credit (financial services for the poor) on poverty and women’s empowerment. The six case studies cover a range of organization forms. Micro-credit in India predominantly uses two group-lending models-the Self-Help Group [SHG] and the Grameen-and is usually focussed on women clients.

This book is to be welcomed for a number of reasons. Firstly, it brings politics back into the discussion of development issues; secondly it examines industrialization as a process that transforms society (rather than viewing it as merely a numerical growth in industrial output); thirdly, by analysing the experiences of Nigeria, India, Brazil and South Korea it addresses the problems of countries with undistinguished records, in addition to that of an East Asian Tiger.

This book is to be welcomed for a number of reasons. Firstly, it brings politics back into the discussion of development issues; secondly it examines industrialization as a process that transforms society (rather than viewing it as merely a numerical growth in industrial output); thirdly, by analysing the experiences of Nigeria, India, Brazil and South Korea it addresses the problems of countries with undistinguished records, in addition to that of an East Asian Tiger.

Amar Farooqui’s contention that it was early nineteenth century Bombay’s opium trade which was ‘the defining feature’ of its economic world and its business class, is a provocative statement that takes us straight into the heart of a controversy. Does Bombay really merit the title of ‘Opium City’? Was it really opium, as opposed to cotton or ‘white gold’,

Amitava Kumar is a widely admired writer, chiefly for his non-fiction work like his A Matter of Rats, a book about Patna that is as insightful as it is witty. The Lovers is his second novel, set, not unsurprisingly mainly in a university on the east coast of the US but with vivid images of Ara, the town in Bihar where the protagonist, Kailash grew up. In a BBC interview not so long ago Hanif Qureishi said, a little lugubriously, ‘ Well, all novels are about love.’

Anybody reading the blurb of the book will be forgiven for feeling a sense of déjà vu—another novel about the atrocities and indignities meted out to the widows of Vrindavan! Yes, the book does contain some harrowing accounts, but read it and you’ll realize what a tale with a twist it is. It is a very short novel, only about a hundred pages long, but it racks the reader with its very unusual point of view.