This book is based on a PhD thesis recently awarded by the University of Berlin. The author lived in an Oriya village called Mundaloi for 18 months during 2000-02 to collect data for his thesis. Until I read this book I had a kind of belief that PhD theses do not make good books even if they are substantially revised.
Given the range it represents in terms of location, generation, community and caste, this volume of eighteen interviews seeking to explore issues related to gender and censorship often invites the reader to lose herself in individual accounts that open up unfamiliar areas of experience, of history and of political struggle.
This book has a fresh and endearing sense of timelessness, although the essays translated here are of women writing in their native tongue in the 1930s. While U.R Ananthamurthy was called in by the Kerala government to help revive government schools and the teaching of Malayalam,
Migrants officially sent home more than US$167 billion dollars to their families in developing countries this year, a figure more than twice the level of international aid, according to the findings of the World Bank’s annual Global Economic Prospects report for 2006, titled The Economic Implications of Remittances and Migration.
From this cliff’s brow For wifehood’s glory With spurning feet I dart Down into yon fire’s heart To meet him, ne’er to part Flames reddening o’er me To nestle to his side, In Cora’s bowers a bride! O love, though thou hast died, I’ll not forsake thee. —Euripides, Supplices
The way to assess the patriarchal leanings of a state is to go through its policies towards the so called ‘oldest profession in the world’— prostitution. Ideally, state policy should reflect sensitivity to the socio-economic and historical issues related to prostitution, policies should differentiate between prostitution as a socio-cultural institution that treats women as marketable commodities, encourages women and child trafficking,