Abhijit Sen (or ‘Manik’ to his family, friends and colleagues), one of India’s leading progressive economists, passed away on 29 August 2022. Besides serving as a much respected and loved Professor of Economics at the Centre for Economic Studies and…
Besides being inherently controversial with implications for freedom of choice of religion, anti-conversion laws run into a long-standing practice among oppressed sections even within the majority community: that of opting for conversion as a form of protest. This issue has…
The decision of the Bharatiya Janata Party-led Haryana government to pass an anti-conversion law has once again put the contentious political issue of religious conversion at the centre of political discourse (The Hindu, 22 March 2022). This is not an…
The body of the child at the site of protest has always been a point of contestation. It is used by the State to dilute protest movements. This could be seen during the farmers’ movement and also the Shaheen Bagh…
The significance of communist ideology in the political process of Kashmir cannot be understood without examining the political milieu of Kashmir. It had a significant contribution in designing the socio-political and economic structure of Kashmir, being at the forefront in…
Pre-colonial records indicate that opium cultivation in India was practised to meet both medicinal and recreational purposes. Its ability to produce short-lived mind-altering conditions is well known.1 Owing to the caste-mediated nature of the agrarian landscape, it was the koeri…
Tamil Nadu has seen Dravidian political parties in power for the past five decades. Since 1967, its political system was governed either by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) or by the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK). Despite the…
To most people even a cursory examination of the idea of nation indicates that it is almost normal. It is as if the idea always existed. Its presence being as natural to people as is the light of the day.…
Dynamics of Difference: Inequality and Transformation in Rural India Narender Pani, ed. Routledge India, 2021, 284 pages, Rs 1095. Book Review by Siraj Hussain The Political Economy of New India: Critical Essays Raju J. Das, AakarBooks, Delhi, 2020 202 pages…
This issue of Social Scientist leads with two long review essays: one based on a book by Rehman Sobhan, on his experiences as a member of the Planning Commission established after Bangladesh’s liberation in 1971; and the other on a…