Small can be very beautiful

Jigme Singye Wangchuck, the King of Bhutan felt the need- quite remarkably- to measure his country's development in terms of the happiness of it's people, rather than in terms of an abstract economic measurement such as GNP. What an idea!

The Center for Bhutan Studies brings out a number of titles and a journal on Bhutan Studies, and much of this is freely downloadable. For example, Rethinking Development - Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Gross National Happines, where you can find articles such as "What is Gross National Happiness", "What is Sustainable and What is Not?", much but not all in the Bhutanese context. To quote Jigmi Thinley, "Happiness may not be directly deliverable to an individual like a good or service. But it is far too important also to be left to purely individual effort and search, without collective or governmental endeavour." There are "many societies on the edge of the global capitalist system who are similarly searching for appropriate yardsticks for sustainable development, trade and foreign investment while respecting cultural and ecological integrity".

The books are not easily available, yet. However, at Scholars it is our continuing effort to make these more accessible, so should you require any of the titles of the Center for Bhutan Studies, please write in. We'd happily go to Thimphu to get them for you...

The Centre for Indigenous Cultures

The Don Bosco Centre for Indigenous Cultures in Shillong, Meghalaya, is an institution devoted to the study, promotion and development of indigenous cultures.

Given the size of our population, it is not surprising that India has the highest number of indigenous or tribal people in the world, some 95 million or so. These are distributed in about 500 tribes and sub-tribes, 85% of which live in Central India (mainly in Jharkand, Chhattisgarh, MP and Rajasthan). The North East is home to some 50 million indigenous peoples, and the DBCIC has a superb museum devoted to this lesser known and lesser explored part of our country.

They also publish books, under the imprint of the Vendrame Institute Publications. Not many, but what they do publish is unique, and offer some insight into the culture and history of the northeast. Some of their titles:

• The Catholic Church in Northeast India, 1890-1990.
• Tea-Garden Labourers of Northeast India.
• An Introduction To Khasi Ethics
• Understanding Tribal Cultures

And the comprehensive The Tribes of Northeast India, edited by Sebastian Karotemprel.

These will come onto our site slowly, but in the meanwhile, do write in to us: we are more than happy to cross these internal borders to get the books for you...

Some things that work... and work rather well.

This is the National Heritage Week being celebrated by the Archaeological Survey of India, one of the most impressive organizations in the public domain. Part of the Ministry of Culture, the ASI is responsible for the preservation of much of our cultural heritage.

The Publications of the ASI date from the 1870's when A Cunningham, the first Director General documented the tours undertaken by him and his colleagues.  Since that time, there have been a large number of epigraphical reports, monographs and books brought out by the Survey, many of which are remarkable pieces of  scholarship, and invaluable sources of information and history. 

We are very pleased to list all the ASI publications in our section on Archaeology. Come explore!

Knowing Infinity

Many people know of the remarkable genius of Srinivasa Ramanujan through Robert Kanigel's very readable biography, The Man who knew Infinity, (and of course Hardy's A Mathematician's Apology, apart from other popular and semipopular books). Rupa Publishers had brought out an Indian edition, but that, sadly, is no longer available.

There is, however, a superb collection, Ramanujan: Essays and Surveys, that should be better known. This is edited by Bruce Berndt and Robert Rankin and has been brought out by the Hindustan Book Agency. This title is for distribution within India only, but it collects a number of essays on Ramanujan and his work that were written especially for this volume. It also includes important survey articles in areas influenced by Ramanujan's mathematics. Most of the articles in the book are nontechnical, but even those that are more technical contain substantial sections that will engage the general reader.

The book opens with the only four existing photographs of Ramanujan, presenting historical accounts of them and information about other people in the photos. This section includes an account of a cryptic family history written by his younger brother, S. Lakshmi Narasimhan. Ramanujan's illness is describedby R. A. Rankin, the British physician D. A. B. Young, and Nobel laureate S. Chandrasekhar. They present a study of his symptoms, a convincing diagnosis of the cause of his death, and a thorough exposition of Ramanujan's life as a patient in English sanitariums and nursing homes. The book also contains brief biographies of S. Janaki (Mrs. Ramanujan) and S. Narayana Iyer, Chief Accountant of the Madras Port Trust Office, who first communicated Ramanujan's work to the Journal of the Indian Mathematical Society.

The last half of the book begins with a section on "Ramanujan's Manuscripts and Notebooks". Included is an important article by G. E. Andrews on Ramanujan's lost notebook. The final two sections feature both nontechnical articles, such as Jonathan and Peter Borwein's "Ramanujan and pi", and more technical articles by Freeman Dyson, Atle Selberg, Richard Askey, and G. N. Watson.

A book no library can afford to be without. And at this price, attractive to even the interested nonmathematician. In the General section of Scholars. Rs 450. ISBN 81-85931-35-6

Shelter, sustenance, and companionship

Sarai, a programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in Delhi is an unusually creative venture. Their vision is grand: how to critically expand the horizons of the discourse on development". And one of the tangible results of all this study of development is some remarkable publications which Scholars is very pleased to bring to you.

The Sarai English Readers, their main publications, are annuals structured around a specific theme. The volumes- and there have been 6 so far- feature articles, essays, reviews & criticism, interviews and photographic essays. The Readers are inter-disciplinary and invite and ommission writing by practitioners, academics, activists and artists from diverse fields. The net result is a vibrant issue which one can dip into, learn from, and enjoy.

Sarai Reader 01 was on The Public Domain, Sarai Reader 02 dealt with The Cities of Everyday Life, and each year moved into different themes and spaces, ending with this year's Sarai 06 Reader, on Turbulence. Using Turbulence as a conceptual vantage point from which to interrogate all that is in the throes of terminal crisis, and to invoke all that is as yet unborn. Sarai "wants to see areas of low and high pressure in politics, economy and culture that transcend borders, to investigate the flow of information and processes between downstream and upstream sites in societies and cultures globally." Well, we're OK with that... transcending borders, that is.

But more. Sarai has a lot of very creative material to offer- their contributors are impressive: Ravi Vasudevan, Aditya Nigam, Gyan Prakash, Ashish Nandy... and many more. And their format is not just the annual- they have Sarai Hindi Reader, Deewan-e-Sarai, Cybermohalla Publications which are broadsheets, booklets, etc., Sarai.txt, a quaterly broadsheet produced by an editorial collective at Sarai which "playfully interprets and renders research about urban experience".

Worth a read? We think so, especially if you are interested in the evolving India. In our sections on Culture and under Essays and Nonfiction. Searchable too: Click here.

The waterfalls near Thirunelveli

In 1970, The Statesman, Kolkata, brought out Maurice Shellim's The Daniells in India and the Waterfall at Papanasam, a slender book that details the life of the brothers Daniell, their travel to India and the pictures they made. I saw this book about 10 years ago for the first time, having known of Papanasam only indirectly, via the name of the great modern composer of carnatic music, Papanasam Sivan. The book is long out of print and only available at fairly steep prices via antiquarian bookstores, but it is interesting in its way.

The picture on the right is also by the Daniells, of another of the waterfalls near Thirunelveli. The town of Kutralam (or Courtallam) is famous for it, and generations of vacationing tamilians have visited the falls over the years. But the region has been famous for centuries through Melagaram Tirikutarasappa Kavirayar's epic, Kuttrala Kuravanji. The gypsy fortuneteller- the kurathi- is a standard character in classical Tamil drama, and forms the focus of the Kuravanji dramas, of which there are several.

Kuttrala Kuravanji has been translated recently by Professor David Buck as A Kuravanji in Kutralam during his sabbatical at the Institute of Asian Studies in Chennai, and published by them last year. The book has been well received- quite apart from being possibly the only translation available, reviews have been favourable. The Hindu, for instance, found " David Buck's research paper on the Kuravanji tradition and the socio-political ramifications of Kavirayar's thoughts makes A Kuravanji in Kutralam a rich contribution to Tamil studies."

The Institute for Asian Studies has an amazing publication program with a great list of titles in Tamil and the other Dravidian languages, some in translation, dictionaries... All of which can be seen at their website, and all of which can be ordered through Scholars. Please write in to us, though, since all the titles are not on the site. At least not just yet.

David Buck's book is, in our Translation section. Rs 350. ISBN 81-87892-21-8

Total Attention

Three Essays Collective is a publishing house that marches to the beat of an alternative drum. Their format is simple, and based on the premise that most of us have shrinking attention spans to any issue, however complex, and also that any issue, however complex, can be explained simply... It should take no more than a few- say 3(?)- essays to get a point of view across.

Their new title is Total Capitalism, about the way capitalism has been transformed into a largely uncontrolled system that increasingly invades the whole of life. Like total war, a war fought without limitations, total capitalism invades and dominates every sphere of life, taking no hostages... the state increasingly becomes a servant of Capital.

You can see where this is going.... This theme is pursued first in relation to the countries of the South, in an essay on development theory, and then in two essays which use Britain as a case study in order to describe a process that has now become literally world-wide. An introduction brings out the links between the three essays which are about the arrival and implications of total capitalism, its politics, economics and ethics, and span a decade of work by Colin Leys .

Colin taught politics at the universities of Oxford, Makerere (Uganda), Sussex, Nairobi, Sheffield, and Queen's University, Canada, where he is now an emeritus professor of political studies.

In our Publisher Lists, under TEC. viii, 144 pages
ISBN 81-88789-52-6 Hardcover Rs450.00
ISBN 81-88789-60-7 Paperback Rs200.00

Be Prepared!

As we have mentioned earlier, Books for Change, the publishing house based in Bangalore, bring out low cost editions of very useful books in addition to their own publications.

A remarkable international initiative aimed at improving the effectiveness and accountability of humanitarian assistance is summarized in the Sphere Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Disaster Response handbook. This new edition has been thoroughly revised and updated, taking into account recent developments in humanitarian practice, together with feedback from practitioners in the field, research institutes and cross-cutting experts in protection, gender, children, older people, disabled people, HIV/AIDS and the environment. The revised handbook is the product of an extensive collaborative effort that reflects the collective will and shared experience of the humanitarian community, and its determination to improve on current knowledge in humanitarian assistance programmes.

The cornerstone of this book is the Humanitarian Charter, which is based on the principles and provisions of international humanitarian, human rights and refugee law, and on the principles of the Red Cross and NGO Code of Conduct. It describes the core principles that govern humanitarian action and asserts the right of populations to protection and assistance. The Minimum Standards are organised into an initial chapter that details process standards for the planning and implementation of programmes, together with four technical chapters covering water, sanitation and hygiene promotion; food security, nutrition and food aid; shelter, settlement and non-food items; and health services.


Other books that they have brought out recently include Rocks & Hard Places by Roger Moody, on the role of multinationals in a sector that has always been at the core of resource exploitation- the global mining enterprise.



Sex at Margins looks at myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work; that migrants who sell sex are passive victims; and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' disempowers them.


Water supply is one of the major challenges faced in both urban and rural India. Various dimensions – social, technical, economic, institutional, environmental, legal and political – of the problem have been addressed in the book Elixir for Life by K V Raju.



All available through our site, of course.

Managing Disability

Books on disability- as on most topics- are rare to come by in India. Given the size of our population, the number of persons with one or the other form of disability is, regrettably, large. And this means that there is a sizable section of our country whose needs are not adequately addressed. To be sure there is a huge effort- the Disability India Network runs an excellent website with much information, and a lot of pointers for what can be done, both by way of participation as well as by intervention.

SAGE is one of the few publishers that have a number of titles in the area. This year, they brought out the second edition of Archie Hinchcliffe's Children with Cerebral Palsy. Earlier titles include S Venkatesan's Children with Developmental Disabilities, and the very important Management of Cerebral Palsy by Kate Tebbett, Poonam Natarajan and Rajul Padmanabhan. In this interdisciplinary study, the authors draw upon the experience of Naratajan and her group in running Vidya Sagar, a facility for the care of individuals with cerebral palsy, in Chennai. The volume itself integrates a variety of different approaches in the management of disability, touching upon physiotherapy, speech, language, psychology, sociology, as well as epidemiology and public health.

Poonam Natarajan, who started Vidya Sagar in 1985, is now Chairperson of the National Trust, a statutory body set up by the Ministry of Social Justice and

Empowerment under The National Trust for Welfare of Persons with Autism, Cerebral Palsy, Mental Retardation and Multiple Disabilities Act, 1999.

Their most important function is to set up safety nets and support systems for the disabled people. The Act looks at disability in an altogether different paradigm, not merely setting up a residential home. The trust looks at building capacity and skill development of the disabled. The National Trust works through a network of registered NGOs, parents’ associations and various groups working for the disabled. (Business Standard, October 9, 2007)

Clearly, there is much that can be done and these books might help along the way. We list these titles in our Education section.

Fact+Fiction = Novel pedagogy

Tulika, the independent publishing house based in Chennai that produces superb books for children has come up with a winner- their book of mathematics stories entitled Mathematwist.

The title is the least charming thing about the book-  written by T V Padma and illustrated by Proiti Roy- which is a collection of delightful stories, each with a mathematical lesson woven into the text. The stories themselves are set in different lands in different times, so multiplication and weights come to the inquisitive 10 year old via the Roman Army, and factorials are introduced via a Russian waiter's seating dilemma... Touches like these add to the pedagogy- and hold even adult readers (self included) in rapt attention...

Although it is suggested that the book is appropriate for the 10+ age group, given our school curriculum, younger kids are typically ready for many of the concepts- I found it easy to teach my seven year old daughter many of the "lessons" that are integral to the stories with a change here or there, and the illustrations make the book even more enticing to the younger groups...

The Fact and Fiction series has a few more books- but too few. We really do need more people to write books like this, that can engage children in the world around them without a heavy hand....

In our For Children section, 96 pages, paperback. Rs 175. ISBN 978-81-8146-357-9

Which language do you dream in?

Much of the rich literary traditions in our country are only available to us through translations... While most of us are bi- or tri- lingual, speaking a language passably and reading its literature are different skills, and the default option of accessing everything in English is too easy to avoid.

Katha is an organization that has tried hard to address this problem, and has had some remarkable successes along the way. Geetha Dharmarajan, who set up this very unusual NGO in Delhi many years ago, with the very unusual idea, of translating directly from one Indian language to another, instead of using English as the link language always... The idea is not so simple to implement: how many people speak both Oriya and Gujarati fluently, and how many of them would be willing (or able!) to translate from one language to the other? For some pairs of languages, Katha has been able to find translators, but they have been most successful, not surprisingly, in translating into English.

Recently, they brought out two more of Krishna Sobti's novels. Sobti was the recipient of the First Katha Chudamani Award, "instituted to honour a writer for work of exceptional merit, notwithstanding the corpus of works". As my erstwhile colleague at JNU, Namvar Singh said, "Sobti is a writer of the first rank. It's a pity she is not known outside the Hindi world."

Katha has done something to change that. Ai ladki (Listen, Girl!), Mitro Marjani (To Hell with you, Mitro), Dar se bichudi (Memory's daughter) and Dil-o-danish (The Heart has its reasons) are all available in translation, into English. Look for them on our website.  We carry a number of  Katha titles, some academic, some translations...