The author of the book, Biplab Dasgupta, whose untimely death a few months ago has caused a big void, was an erudite scholar, respected teacher and affable parliamentarian with staunch Leftist leanings. After the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP)/Structural Adjustment Package (SAP) in India in 1991,
In the last two decades, it has been observed that the rise in wealth and trade at the global level has been accompanied by increase in poverty and lack of access to resources and opportunities for the majority. Developments in science and technology as well as intensified use of natural resources have led to a lopsided global order.
City dwellers, by and large, think of their environment in material terms: streets and traffic, buildings they live and go to work in or use for entertainment; infrastructure services (or the lack of them) that support urban living, parks and other public spaces. These are the tangible, ‘rational’ components of the city, whether planned or unplanned, with which they relate on a daily basis.
The book reviewed is a publication of the French Research Institutes in India & South Asia Institute, New Delhi. The contents of the book are therefore the work of various researchers – compiled and edited by Evelin Hust and Michael Mann, both senior scholars based in Germany. Both the editors have had a long association in conducting research in the South Asia region with a special emphasis on development issues in India.
For seven days in January 2004 Mumbai staged a kind of khumbh mela for the concerned and the sensitive souls. From across the world came scholars, activists, intellectuals, grassroot workers, and all others who wanted to associate themselves with an occasion that celebrated dissent. Mumbai,
In many ways, the volume under review is a strange one. For one thing, it is a volume that seeks to track writings by ‘Left intellectuals’ in India over the last few decades – that is, precisely in the period when Left wing thinking has seen its most serious ever crisis worldwide and has become somewhat out of tune with the times.