Prologue In the early 1800s, a mother goose rhyme went: ‘To market, to market to buy a penny bun / Home again, home again, market is done.’ Later nineteenth-century versions become sumptuous – include a plum bun, a fat hog…
This year, in May 2015, Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai received the Man Booker International Prize, and this burst the belief of Hungarians that they have a great literature that cannot be translated and understood. At the distribution ceremony Krasznahorkai was…
After examination of the Indian emigrants landed from vessel, we have pleasure in reporting that they were a very healthy lot of men and very compact and muscular in build. We have pleasure in stating that none of these men…
India entered the twenty-first century with over 6.5 crore slum population, which is estimated to reach up to 10.4 crore by 2017. The Census Report of 2011 reveals that besides alarmingly increasing in metropolitan cities, slums are fast spreading their…
Ernst Waltraud and Biswamoy Pati, eds, India’s Princely States: People, Princes and Colonialism, Primus, Delhi, 2010. Romila Thapar, The Past as Present: Forging Contemporary Identities through History, Aleph Book Company, New Delhi, 2014, 326 pages, Rs 595 Gargi Chakravartty and…
The lead article by Prabhat Patnaik in the current issue of Social Scientist distinguishes between two opposed concepts of commodity production, one espoused by Adam Smith which constitutes the theoretical basis of liberalism, and the other by Karl Marx which…
The term ‘commodity’ is very little understood. It is generally taken to mean a product that is exchanged against another product (as in barter) or against money. Commodity production correspondingly is taken to mean production for the market or, more…
Dead-end of the Tunnel An armed guerilla struggle by a section of peasantry against the Indian state was launched from Naxalbari in West Bengal. It was led by Charu Majumdar who broke away from the CPI(M) because he considered that…
During the anti-Partition agitation, and the subsequent Swadeshi and boycott agitation, public sphere became the arena of conducting politics. Opinion of the people gained heightened importance under the new order. Naturally, new and old media began to be deployed for…
The report of the High Level Committee on Reorienting the Role and Restructuring of Food Corporation of India (HLC henceforth) is the latest redefinition of the approach to food subsidy policy in India. Food subsidy has been one of the…