Except for some well-known concepts such as Gundar Frank’s development of under¬development the actual prob¬lems of development and poli¬tical change in Latin America are still relatively unfamiliar on this side of the world. For this reason the author’s stated aim of encouraging ‘scholarly South-South exchange’ is to be applauded as well as an Indian publisher’s willingness to assist.
W.W. Rostow identified the central fact about the eco¬nomy of a traditional society to be—
… that a ceiling existed on the level of attainable out¬put per head. This ceiling resulted from the fact that the potentialities which flow from modern science and technology were either not available or not regularly and systematically applied … But in agriculture, the level of productivity was limited by the inaccessibility of modern science, its appli¬cation, and its frame of mind.
During the past one decade or so there has been a drama¬tic shift in perceptions of deve¬lopment possibilities in nation¬al economies. Moved by the substantial deterioration in the living standards of the majo¬rity of the population despite improvements at a purely aggregate level, decision¬-makers, both at international and national forums, have started concentrating on change in the structure of the economy with a view to identi¬fying the potential beneficiar¬ies of alternative development scenarios.
M.S. Rajan and Shivaji Ganguly have done a com¬mendable labour of love in bringing together writings of Sisir Gupta on wide and vari¬ed aspects of international relations in contemporary times. The volume is dedicat¬ed to the memory of Professor Sisir Gupta.
The ancient Sanskrit texts have many references to the practice of fine arts in India. But not many of the fine arts have survived through the ages. How¬ever, what was regarded as fine arts in ancient India cannot be included in the present day meaning of the term. There were sixty-four fine arts that in¬cluded physical culture, use of weapons, elephant riding, instrumental music, dancing, painting, body decoration, astronomy, magic, wood-craft etc.
R. Parthasarathy, returning from ‘exile’, wrote ‘My tongue in English chains/I return, after a generation, to you.’ Taking this poem as a paradigm of Indo-English poetry, M. Sivaram¬krishna says in his introduction to this collection of critical essays on the work of eleven poets, ‘It is in terms of this triadic frame of reference…the transcen¬dence of Anglo-mania through an assertion of the Indian identity, the discovery of a ‘viable’ past and the residue of linguistic significance—that the following pages try to map out the features of the unchained tongue, that is Indo-English poetry today.’