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’,
2017
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.
There is a kind of anger that is necessary in the world as it is right now. It is an anger that sticks to the truth like tar to your shoe on a hot day. It is the anger that powers the best storytellers, who not only stick to the truth but sing while they do it. This is a popular stand currently, because it is powerful. We live in a time where it is possible, as chaos shifts under our feet, to break the rules we have been fed and speak out, even if only for an instant.
Daughters of Jorasanko, the recent novel from Aruna Chakravarti, reasserts her position as a perceptive and sensitive writer. Though written as a sequel, it does not lean on Jorasanko, but asserts its independence in its totally different tone, mood and pace. The female characters in Daughters of Jorasanko vividly reflect a change from the previous generation of women in Jorasanko…
It would not be an exaggeration to state that since his sesquicentennial birth anniversary celebrations began in 2011, Rabindranath Tagore has been the focus of attention of plenty of scholars all around the world. As a global figure, Tagore transcends the boundaries of language and reaches out to people distant both in time and space. So it is no wonder that seminars leading to anthologies based on his oeuvre have flooded the market over the past few years.
While much has been said about Rabindranath Tagore’s ethical concerns and his dynamic approach to aesthetics as separate strands in his work, the present study attempts to take a holistic view of these elements through a focus on the last decade of Tagore’s life. Shirshendu Chakrabarti examines the ‘slackening of the ego’ found in Tagore’s late poetry, adopting an approach that foregrounds the relationship between aesthetic form and abstract idea.
2017
Lata Singh’s Raising the Curtain: Recasting Women Performers in India reveals how women in theatre and performance in the country have moved, changed and evolved over a period of time. Her absorbing book turns the spotlight on the little known history of theatrical performance, restoring women performers to their rightful place by documenting their lives and highlighting their overall contribution to this genre.
In 1998, commemorating fifty years of India’s Independence (1947–97), artist Vivan Sundaram installed a year-long site-specific project at the Durbar Hall of Victoria Memorial Museum in Calcutta, calling it a Journey Towards Freedom: Modern Bengal, which was subsequently re-christened as the History Project. Almost twenty years later, under this latter name—that according to art critic Geeta Kapur…
Tilt Pause Shift:Dance Ecologies In In-dia edited by Anita E. Cherian is a remarkable book. It is remarkable for many reasons, in a context where hagio-graphies about dancers, coffee table books on dance with glamorous production values abound—here is a book that is scholarly, incisive and very aware of the politics of bodies in performance.
The Radical Impulse by Sumangala Damodaran is a valuable archive of IPTA’s musical repertoire across languages and regions of India as well as a sophisticated analysis of the political and cultural climate of the early to mid-twentieth century in which this music evolved. Formed in 1943, the Indian Progressive Theatre Association made one of the first conscious attempts to use music and performative forms as modes of political activism and protest and to develop a self-conscious ‘people’s aesthetic’ that had a momentous impact on literary cultures of the time.
Banaras, generally characterized as the longest continuously living city and as a microcosm of Hindu civilization, has long enjoyed epithets of an eternal, timeless, unchanging, and archetypal Hindu holy city. It has, perhaps, for a city of its size, attracted much more attention from scholars of repute, and many of them, in recent times, have forayed beyond the domain of the sacred, to unravelling the complexity that Banaras represents.
India is a diverse country with several re gional cultures and histories. We implicitly acknowledge this diversity as a badge of identity. However, when it comes to modern architecture, we expect all buildings to look ‘modern’, whether they are built in Maharashtra or Bengal, Punjab or Kerala. Even critics don’t expect otherwise. But the ground realities reveal a different picture and some critics are beginning to realize that modern architecture in India is not as homogenous as it is imagined.