Tag Archives: General

The United Service Institution (USI) describes itself as the oldest think-tank in Asia. Set up by the British, it opened in Simla in late nineteenth century. Soon after Independence, it moved to New Delhi. Though under considerable pressure from lack of resources in the early years…

As we live through an unprecedented number of new infections of Covid-19, and deaths, we can take pride in that in this one indicator  we have even overtaken the USA. We are reporting close to 400,000 new cases every day and close to 4000 deaths every day…

Academic writing in the field of education often presents a theoretical understanding that is disconnected from field realities. As a teacher educator, I have often found pre-service teachers struggling with theories, models and perspectives that are built on the basis of research…

When a friend sent me a copy of Indian Icon by Amit Raj, the timing was great! It had been a regrettably long time since I had read a good book and I was looking for something to get back into the habit. We have had Bullets in our family for three generations…

JNU Stories: The First 50 years is an anthology of anecdotal essays and a few poetical pieces. These essays, suffused and soaked with nostalgia, map the institutional and intellectual journey and are haunted by an ‘anxiety about preserving an institutional memory’ (p. 44). This passionate…

Reading the history of one’s old school is always interesting, sometimes even challenging. Rakesh Batabyal’s book on Modern School is certainly both. Situating the founding of the school in the context of the Indian Independence movement’s initiatives to build free…

The patient pulls out his/ her reports, and there are the problems: the blood sugars are high, the blood pressure readings are high, the obesity is worsening, and oh, the cholesterol level is high too. The worry about kidney failure and blindness is topped with the sad, frustrated plea, ‘have stopped eating sugar and sweet things…

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) is a grave illness, if not diagnosed and treated early in life. It is a form of chronic anxiety, where a person has recurrent disruptive thoughts (obsessions), which result in repetitive behaviour (compulsions), anxiety about thoughts or rituals, over which he/she has little control…

The last decade has seen a meteoric rise of technology companies especially in the context of market gains and economic growth¹. The top five publicly listed technology giants (as per the NYSE) are Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix and Google (now Alphabet)…

The Covid-19 global pandemic has changed the way of life for one and all across the planet, and the battle against the virus is still ongoing. Many books about Covid-19 have been published since the virus first emerged in Wuhan, China, addressing various aspects of it.

A winner of the Brighthorse Prize, Kavita A Jindal’s debut novel builds slowly at first; the mood is tense, both pace and complexity rise steadily to an almost rabid crescendo. Jindal’s rich prose seduces you into northern India: Uttar Pradesh,

‘May the force be with you!’ The last line of the book is not a mere wish but a self-proclaimed statement of a tech entrepreneur, whose smart work has won many laurels. Decoding mental agility and extraordinary physical ability, Mukesh Bansal, the founder.

This is the revised and updated edition of a book originally published in 2003. Maithreyi Krishnaraj’s ‘Note from the Series Editor’ introduces the volume and places it in its context, while Uma Chakravarti’s ‘Afterword: Caste and Gender in the New Millennium’ provides.

This fascinating book provides a compelling narrative about the life and times of South Asia’s female heads of state. While the content focuses mainly on Indira Gandhi, Benazir Bhutto, Khaleda Zia, Hasina Wajed, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Chandrika Kumaratunga.

The time of impersonal recipe books with no introductions or context, is long gone. They have slowly and steadily been almost completely replaced by food memoirs, travelogues with recipes of dishes one ate around the world or history books charting the origin,