As another addition to the spate of publications on Indira Gandhi and Emergency, this book does not provide any fresh insights into either the personality of the former Prime Minister or on the economic/political developments which led to centralization of the state in the form of Emergency. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly the personality of Indira Gandhi overrides all other considerations.
In the last decade, studies on women have made an impact in the field of literature and social sciences. Whether to become a ‘libber’ or be known as ‘Ms’ is a topic of active discussion in women’s forums the world over.
Foreign aid to India is a subject which has attracted good deal of scholarly attention. Its topicality, too, has seen many revivals, the latest occasion being Carter’s visit to India early this year.
English has an uneasy existence in India, for we in India are not at home with it in spite of the Times Literary Supplement’s consistent advocacy of the recognition of Indian English.
A Tamil proverb says that a half-nosed person is the king among noseless persons, This proverb can be applied with precision in the modern Tamil literary sphere where anything vaguely resembling political writing and everything that is made to seem revolutionary is hailed.
Vishwajyoti’s Ghosh’s Delhi Calm reminds one of the daily calm that is being witnessed along with the daily alarm of scams, jams, inflation and general deflation of spirits.
Trickster City is an extraordinary collection of stories, anecdotes, observations, biographical fragments about arrival, about belonging, about identity and about the fragility of existence. It is about a Delhi that is known and yet unfamiliar.
‘Delhi is whatever you make of it’, muses New Yorker Dave Prager in Delirious Delhi, the Capital’s latest travelogue-cum-survival guide. ‘Every person defines Delhi for his or her self, and no two Delhi struggles are the same. At any given point, your experience will be the exact oppo-site of my experience, and we’ll both be right.’
Kitsch and homogenization have been two important techniques used in the reduction of the person to the mass man by the mass society of today.
The book is meant as a case study of different modes of transport provided by different agencies, under public and private ownership, in the Calcutta metropolitan area, and the economic and operational efficiency of these modes and agencies.
In the struggle-torn world of today, not only individuals try to better their lot, but even nations compete ferociously to overtake each other. Ever-growing competition has led to an almost unwholesome image-consciousness which manifests itself in organized showmanship by almost every country. T
‘The humbug, the waste and the plain stupidity that constitute a distressingly large part of our educational scene today’. This is the basic theme of this provocative collection of essays.