The collection of papers under review was first published in 1969, five years after they first felt the heat of discussion at a seminar, at the University of Wisconsin. The continuing demand for them and the response aroused by them are the reasons offered by the editor for the second edition.
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. 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.