The past few years have seen an increase in the number of people around the world willing to step out of their homes in support of causes impacting the larger society. One such movement in India was the Anna Hazare led Jan Lokpal bill movement.
The present discourse on Capitalism has two kinds of people, a pessimist and an optimist. A pessimist is one who says, ‘things are so bad that it cannot get any worse’, an optimist is the one who butts in here and says ‘wait, it can..’; well when an economic system can be reduced to the previous joke, it is certainly time to transform the system.
My first reaction to this book was shock and horror: Shock that the subject needed such a monumental tome to do justice to it. And horror that there were so many birds that required special care and protection—like patients in a rather large intensive care unit. The genesis of the book is interesting.
There has been no greater PR person for the tiger in India than Valmik Thapar.The jacket of the book mentions that he has written 22 books on the tiger, all very well illustrated and mostly covering Rantham-bhore, which is where his fascination for the animal started 35 years ago.
Gujarat and its craftspeople have been an integral part of my life since I chugged into Bhuj station 35 years ago on the metre gauge train from Kandla and—excitedly, nervously—took a tonga to my new assignment as the Gurjari designer in Kutch.
The title of this book is something of a misnomer. After India and China clashed in 1962 to establish their respective claims over their frontiers in the Himalayas interested scholars in their quest to find out the truth about the different claims started vigorous research to trace out the history of the Sino-Indian…
This book has been published in the thousandth year of the consecration of the Brahadisvara temple, as have many other books, conference proceedings etc, across the country.
At a time when the Archaeological Survey of India has just concluded its 150th anniversary celebrations, we are thankful to Virchand Dharamsey for his path breaking study of a pioneer archaeologist who lived and worked outside the State supported institution.
2012
‘But the burden of every death can be assumed symbolically by a culture and a social memory (that is even their essential function and their justification, their raison d´être). Culture and memory limit the ‘reality’ of individual death to this extent, they soften or deaden it in the realm of the symbolic.’…
2012
The book starts off quietly and gently, almost too quietly—the same momentum is sustained throughout—but gradually draws the reader into the world created by the author. There are fascinating glimpses into the world of Sudan in the 1950s and the tentative forays into modernity, all seen through the eyes of a wealthy and influential family that has had its share of tragedy and relationship conflict issues…
Savia Viegas’s debut novel Tales from the Attic (2007) brought to life the fascinating but fast vanishing world of a Catholic community in South Goa. The novella’s protagonist Mari is in an operation theatre for hysterectomy. In the process of losing consciousness under the care of an impatient anesthetist, she reminisces about her childhood in a village in Salcete where every one ‘had the same surname and shared a blood kinship and had big empty houses…
Pahari Paintings of an Ancient Romance:The Love Story of Usha-Aniruddh, brings to our reach the entire run of the great romance Usha-Aniruddha, popular amongst the art patrons, during a certain period of history in India…
When thinking about the significance and meaning of images, one must remember that art works are produced through specific historical contexts, and then subsequently encountered in diverse settings by people with wide ranging ideological dispositions…
The name of S. Balachander (1927-1990) is less well known now than it used to be, but there was a time when he was regarded by many, and certainly by himself, as a major player on the Carnatic stage. Younger readers will scoff, but there was a world before internet and Wikipedia…
There is a sudden spurt of interest in Sufism among a section of our population that did not have such an interest a decade or two ago, and there are several reasons for this. Some were introduced to Sufism and its spiritual philosophical moorings through interactions…
This book grew out of an exhibition by the same name that was organized by the Asia Society, New York with the help and support of several institutions, museums and private collections, including the Government of India…
It is a rare study that can encompass within its bounds the writings of the Sikh Gurus as well as several other writers who followed and then draw threads of arguments that run from sacred texts to later polemical essays in order to develop a holistic view of the evolution of various aspects of the Sikh faith…
In the streets of Portau-Prince, the capital of Haiti, armed members of the disbanded military move around in cars and engage in target practice by shooting down children on the streets of the city…
Economic Reforms and Growth in India is a collection of articles from the Economic and Political Weekly on the Indian growth trajectory in the post-liberalization period. The articles are spread between the years 2004 to 2010 focussing mainly on those article written in the later stages of the economic reforms. The introduction to the book by Balakrishnan offers an overview to the five sections in which the book has been divided, and provides a rationalization for the compilation…
The relationship between financial development and economic growth is well documented in the economic development literature. More recently, the debate has expanded to include financial inclusion as a necessary condition for sustaining equitable growth…