News

Years ago, I had seen Indira Parthasarathy when he joined our family in Srirangam on a day the Lord comes out of the temple in procession. He was looking intensely at the gorgeous presence of the Lord: was he wondering how Sri Ramanuja would have felt walking in the streets of this temple city and watching the Lord during the days of special procession? It was an unforgettable moment for me as I realized that Indira Parthasarathy has been more than a Professor of Tamil and an outstanding scholar.

Homi J. Bhabha, one of the stalwarts of Jawaharlal Nehru’s team who steered the growth of science in India, has always been a subject of great enthusiasm for historians of science. Often this interest in him has led to situating him within the frame of Nehruvian nationalism and the building of the nuclear technology establishment of the country, and of late, to addressing the relationship between science and the Indian state. The book under review veers away from these historiographical frames, and portrays Bhabha as an institution builder, and concentrates on the institutional history of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR), Mumbai, one of the centres of scientific excellence in India.

The book under review examines the status of English Studies in India, as well as the aspirations pinned on it by students, teachers, policy makers and society. It is an invaluable resource book for academic readers who are interested in English Studies as a discipline at the higher education level. In this context, English Studies consists of the study of English literature, language, linguistics as well as cultural studies.

After the attack on an Army camp in Jammu and Kashmir’s Uri sector on 18 September 2016 by the militants in which twenty Indian soldiers lost their lives, the Government of India gave a call to scrap the Indus Water Treaty (IWT) of 1960 between India and Pakistan. This created ripples in both countries. For Pakistan the Indus River System (IRS) is a lifeline and without water from the rivers constituting the system, the country would lose its existence. In India many welcomed this decision while some questioned its rationality.

The editor of the volume under review, T.V. Paul, is James McGill Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at McGill University. The book is rather dense and a difficult read, and consequently can only be recommended for the cognoscenti. Its 14 contributions are by well-chosen academics who attended a workshop with the theme ‘Globalisation and the Changing National Security State’ organized by the editor and his project team in late 2013.

At a time when doubling farmer’s income in the next five years has become the catch phrase, the policy emphasis is on the oft-beaten approach of boosting crop productivity, reducing the cost of cultivation, expanding the area under irrigation and providing a unified national agricultural market.