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. But it gets lost in details and the essential thrust of the thesis is weakened in the process. The attempt at scholarship is somewhat pedantic and lacks spontaneity.
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. These nations have political structures varying from democracy to military dictatorship.
‘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. Sudhir Kakar as the editor has attempted to bring together in this volume the views of experts from different fields on the growing up process in the Indian context.
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 Co-operation in post-Independence Bombay state, had encouraged the growth of co-operative sugar factories with great enthusiasm.
Crime and Sex in Ancient India deals with the crimes and sexual aberrations prevalent in ancient India and the punishments meted out. The title is rather a misnomer as the volume does not relate crime and sex to each other even though one can gather when sex became criminal to our ancients.
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. The traditional approach has been to study the so-called ‘village republics’ and the Chola ‘Byzantine’ State at two different levels without sufficient conceptualization thereby overlooking the obvious contradiction.