Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

Srimadbhagvadgita—or Gita in short, has been interpreted in many ways. It is considered one of the three fountainheads of departures of the authentically ‘Vedic’ worldview, the other two being the Brahmasutras and the eleven principal Upanishads. No philosopher can expect his views to be taken as ‘authentic’ extension or evolution of the perennial Vedic wisdom, if he cannot produce a convincing commentary of these three texts—the Prasthan Trayee!

Myths have fascinated all human societies, from the oral tradition to the written and to the age of cyber technology. Myths live forever, and, like genes, mutate and learn to survive and flourish in every generation. The term myth originates from the Greek muthos, which means “speech” and resembles the Sanskrit katha, vac (“story telling”, “narration”).

In a world trying to grapple with the contradictions of a global reality and a need for cultural identity rooted in local traditions and history Vamsee Juluri’s book Becoming a Global Audience tries to address some of these issues through her study of music television and specifically countdown shows.

One of the problems with a book that covers the gamut of communication forms and technologies and from Harappa to the present is that it is too demanding of any reviewer, certainly this one. The volume in question attempts to do this based on a set of papers presented in the panel on “History of Information and Communications Technology in India” at the Mysore session of the Indian History Congress, 2003.

There is an increasing realization that in our age of globalization, a kind of homogenization of cultures and life styles is taking place leading to a mono culture and macdonaldization. Cultural diversity and indigenous ways of life are coming under threat. This mono culture spread by multinational corporations and the law of the market is a kind of aping of western life style and values.

I was gifted with a copy of the set of poems by Kabir, translated into English by the well known Sikh writer, poet and philosopher Dr. Kartar Singh Duggal. My first reaction was to ask myself how come poems with such beautiful thought had not come to my notice till so late in my life.

Outside the Information Technology industry, Ranbaxy is India’s most genuinely multinational company. This well-researched book tells the story of Ranbaxy’s evolution. Bhupesh Bhandari has woven the tale well – it has strong personalities, serendipitous events, the twists and turns of policy changes, and even intrigue. Far from being a dry account of business history, The Ranbaxy Story is thus a highly readable work of contemporary business history.

What was Indian society really like at the time when it came under colonial rule? What was the nature and extent of this encounter and how does it continue to affect the lives of millions of people today? These surely must be among the most frequently asked and challenging of questions confronting Indian historians.

The Centre for Non-Proliferation Studies in the Monterey Institute of International Studies, USA, along with the United States Institute of Peace and the Cooperative Monitoring Centre at the Sandia National Laboratories, USA, funded and supported the research and publication of the above volume.

In the long and chequered annals of Tibet, India to the South and China to the West have played—and indeed continue to play—very significant roles. Expectedly, both have contributed a great deal to the texture of Tibetan life.

The Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) have inspired close to 300 tomes and treatises since the agreement among the signatories of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) came into effect in 1995.

The author of the book, Biplab Dasgupta, whose untimely death a few months ago has caused a big void, was an erudite scholar, respected teacher and affable parliamentarian with staunch Leftist leanings. After the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP)/Structural Adjustment Package (SAP) in India in 1991,

In the last two decades, it has been observed that the rise in wealth and trade at the global level has been accompanied by increase in poverty and lack of access to resources and opportunities for the majority. Developments in science and technology as well as intensified use of natural resources have led to a lopsided global order.

City dwellers, by and large, think of their environment in material terms: streets and traffic, buildings they live and go to work in or use for entertainment; infrastructure services (or the lack of them) that support urban living, parks and other public spaces. These are the tangible, ‘rational’ components of the city, whether planned or unplanned, with which they relate on a daily basis.

The book reviewed is a publication of the French Research Institutes in India & South Asia Institute, New Delhi. The contents of the book are therefore the work of various researchers – compiled and edited by Evelin Hust and Michael Mann, both senior scholars based in Germany. Both the editors have had a long association in conducting research in the South Asia region with a special emphasis on development issues in India.

For seven days in January 2004 Mumbai staged a kind of khumbh mela for the concerned and the sensitive souls. From across the world came scholars, activists, intellectuals, grassroot workers, and all others who wanted to associate themselves with an occasion that celebrated dissent. Mumbai,

In many ways, the volume under review is a strange one. For one thing, it is a volume that seeks to track writings by ‘Left intellectuals’ in India over the last few decades – that is, precisely in the period when Left wing thinking has seen its most serious ever crisis worldwide and has become somewhat out of tune with the times.

Who wants democracy? A terribly simpleminded question many might say. In an Indian democracy everyone must. But as Javeed Alam, a prominent political theorist shows in this simply, yet elegantly written book the answer to his basic question is not quite that simple. Using data compiled from a study by V.B. Singh and Subrata Mitra, Professor Alam statistically illustrates some of his always interesting, often profound findings.

It was probably in 1990 that as an impressionable student embarking on a specialized study of history, I heard Fatima Meer, a close associate of Nelson Mandela in the African National Congress speaking about the hopes and aspirations of the Africans, Indians and others in a society emerging out of the shadow of the apartheid system.

It would be no exaggeration to say that Amartya Sen has an iconic and towering presence in the world of economics in present times. The sheer range as well as depth of his work is formidable even by the standards of his fellow Nobel laureates in the subject in the last thirty-five years or more.