In this issue Social Scientist pays homage to and celebrates the life and work of Amiya Kumar Bagchi, a doyen among progressive economists and economic historians who influenced the thinking and practice of generations of scholars. Bagchi was on the…
Professor Amiya Bagchi was never formally my teacher. No, not even in his salad days as a teacher (1958–59) when his absurdly youthful looks made the callow students of the ‘Intermediate Arts’ class at Presidency College think of him as…
I was a graduate student when I first met Amiya Bagchi, Jasodhara Bagchi and their three-year-old daughter Tista during Christmas 1967 at their home in Cambridge, UK, where he was teaching as a member of the Economics faculty. He returned…
I addressed him as ‘Amiya-da’; we had a close and fruitful relationship for more than five long decades. He was my mentor, in the way Professors Amal Bhattacharjee, Amartya Sen, Ashin Dasgupta, Sankha Ghosh and Prabhat Patnaik were/are my mentors.…
There were three notable Indians who were strongly influenced by Marxism or the ideology of socialism but never joined the Communist Party. They are E.V. Ramasamy Naicker (1879–1973), generally known as Thanthai Periyar, or just Periyar; Bhupendranath Datta (4 September…
The epic Mahābhārata, a monumental work, explores various themes and is a significant piece theorising diverse masculinity. Among these, Kshatriya masculinity emerges, closely mirroring the hegemonic masculinity expounded by R.W. Connell and widely acknowledged. Our research hones in on the…
The politics of Assam has been centred around a discourse on citizenship for decades. Contests and politics over citizenship have led to the termination and formation of governments in the state multiple times. Episodes of terming and labelling citizens as…
The quality of human life is contingent upon ecological conditions. A complex relationship exists between environmental factors and social-cultural dynamics and economic progress. The notion of ‘environment’ is no longer concerned just with natural surroundings or habitats, but about a…
Annie Zaidi, Bantering with Bandits and Other True Tales of India, Delhi: Aleph Book Company, 2023, xiii+250 pages, Rs 499 The present book is primarily about groups who are marginalised or are on the verge of it. Divided into seven…
There is perhaps no more urgent and fraught issue in India today than the question of the relationship between the democratic State, secularism and religion. According to a widely held view, either secularism as a conceptnorm is inapplicable in India…