Redrawing India


Book Description

Eighteen-year-old Shaheen Mistri, having grown up around the world, spends the summer in Mumbai and wanders into the Ambedkar Nagar slum community. She sees Pinky, who becomes the first of the thousands of children whose lives she will touch on her journey. Hers are the endlessly compelling stories of the underprivileged children of India, the harsh realities that they face, and the hope and love that will catapult them into being a future generation of leaders. This is a story of the power of personal reflection and makes us ask ourselves the question, ‘What is the greatest life I can live?’ And in answer are the personal accounts of so many Teach For India Fellows and staff, India’s best and brightest, who have shown that each and every one of us, working together, towards the belief that one day every child will have the opportunity to receive an excellent education, has the power to change the world.




India Since Independence


Book Description

A thorough and incisive introduction to contemporary India The story of the forging of India, the world's largest democracy, is a rich and inspiring one. This volume, a sequel to the best-selling India's Struggle for Independence, analyses the challenges India has faced and the successes it has achieved, in the light of its colonial legacy and century-long struggle for freedom. The book describes how the Constitution was framed, as also how the Nehruvian political and economic agenda and basics of foreign policy were evolved and developed. It dwells on the consolidation of the nation, examining contentious issues like party politics in the Centre and the states, the Punjab problem, and anti-caste politics and untouchability. This revised edition offers a scathing analysis of the growth of communalism in India and the use of state power in furthering its cause. It also documents the fall of the National Democratic Alliance in the 2004 General Elections, the United Progressive Alliance's subsequent rise to power and the Indo-US Nuclear Deal that served to unravel the political consensus at the centre. Apart from detailed analyses of Indian economic reforms since 1991 and wide-ranging land reforms and the Green Revolution, this new edition includes an overview of the Indian economy in the new millennium. These, along with objective assessments of Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, Jayaprakash Narayan, Lal Bahadur Shastri, Rajiv Gandhi, Vishwanath Pratap Singh, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh, constitute a remarkable overview of a nation on the move.




Language Policy and Linguistic Minorities in India


Book Description

India not only is concerned with inevitable multilingualism, but also with the rights of many millions of speakers of minority languages. As the political and cultural context privileges some major languages, linguistic minorities often feel discriminated against by the current language policy of the Union and the States. They experience on a daily basis that their mother tongues are deemed worthless dialects that have little utility in modern life. Many such languages have definitively disappeared, and several more are on the brink of extinction. Is this the inevitable price to be paid for economic modernization, cultural homogenisation and the multilingual fabric of India's society at large? This book is an effort to map India's linguistic minorities and to assess the language policy towards these communities. The author, a senior researcher of the EURAC (South Tyrol, Italy), assuming linguistic rights as a component of fundamental human rights, codified in a number of international covenants and in the Indian Constitution, provides an appraisal of the extent to which language rights are respected in India's multilingual reality, which takes into consideration the experiences of minority language protection in other regions.




India


Book Description

India Is Slowly Awakening From The Sleep Extending Over Half A Century And Gradually Taking Its Rightful Place In The Comity Of Nations. Gone Are The Days When Agrarian Economy Characterized The Indian Economy. Today, Industrial And Services Sectors Are Playing Important Role In The Country S Economy. While Fast Development Is Perceptible In These Sectors, Considerable Progress Has Also Been Made In The Agricultural Sector Owing To The Green Revolution. Consequently, There Has Been A Marked Increase In The National Income Since Independence. But Will It Be Correct To Say That India Has Succeeded In Providing All Its Citizens A Better Quality Of Life? Has It Built Up A Nation Where Even The Poorest Citizen Can Lead A Life Of Simple Dignity With At Least His Basic Needs Being Satisfied? Has It Been Able To Ensure That Not A Single Citizen Will Remain Hungry Even For A Day? Has It Guaranteed An Affordable Shelter To All, And Access To Education To All Its Citizens? Has It Instilled The Spirit Of Unity And Oneness Among The Millions Of Citizens Of Diverse Caste, Creed, Community, Religion Or State? Has The Government Policy Brought A Significant Improvement In The General Lot Or The People Are Still Striving For Their Socio-Economic Rights? Numerous Questions Need To Be Answered To Realise The Steady Progress Of India In Diverse Fields In True Spirit.The Present Book Attempts To Trace The Quality Of Life As Enjoyed By An Average Citizen Of India After More Than Fifty Years Of Independence. Beginning With The Pre-Independence Era, The Book Analyses India S Steady Progress In The Diverse Areas Agriculture, Industry, Infrastructure, Education, Health, Rural Development To Name A Few In The Light Of Progress Made By Countries Like South Korea, Japan, China, Malaysia, Taiwan, Etc., Which Judged By Any Standards Are Far Ahead Of India Socio-Economically. Besides, The Basic Question Is Democracy Losing Ground Has Been Approached To From A Different Perspective.It Is Hoped That The Present Book On Socio-Economics Will Appeal To All General Readers Concerned With The Development Of The Indian Economy.







Transition and Development in India


Book Description

According to Nehru, the transition from a backward agricultural society to a modern industrialized society was the only road for India to progress. So, for the past few decades, India has focused its transitional development around movement away from a state-controlled economy toward that of a free market economy. Transition and Development in India challenges the current basis of this theory of development, laying the groundwork for an entirely new Marxist approach to transition that should apply not just to India, but to all developing nations.




Pakistan’s Security and the India–US Strategic Partnership


Book Description

This book explores the relationship between the developing India–US strategic Partnership and Pakistan’s security. It assesses India and the US's areas of cooperation to show that the partnership will bring drastic changes for India’s military capabilities and modernization of its forces. The book shows that, in addition to enhancing India’s domestic nuclear stockpiles through the nuclear cooperation agreement, collaboration in high-tech areas such as space and innovative technologies will enable India to acquire sophisticated delivery systems as well as surveillance capacity. The author argues that these advancements will enable India to destabilize the strategic balance in the region. The book also briefly explores the nuclear doctrines of India and Pakistan that provide an insight into the role of nuclear weapons in maintaining deterrence in the region. To understand the power dynamics caused by the strategic partnership and their impact on strategic stability in South Asia, the author utilizes the Balance of Power and Power Transition theories. A timely analysis of the India–US Strategic Partnership with a Pakistan angle, the book will be of interest to academics working in the fields of Asian security, Asian politics, especially South Asia, strategic studies, international relations, political science, nuclear non-proliferation, conflict studies, arms control, and security studies.




Indovation


Book Description

How should we understand the many reports that poverty is the mother of innovation in India? What has the role of austerity been in the development of India's knowledge economy? In this critical study of Indian innovation, or 'Indovation', Thomas Birtchnell explores how the complex mobilities of 'globals' with stakes in India have transformed discourses and imaginaries about innovation in the region. He adopts a critical eye to the notion of Indovation by focusing on the various circuits of globals where India's knowledge economy is concentrated: expertise, entrepreneurship and community. Birtchnell traces the various discourses and counter-discourses around an Indian way of working and illustrates how differences in the international dimensions of austerity allow India's knowledge economy to prosper.




The Rediscovery of India


Book Description

What makes India a nation? What has held its many disparate societies with their diverse, sometimes conflicting, narratives together for more than sixty years? What has allowed India to sustain its commitment to the democratic process, given its location in a region that is largely undemocratic? In this magisterial analysis of the last five hundred years of Indian history, Meghnad Desai looks at India's colonial past, its struggle for independence and its many contemporary conundrums, to discover answers to the questions that have confronted India-watchers for decades. Rejecting much received wisdom, including narratives fashioned by India's ruling establishment, Meghnad Desai goes back to the beginnings of the East-West encounter at the end of the fifteenth century. He tracks its impact on the cultures and politics of the present day, from the emergence of new classes under colonialism, the influence of Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi on the idea of Indian nationhood, to the entirely parallel discourses that developed in North and South India. Yet this trajectory, this outcome, was not inevitable. Through a series of 'Counterfactual Boxes' Meghnad Desai analyses the accepted defining moments of India's past and suggests alternative courses that history could so easily have taken. Meghnad Desai draws on a wealth of sources to illuminate India's journey to the twenty-first century. Whether it is an examination of British parliamentary debates on the question of India's independence, or the liberalization of the economy after decades of licence-permit raj, or the state' complicity in the Gujarat riots, Meghnad Desai's original, occasionally iconoclastic, approach to seemingly settled arguments makes The Rediscovery of India a path-breaking and comprehensive account of India's past and present.