This second volume of Arundhati Roy’s collected non-fiction writing brings together fourteen essays written between June 2002 and November 2004. In these essays she draws the thread of empire through seemingly unconnected arenas, uncovering the links between America’s War on Terror, the growing threat of corporate power, the response of nation states to resistance movements, the role of NGOs, caste and communal politics in India, and the perverse machinery of an increasingly corporatized mass media. Meticulously researched and carefully argued, this is a necessary work for our times.
Catagory: Society & Social Sciences
The Truth About Me
Revathi was born a boy, but felt and behaved like a girl. In telling her life story, Revathi evokes marvellously the deep unease of being in the wrong body that plagued her from childhood. To be true to herself, to escape the constant violence visited upon her by her family and community, the village-born Revathi ran away to Delhi to join a house of hijras. Her life became an incredible series of dangerous physical and emotional journeys to become a woman and to find love. The Truth about Me is the unflinchingly courageous and moving autobiography of a hijra who fought ridicule, persecution and violence both within her home and outside to find a life of dignity.
The Meadow
In the summer of 1995, six tourists were kidnapped in the mountains of Kashmir. The ransom note said the kidnappers were from an unheard of Islamic outfit and that they wanted the release of Pakistani militant leader Maulana Masood Azhar (later responsible for the attack on the Indian parliament). The kidnapping electrified the world and for the first time put the global spotlight on Kashmir. Within four days, one of the prisoners had made a hair-raising escape. A month on, was found, beheaded by his captors who had carved their name into his flesh. In the background, camped out in Delhi, the families of the missing struggled to keep their hopes alive, while international governments negotiated frantically with India, and the army, police and intelligence services tried to follow the trail. But the remaining four hostages were never found, their case forgotten – until now.
The Discovery Of India
The Discovery of India has acquired the status of a classic since it was first published in 1946. Nehru’s brilliant intellect, deep humanity, and lucid style make ‘The Discovery of India’ essential reading for anyone interested in India, both its past and its present.
Written over five months when Jawaharlal Nehru was imprisoned in the Ahmadnagar Fort, The Discovery of India has acquired the status of a classic since it was first published in 1946.
In this work of prodigious scope and scholarship, one of the greatest figures of Indian history unfolds the panorama of the country’s rich and complex past, from prehistory to the last years of British colonial rule. Analysing texts like the Vedas and the Arthashastra, and personalities like the Buddha and Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru brings alive an ancient culture that has seen the flowering of the world’s great traditions of philosophy, science and art, and almost al its major religions.
Nehru’s brilliant intellect, deep humanity and lucid style make The Discovery of India essential reading for anyone interested in India, both its past and its present.
Non-Stop India
Today, India is likely to become one of the major economies of the twenty-first century. But many unresolved questions remain about the sustainability of such growth and its effect on the stability of the nation. Veteran journalist Mark Tully draws on thirty years of reporting India and travels the length and breadth of the country to find the answers. Have the changes had any impact on the poor and marginalised? How can the development of the country’s creaking infrastructure be speeded up to match its huge advances in technology and industry? With a gift for finding the human stories behind the headlines, he looks at the pressing concerns in different areas of life such as governance, business, spirituality and ecology.
In revealing interviews with captains of industry and subsistence farmers, politicians and Dalits, spiritual leaders and bandits, Mark Tully captures the voices of the nation.
From the survival of India’s languages and the protection of wildlife, to the nation’s thriving industries and colourful public affairs, Non-Stop India is a testament to India’s vibrant history and incredible potential, offering an unforgettable portrait of this emerging superpower at a pivotal moment of its history.
Penguin Gandhi Reader
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948) was born in Porbander on the western coast of India. His childhood and early upbringing were undistinguished but as an adult he initiated and was involved in a series of novel forms of peaceful protests which established him as one of the most important leaders of the twentieth century and one whose message and relevance transcended national boundaries. This meticulously edited volume culled from the Collected Works of Gandhi contains a representative selection of his writings focusing on themes which were central to Gandhi’s philosophy.
Remote Control
Television is the single most powerful and dynamic agent of change in India today. It is also the country’s most popular and accessible form of entertainment. Remote Control examines three kinds of programming-24×7 news, soap operas and reality shows-that have changed Indian television forever, and analyzes how these three genres, while drawing on different sources, are hybridized, indigenized and manage to ultimately project a distinctively Indian identity. Shoma Munshi’s book shows us how everyday reality in India in the twenty-first century shapes television; and how television, in turn, shapes us.
Way Beyond The Three Rs
The education of their children is of paramount importance to all Indian parents. They spend tens of thousands of crores each year to get their young educated. The country fetes its successful students : from class X to board toppers and those who ‘crack the IIT JEE’ to those who clear the civil- services examination.
Yet things on the ground are dire.
About 70 per cent of all students ( in villages, towns and cities) have to make do with inferior schooling. Metropolitan newspapers are full of the difficulty of getting a nursery seat in a good school. And while there is a seat crunch in the better colleges too, only 10 per cent of all students between the ages of 18 and 21 are enrolled in college. Crores of educated Indians discover too late that they do not have the skills to land a suitable job.
Y.S. Rajan examines the gamut of issues involved in India’s efforts to educate its young people and the work required to fix schools, vocational training centres, colleges and universities. He argues that Indian education needs reforms on a scale comparable to those which freed the economy of the shackles of the licence-permit raj almost twenty years ago.
Grassroots Innovation
A moral dilemma gripped Anil K. Gupta when he was invited by the Bangladeshi government to help restructure their agricultural on-farm research sector in 1985. He noticed how the marginalized farmers were being paid poorly for their otherwise unmatched knowledge. The gross injustice of this constant imbalance led Gupta to found what would turn into a resounding social and ethical movement-the Honey Bee Network-bringing together and elevating thousands of grassroots innovators.
For over two decades, Gupta has travelled through rural lands, along with hundreds of volunteers of the Network, unearthing innovations by the ranks-from the famed Mitti Cool refrigerator to the root bridge of Meghalaya. He insists that to fight the largest and most persistent problems of the world, we must not rely only on expensive research labs but also look towards ordinary folk, and eventually build bridges between the formal and informal sectors. Innovation-that oft-flung-around word-is stripped to its core in this book.
Poignant and personal, Grassroots Innovation is an important treatise from a social crusader of our time.
The Mother-In-Law
In this witty, acute and often painfully funny book Veena Venugopal follows eleven women through their marriages and explores why the mother-in-law is the dreaded figure she is.Meet Deepa, whose bikini-wearing mother-in-law won’t let her even wear jeans; Carla whose mother-in-law insists that her son keep all his stuff in his family home although he can spend the night at his wife’s; Rachna who fell in love with her mother-in-law even before she met her fiancé only to find both her romances sour; and Lalitha who finds that despite having had a hard-nut mother-in-law herself, she is turning out to be an equally unlikeable Mummyji.Full of incisive observations and deliciously wicked storytelling, The Mother-in-Law is a book that will make you laugh and cry and understand better the most important relationship in a married woman’s life.