Manisha Priyam

At the core of the spread of mass schooling in democratic nations has been a set of ideas and beliefs. It is a widely held, if not universally accepted, view that not only does schooling provide individuals with important competencies; it is an important tool of social engineering and overall progress of a nation. A democratic nation has, therefore, important stakes in educating every child for as many years as possible regardless of social origin, geographic locations and economic circumstances.


Reviewed by: Md. Sanjeer Alam
Meenakshi Thapan

Beginning in the 1970s, sociology of education in India has been marked more by debates and theories than field work. Ethnographies of Schooling in Contemporary India is an important contribution to this context. The essays presented in the volume under review are based on the study of everyday processes in different types of schools.


Reviewed by: Latika Gupta
Rahul Mukherji

Part of the Oxford Series of short introductions Political Economy of Reforms in India by Rahul Mukherji runs over 200 pages. The book’s four compact chapters addressing the major themes of economic reforms and social change in a chaotic democracy delineates both the success of India’s growth model in the post-liberalization period as well as the predicaments of poor infrastructure, inefficient public delivery system and low literacy levels that it produces.


Reviewed by: Siddhartha Mukerji
Vijay Prashad

The recent right turn in Indian politics has left the Left parties in a lurch. The 2014 Lok Sabha election electorally devastated the entire Left, particularly the Communist Party of India-Marxist. Vijay Prashad’s No Free Left: The Futures of Indian Communism examines the existential crisis faced by the Left parties in India given the formidable challenge from the Right, especially from the dizzying electoral success of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls.


Reviewed by: Ajit Kumar Jha
Rita Joshi

wo young women in creative collaboration, looking at a train winding its way through the hills and immortalizing this moment on canvas—all the symbols on this cover—the blue sky, the hills in the distance, the misty horizon, the train, the sparse vegetation, the canvas and brush and the two female figures—signal the literary intention of the writer. She has set out, in the six short stories in this collection, to decode the lives of women as they negotiate their lives and search for meaning and identity.


Reviewed by: Anjana Neira Dev
Mala Dayal

Having been close to Khushwant and hearing countless stories firsthand, reading the book made me feel as though I am sitting by him, listening to him recount his impression of ideas, people and places. He remains the best raconteur I knew, and will probably never meet anyone better.


Reviewed by: Sadia Dehlvi