You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The human face of poverty The poor in India are, too often, reduced to statistics. In the dry language of development reports and economic projections, the true misery of the 312 million who live below the poverty line, or the 26 million displaced by various projects, or the 13 million who suffer from tuberculosis gets overlooked. In this thoroughly researched study of the poorest of the poor, we get to see how they manage, what sustains them, and the efforts, often ludicrous, to do something for them. The people who figure in this book typify the lives and aspirations of a large section of Indian society, and their stories present us with the true face of development.
This anthology includes, among many other enlightening essays, Rick Perlstein on Paul Cowan's 'The Tribes of America'; Nicholson Baker on Daniel Defoe's 'A Journal of the Plague Year', Marla Cone on Rachel Carson's 'Silent Spring', and much more.
WINNER OF THE TATA LITERATURE LIVE FIRST BOOK AWARD (NON-FICTION) 2021 Maharashtra, India's richest state by GDP, has its eyes set on becoming the country's first trillion-dollar economy by 2025. At the same time, Marathwada - a historically backward part of the state adjoining the distressed Vidarbha region - has seen a surge in farmer suicides. At the heart of the crisis is a cyclical drought that has persisted for almost a decade. Relief packages and loan waivers have not reversed the trend. On the contrary, the stories of dystopia grow more tragic every year as thousands of farmer families flee to the big cities, while those who stay back are plagued by bad credit and crop loss. Landscapes of Loss tells the story of Marathwada through the accounts of its people: marginal farmers, Dalits, landless labourers, farm widows and children. It lays bare the complex factors that have brought the region to this pass - a story representative, in many ways, of the agrarian unrest in large parts of rural India.
This book analyses the contribution of the IMO International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships to sustainable ship recycling against the backdrop of present practices and third world approaches to sustainable development.
This collection of Jean Dreze's essays offer a unique insight on issues of hunger, poverty, inequality, corruption, conflict, and the evolution of social policy in India over the last twenty years. Sense and Solidarity enlarges the boundaries of social development towards a broad concern with the sort of society we want to create.
A history of India upto 1300 AD introducing the beginnings of India's cultural dynamics
Conventional wisdom says that integration into the global marketplace tends to weaken the power of traditional faith in developing countries. But, as Meera Nanda argues in this path-breaking book, this is hardly the case in today's India. Against expectations of growing secularism, India has instead seen a remarkable intertwining of Hinduism and neoliberal ideology, spurred on by a growing capitalist class. It is this "State-Temple-Corporate Complex," she claims, that now wields decisive political and economic power, and provides ideological cover for the dismantling of the Nehru-era state-dominated economy. According to this new logic, India's rapid economic growth is attributable to a special "Hindu mind," and it is what separates the nation's Hindu population from Muslims and others deemed to be "anti-modern." As a result, Hindu institutions are replacing public ones, and the Hindu "revival" itself has become big business, a major source of capital accumulation. Nanda explores the roots of this development and its possible future, as well as the struggle for secularism and socialism in the world's second-most populous country.
One morning in 2014, Ramrao Panchleniwar, an ordinary cotton grower in Maharashtra's infamous Vidarbha region, consumed two bottles of pesticide in a bid to commit suicide. But he miraculously survived. In Ramrao, rural journalist Jaideep Hardikar attempts to put a face to India's unending farm crisis with his story. He takes the reader on a journey of the everyday life of an Indian farmer, his daily struggles, his desperation to come out of his situation, his inability and many failings, the quagmire of issues he faces, and how he comes to a pass where he chooses to put an end to it all. The result of years of committed reportage, this is an evocative read that rescues an ordinary life from obscurity and turns it into an essential biography for our times.