Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
2024
Under Narendra Modi's decade-long tenure as Prime Minister of India, the country has made worldwide headlines for putting in place a majoritarian infrastructure that has seen a crackdown on press freedom, a ruthless evisceration of civil liberties, religious polarization, caste bigotry, institutional debilitation and demagoguery-and an overall democratic downslide. The world's largest democracy, it would seem, is hurtling towards disarray and chaos. Is the political legitimacy accorded to authoritarian populists because of, ironically enough, their popular mandates, the biggest threat to democracy itself? In 2024, former Congress spokesperson Sanjay Jha argues that India is in a state of free fall. With the country set to go to the polls once again, he raises urgent issues-from the othering of Muslim minorities and the bulldozing of citizens' rights and even homes, to the surreptitious dismantling of the judiciary and the unfettered growth of crony capitalism and plutocracy that has aggravated income inequality. Compelling and important, this is a must-read for anyone concerned about the nation's future and their own.
2014
Since May 2014, under a resurgent Bharatiya Janata Party, the Nehruvian-read liberal, secular, scientific-Idea of India appears to have come utterly undone. Institutions of governance that weathered great turbulence in the past are now disintegrating. The economy, once the celebrated 'India story', is in a shambles. Large sections of the media genuflect to the ruling dispensation. Meanwhile, the grand old party of India remains trapped in its glorious yesterday and unsure about its future. In 2014, named after the year the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance first came to power under Narendra Modi, Sanjay Jha takes a long, hard look at what all of this means for India. What are the reasons ...
Writer's Block
This is Suresh Subrahmanyan’s third volume of tongue-in-cheek vignettes on a variety of subjects. There is no topic or issue under the sun that does not come under his genial and articulate gaze. He wields his pen, in a manner of speaking, with considerable panache and style. His love for the English language is amply evident in the way in which he crafts every sentence with minute care. He is greatly influenced by the British school of writing and the great authors from that formidable stable. He is unapologetic about adopting a slightly old-fashioned style, as he believes the present generation who read (and that tribe is rapidly dwindling) should appreciate that this is the language of Shakespeare and Milton, without the likes of whom we would all be talking to each other with a vocabulary that does not go beyond words like cool, awesome, shoot, OMG and lowbrow slang like my bad, I’m good, and get a life, bro. In the author’s own words, “Texting trumps writing and language pays the price.” Suresh Subrahmanyan tries to make amends.
Indian Politics and Society since Independence
Focusing on politics and society in India, this book explores new areas enmeshed in the complex social, economic and political processes in the country. Linking the structural characteristics with the broader sociological context, the book emphasizes the strong influence of sociological issues on politics, such as social milieu shaping and the articulation of the political in day-to-day events. Political events are connected with the ever-changing social, economic and political processes in order to provide an analytical framework to explain ‘peculiarities’ of Indian politics. Bidyut Chakrabarty argues that three major ideological influences of colonialism, nationalism and democracy have provided the foundational values of Indian politics. Structured thematically and chronologically, this work is a useful resource for students of political science, sociology and South Asian studies.
Dis-Orienting Rhythms
Aims to produce a new understanding of the world significance of South Asian culture in multi-racist societies. It focuses on the role that contemporary South Asian dance music has played in the formation of a new urban cultural politics.
Elite Parties, Poor Voters
Why do poor people often vote against their material interests? This puzzle has been famously studied within wealthy Western democracies, yet the fact that the poor voter paradox also routinely manifests within poor countries has remained unexplored. This book studies how this paradox emerged in India, the world's largest democracy. Tariq Thachil shows how arguments from studies of wealthy democracies (such as moral values voting) and the global south (such as patronage or ethnic appeals) cannot explain why poor voters in poor countries support parties that represent elite policy interests. He instead draws on extensive survey data and fieldwork to document a novel strategy through which elite parties can recruit the poor, while retaining the rich. He shows how these parties can win over disadvantaged voters by privately providing them with basic social services via grassroots affiliates. Such outsourcing permits the party itself to continue to represent the policy interests of their privileged base.
Malevolent Republic
After decades of imperfect secularism, presided over by an often corrupt Congress establishment, Nehru’s diverse republic has yielded to Hindu nationalism. India, the first major democracy to fall to demagogic populism in the twenty-first century, is racing to a point of no return. Since 2014, the ruling BJP has unleashed forces that are irreversibly transforming the country. Indian democracy, honed over decades, is now the chief enabler of Hindu extremism. Bigotry has been ennobled as a healthy form of self-assertion. Anti Muslim vitriol has deluged the mainstream. Religious minorities live in terror of a vengeful majority. Congress now mimics Modi; other parties pray for a miracle. In th...
