Author Archives: Thebookreviewindia

In the tradition of an earlier genera­tion of pioneering Soviet studies of economic development in modern India by Reisner, Pavlov, Goldberg, Levkovsky, Melman and other Soviet scholars, the book under review provides a bold and interesting attempt at elaborating the line that originated in the 20th Congress of the C.P.S.U. in 1956.

The work under review was originally a Ph. D. dissertation. It assembles a lot of material which is useful for a study of India’s economic relations with other countries after Independence, more espe­cially with the countries of the Third World.

First published in 1970, the book has been revised and updated to cover deve­lopments up to the first year of the Janata government to serve as a textbook for studying the determinants, institu­tions, and processes involved in foreign policy making.

South Asia comprises of India, Pakis­tan, Bangladesh, the landlocked Hima­layan Kingdoms of Nepal, Bhutan and the island Sri Lanka. A sizeable chunk of world population subsisting below the poverty line or just above it inhabit the region.

The articles in this book are written by various authors who deal with nume­rous aspects of the Government National Adult Education Programme of 1978. The book reads as though a group of people are discussing the means of trans­porting a doctor,

‘Identity and Adulthood’ is the pro­duct of a month-long seminar organized by the Indian Council of Social Sciences Research in the year 1978, when experts such as Erik Erikson, basically a psycho-analyst was called upon to lead the dis­cussion.

There is a common belief that books published by government departments are not worthy of serious evaluation because of the lackadaisical treatment they generally receive from their publi­shers. But exceptions are there and this book under review happens to be one.

Sugar has produced magnates, bosses, operators and lobbies. These have held the country to ransom. The phenomenon will make V.L. Mehta and D.R. Gadgil turn in their graves. The former, Minister of Finance and

When Jan Breman’s book was first published in 1974, Rural Sociology and Anthropology was going through an in­trospection: community development and Panchayat Raj had failed to bring about the peaceful revolution which would end .­inequality and’ poverty.

In 1980 two outstanding books have appeared on South Indian History or more specifically Cola history. One is of course by Burton Stein, the veteran Indologist (‘Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India’, Oxford Univer­sity Press, 1980). The other is the book under review.

An understanding of the period from 1830 when Raja Rammohan Roy took first faltering steps on the road to what later came to be known as the Indian Renaissance, to 1947, the year which became the culmination point for various socio-political processes, is essential for a correct appraisal of our present predica­ment.

It is given to few to sow new seeds in their field of academic specialization and to even fewer to do so beyond the narrow confines of the groves of academe.