The Centre for Policy Research has a knack of selecting issues of national importance, investigating them in all aspects and bringing out policy impli¬cations for the benefit of planners and practitioners. The focus of this publication is on one such issue of great national significance i.e. people’s participation in family planning without which there is no guarantee that the programme will succeed in future.
The epistemological problem pervades all research. Demographic research is no exception. In fact, the epistemological problem seems to be more serious in demographic research which is characteri¬zed by large-scale sample surveys. Any¬thing smaller than a sample size of 5,000-10,000 households and as many respon¬dents is not only ridiculed but also frown¬ed upon.
The Security of South Asia edited by Stephen Cohen presents a thought provo¬king perspective contributed to by some of the principal commentators in the field, as they look ahead to the sub-continent’s future and examine the implications for the rest of the world.
For those not born to it, Hinduism is not an easy religion to understand, much less to warm up to. And it has not been well served by exegetists—both Indian and non-Indian—who been have swept off their feet by the epistemological and ontological absolutism of Adwaita Vedanta and have therefore tended to over¬emphasize the ‘other-worldliness’ of the Hindu view of life.
My tiny friends, if you remember, I had mentioned in the Nov/Dec. ’87 issue of The Book Review that a wagon full of new books written by Indian authors had arrived in our book market. I wonder if you had the time to read some of them what with examinations on your head, but I delved into the wagon and guess what I found—two exciting books published recently by CBT.
The India-culture boom of post ’84 years has almost bypassed vernacular literature, the Spic Macayian increase in the tribe of Hindustani/Carnatic music and dance lovers notwithstanding. All to the credit then of editors Iqbal Narain and Lothar Lutze to take on the com¬pilation of seven papers presented at the VIII European Conference on Modern South Asian Studies (held in Sweden in 1983).