The year 2014 marked the 125 th birth anniversary and 50 death anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru. During that year the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust had organised a series of lectures assessing Nehru’s role in building independent India. Two of those…
One’s interpretation of the Nehruvian economic strategy (or the Nehru– Mahalanobis strategy as economist Sukhamoy Chakravarty [1987] had called it) depends naturally upon one’s conceptual framework; and it need not even coincide with that of the framers of the strategy.…
I shall talk today about the new metropolis and how important it is as a symbol of change. The announcement of a new metropolis is carefully timed and reflects the future aspirations of the rulers of the day. The announcement…
In spite of the damning indictment of India’s past in the colonial writings and the identification of communities with regions, resulting in the valorisation of some, while simultaneously trivialising others, much like concocting nationalities in the regions, to emphasise difference…
There is scarcely a society, throughout the empire, that British imperialism left undivided. The view that colonial rule in India was based upon the strategy of ‘divide and rule’ might seem to be a nationalist cliché, but is nevertheless substantially…
But if what is meant by truth is the procedure by which norms are justified, as I think it has to be, then I think it would be better to speak of justification rather than truth, at least in the…
Jasodhara Bagchi (nee Sengupta), born 17 August 1937, passed away on the morning of 9 January 2015, after a period of illness subsequent to surgery. She leaves behind her husband, Amiya Kumar Bagchi, two daughters, Tista and Barnita, son-in-law Aditya…
Brought up in Burma, and educated at LSE (London School of Economics), Rajni Kothari belonged to a generation which ran high on an idealism inspired by Indian socialism – Nehruvian or later. He is remembered as an institution builder and…
Siddharth Kara, Bonded Labour: Tackling the system of slavery in South Asia, New York: Columbia University Press, 2012, xx+314 pages (Tables, figures, b&w photos), US$ 29.50. Social scientists in the contemporary world often differentiate the working people in terms of…