Acharya, thanks for this topic. Another related field is ethnography and cultural antorpology making its mark due to globalization.
meanwhile book review in The Telegraph, 11 Aug., 2006
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->NUANCES OF EMERGING INDIAÂ
Loss of the real?Â
<b>TOMORROWâS INDIA: ANOTHER TRYST WITH DESTINY Edited by B.G. Verghese, Viking, Rs 595 </b>
Established in 1881 by the Cambridge Mission, St Stephenâs College of Delhi aligned itself with the nationalist movement of India from its early days. The bond deepened when C.F. Andrews, later known as Deenabandhu Andrews, came to join the college in 1904. The present volume contains articles by twenty-four alumni of this college. The authors have sent in their contributions by way of celebrating the 125th anniversary of their alma mater.
The articles are wide-ranging, and, as the editor claims, purport to look ârandomly at emerging Indiaâ. They seek to project various aspects of Indian federal democracy but sadly, in most cases, without the degree of historical objectivity or analytic acumen that their subjects demand.
<b>Kapil Sibalâs âTowards a knowledge societyâ or Sitaram Yechuryâs âDoes ideology matter?â read like typed versions of platitudinous political harangues with a mostly unsustainable ideological bias. The result is either naïve optimism or misplaced sarcasm which miss the nuances of Indian reality by miles.</b>
Nevertheless, some articles are sharp and cogent. Dilip Simeonâs âRebellion to reconciliationâ, for instance, written in recollection of a traumatic personal experience of violence, insightfully describes democracy not as âa social systemâ but as âan institutional arena wherein social conflicts are enacted in an unstable equilibriumâ. His plea for breaking through âthe structured violenceâ of Indian polity, in some ways, reflects Jürgen Habermasâs discourse on âideal speech situationâ and John Rawlsâs âtheory of justiceâ which created ripples in the debates on democracy in the early Seventies
<b>Another stimulating article is Sagarika Ghoseâs âIndian media; a flawed yet robust public serviceâ, where the author efficiently captures the âschizophrenicâ quality of Indian mass media. Her discussions of state control, the Bollywoodization of news items in the print media and the encroachment of privacy by the television carry unmistakable resonances of earlier reflections on the roles of media by political and social thinkers. The âschizophrenicâ Indian media, as envisaged by Ghose, may be perceived as wavering ideologically between the over-deterministic Althusserian model of âideological state apparatusâ and the hyper-real, self-referential system of image-production which Jean Baudrillard highlights in âSimulacra and simulationsâ. Ghose, however, does not concern herself with the encoding and decoding patterns of these images which have been painstakingly examined by the recent scholars of media studies.</b>
Arun Mairaâs call for starting âa deeper dialogueâ across different belief-systems in his article is sincere and sensible, while Gopal Krishna Gandhiâs reassessment of âthe relevance of Gandhiâ as a questioning, teasing persona rather than as an ever-smiling, acquiescing icon in the Indian context is intense and poetically charged.
<b>Arun Kumar dwells on a triadic nexus of the Indian black economy while B.G. Verghese ponders on the management of the Indian diversity.</b> Ravi Dayal stresses that âthe wealth of Indian English writingâ is as much part of the Indian culture as the vernacular or bhasa literature. But unfortunately, he does not go to the length of exploring the Indian writersâ use of English to encapsulate the Indian reality, as Amit Chaudhuri does in his article âThe construction of the Indian novel in Englishâ. <b>On the whole, this new âtryst with destinyâ is a worthwhile survey of the multifaceted Indian reality, but not quite its in-depth scrutiny.</b>
ARNAB BHATTACHARYA
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
meanwhile book review in The Telegraph, 11 Aug., 2006
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->NUANCES OF EMERGING INDIAÂ
Loss of the real?Â
<b>TOMORROWâS INDIA: ANOTHER TRYST WITH DESTINY Edited by B.G. Verghese, Viking, Rs 595 </b>
Established in 1881 by the Cambridge Mission, St Stephenâs College of Delhi aligned itself with the nationalist movement of India from its early days. The bond deepened when C.F. Andrews, later known as Deenabandhu Andrews, came to join the college in 1904. The present volume contains articles by twenty-four alumni of this college. The authors have sent in their contributions by way of celebrating the 125th anniversary of their alma mater.
The articles are wide-ranging, and, as the editor claims, purport to look ârandomly at emerging Indiaâ. They seek to project various aspects of Indian federal democracy but sadly, in most cases, without the degree of historical objectivity or analytic acumen that their subjects demand.
<b>Kapil Sibalâs âTowards a knowledge societyâ or Sitaram Yechuryâs âDoes ideology matter?â read like typed versions of platitudinous political harangues with a mostly unsustainable ideological bias. The result is either naïve optimism or misplaced sarcasm which miss the nuances of Indian reality by miles.</b>
Nevertheless, some articles are sharp and cogent. Dilip Simeonâs âRebellion to reconciliationâ, for instance, written in recollection of a traumatic personal experience of violence, insightfully describes democracy not as âa social systemâ but as âan institutional arena wherein social conflicts are enacted in an unstable equilibriumâ. His plea for breaking through âthe structured violenceâ of Indian polity, in some ways, reflects Jürgen Habermasâs discourse on âideal speech situationâ and John Rawlsâs âtheory of justiceâ which created ripples in the debates on democracy in the early Seventies
<b>Another stimulating article is Sagarika Ghoseâs âIndian media; a flawed yet robust public serviceâ, where the author efficiently captures the âschizophrenicâ quality of Indian mass media. Her discussions of state control, the Bollywoodization of news items in the print media and the encroachment of privacy by the television carry unmistakable resonances of earlier reflections on the roles of media by political and social thinkers. The âschizophrenicâ Indian media, as envisaged by Ghose, may be perceived as wavering ideologically between the over-deterministic Althusserian model of âideological state apparatusâ and the hyper-real, self-referential system of image-production which Jean Baudrillard highlights in âSimulacra and simulationsâ. Ghose, however, does not concern herself with the encoding and decoding patterns of these images which have been painstakingly examined by the recent scholars of media studies.</b>
Arun Mairaâs call for starting âa deeper dialogueâ across different belief-systems in his article is sincere and sensible, while Gopal Krishna Gandhiâs reassessment of âthe relevance of Gandhiâ as a questioning, teasing persona rather than as an ever-smiling, acquiescing icon in the Indian context is intense and poetically charged.
<b>Arun Kumar dwells on a triadic nexus of the Indian black economy while B.G. Verghese ponders on the management of the Indian diversity.</b> Ravi Dayal stresses that âthe wealth of Indian English writingâ is as much part of the Indian culture as the vernacular or bhasa literature. But unfortunately, he does not go to the length of exploring the Indian writersâ use of English to encapsulate the Indian reality, as Amit Chaudhuri does in his article âThe construction of the Indian novel in Englishâ. <b>On the whole, this new âtryst with destinyâ is a worthwhile survey of the multifaceted Indian reality, but not quite its in-depth scrutiny.</b>
ARNAB BHATTACHARYA
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->