…given the opportunity, women handle money more efficiently. They have long term vision, they handle money more carefully. Muhammad Yunus
The prolonged agrarian crisis in India since the mid-nineties is reflected by the meager growth rates in the agricultural sector.
The title of the book in discussion is indicative of the foundational tenet of the volume. The point of departure is to accept ‘right to work’ fundamentally as an issue of justice with reference to the rural communities of India.
Why, in a period of sustained national economic growth, have Indian agriculturalists been committing suicide in such larger numbers? And what might these acts signify with respect to the challenges facing rural India at this moment? These are some of the pressing questions A.R. Vasavi’s Shadow Space seeks to answer. Through six closely related essays, each of which takes up a different aspect of this crisis, Vasavi contends that the suicides express the marginalization of vulnerable agriculturalists within a political economy that has neglected their welfare. In laying out this argument, Vasavi has produced a work that is both meticulously researched and passionately argued—one that is indispensable for understanding the momentous shifts currently underway in Indian agriculture.
Community policing has several meanings. To begin with, it refers to a process of taking policing back to citizens, for according to some scholars, that is where it began as a measure of public safety even before states and regimes appropriated this role and created a ‘police force’ for maintenance of public order and, of course, for their own protection.
The age of liberalization, privatization and globalization has raised a number of issues, which are central to the tribal life in India. One such important issue is the land question, which is generally considered as a ‘philosophy of tribal life’.
Paul R. Brass’s mega project on ‘The Politics of Northern India: 1937-1987’ is steadily progressing. His style is unique, focusing on the second rung of leaders who played a vital role in the pre-Independence period and immediately thereafter.
Two more books to the Gandhi shelf! Looks like a library will not be enough to house books on and by him. Yet Gandhi is never going to cease to be an enigma.
The book under review is a very welcome addition to the growing interest in mining older Indian intellectual traditions to understand and account for many of the diverse, and often contradictory, impulses of anti-colonialism and nationalism.
Though Political Science is a contested discipline there is near unanimity about its basic foundational structure.
This is yet another book that obsesses and agonizes over China’s rise, how the logic of strategy will dictate the choices China makes and the responses its actions are likely to evoke. China’s political leaders are said to have little agency to dictate this future course though, ‘trapped’ as they are ‘by the paradoxes of the logic of strategy’.
The Peace of Westphalia 1648 laid out the ideals of the state, the Westphalian ideal, which was only realized three centuries later with the end of the colonial era and national self-determination as the sole principle of the political organization of the world. The world became populated by bounded national, social, economic and cultural communities.
This is a hilarious coming of age story set in Madras of the 1970s. The author obviously belongs to an illustrious family—and is an illustrator, cartoonist, graphic designer and writer, all of which you can see the protagonist of the book Gopi has the potential for becoming later in life.
We are fast moving towards an era when we look to admire tigers in faroff forests, enjoy the antics of monkeys in zoos and fish in glass bowls.
When asked to review the book Breaking the Bow: Speculative Fiction Inspired by The Ramayana, I was initially quite excited. The reasons were many, but primary was the fact that due to the interest of my four-year old daughter in Indian mythology, I had been reading the Ramayana almost every night with her, telling her the story of ‘Ram-Sita’.
The work of Professor T.N. Madan is in the league of classical sociology in India, which echoes the issues that heralded the Lucknow School of Sociology in mid-twentieth century. Though there has been considerable discomfort in dubbing it a school of thought Lucknow did play a key role in the early sociology of India.
Chamars have emerged as an important political category capable of influencing larger electoral consequences in North Indian politics. It has been possible due to the ongoing struggle and movement in over a century inside the group.
As the struggle for self-determination and against oppression is being waged in Central and East India, this book is a timely contribution. It is a useful compilation of the different policy briefs and declarations by indigenous people, United Nations and international finance institutions (World Bank and Asian Development Bank) on the rights of indigenous people in the past two decades.
What is the relationship between the public histories of societies and movements, and the personal stories of individuals who participated in them, shaped their direction, and witnessed their transformation? Is there an aspect of history which we can access only through tracking the trajectories of an individual’s thinking and action? These questions are particularly pertinent in the case of political movements that possess a strong ethical orientation.
This interesting if hugely controversial story of Arjun Singh’s life takes off with a rather colourful phrase: ‘It all started when the first grain of sand fell into the crucible of time on 5 November 1930, the date on which I came into this world.’