By Michael A. Collins

Moving from academic to the media which also represents the dominant caste groups’ interests as the nation’s interests, the book critiques the way elections and their outcomes are articulated and portrayed largely as a ‘zero sum game’ or ‘a winner takes it all’ ignoring the dynamic, aspirational and normative motives of the electorate. The theatricality and the triumphalist nature of the reporting of electoral outcomes or simply put, results which include political analysts, psephologists and other ‘political pundits’, set the narrative and deliberate in such a manner that completely ignores the interests of the Dalits in the country.


Reviewed by: Krishna Swamy Dara
By Alexander Lee

Lee’s work begins by highlighting the stark contradiction of impunity prevailing over democracy: despite being a democracy, nearly half of its elected representatives face criminal charges, exemplifying the deep-rooted nature of impunity within its political system. Each chapter then dissects a dimension of this problem—from systemic underfunding to bureaucratic centralization, elite manipulation of postings,


Reviewed by: Shams Afroz

Peggy Mohan, linguist and historian, argued that language is a powerful way into history and not an ‘adult’ subject. Teaching ten-year-olds about migration pushed her to rethink assumptions, from why farmers migrate to how ‘surplus males’ reshape linguistic landscapes. Children’s questions about Ashokan Prakrit or Devanagari sounds have sparked some of her deepest research. She emphasized, ‘Kids don’t want to be patronized. They can do the more difficult things that sometimes we can’t do.’


Editorial

Manu was part of The Book Review family since he could read and write. He began by writing reviews as a child for the Children’s special issues. As he grew up, his intense passion for drawing led to his designing brochures and covers for The Book Review, and one of them was for the January 2016 issue when TBR turned 40. Uma had asked him a few months ago to design the cover for the January 2026 issue when TBR turns 50,


Editorial
By Sanghamitra Chakraborty

There is hardly any enigma in the life and professional career of Soumitra. A consummate actor, equally proficient in cinema and theatre, Soumitra knew the difference that these two art-forms demanded. He was also fortunate to have been mentored in his early years by Natyacharya Sisir Kumar Bhaduri who gave a new life to Bengali theatre, and later by Satyajit Ray.
Satyajit-Soumitra collaboration has been much discussed in discourses on cinema.


Reviewed by: Amitabha Bhattacharya