A dancer's Dancer

Leela Samson, a dancer of repute, is the present Director of Kalakshetra, Chennai. As a student, she spent several months over many years at Kalakshetra, where she came to know Rukmini Devi, her art, life, and philosophy. Her biography, Rukmini Devi: A life, from Viking Penguin, is a documentation and (mainly) an appreciation of the extraordinary life of Rukmini Devi Arundale.

On 30 December 1935, thirty-one year old Rukmini Devi created history with her performance of Sadir, later known as Bharata Natyam, which had until then been confined to temple precincts and was the preserve of devadasis. A celebrated artiste and dancer, she was also a Theosophist, a composer of acclaimed dance-dramas, an educationist, an animal welfare and child rights activist, and a nominated member of the Rajya Sabha. This rich biography illuminates her many lives.

Rukmini’s early life was in the districts of Madras presidency where her father, an engineer, was posted, and it took many dramatic turns: her marriage in 1920 to George Arundale, a Theosophist and family friend, caused public outrage, particularly among the Madras brahmins. She was closely associated with Annie Besant, who became her mentor, and her meeting with Anna Pavlova inspired her to learn dance. Rukmini went on to establish Kalakshetra, an academy of arts, in 1936, which grew and flourished, and is renowned to this day for its classicism in dance training and performance—a tribute to her skill as an institution builder.

Rukmini revered traditions but did not hesitate to innovate, whenever necessary. She re-interpreted traditional natakas for some of her dance-dramas; she introduced women to nattuvangam, traditionally a male preserve, and adapted the traditional Kerala theatre, the kootambalam, to modern needs of performance at Kalakshetra. Her liberalism was not confined to the arts. Believing in oneness of all living creatures, she successfully piloted a bill which became the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act in 1960. She was also president of the Indian Vegetarian Congress in 1957.

Leela Samson draws on the oral evidence of Rukmini’s family, friends, associates and stalwarts of dance and music, the reminiscences of such luminaries as Annie Besant, J. Krishnamurti, C. W. Leadbeater, Maria Montessori, C. Rajagopalachari, Tagore, Pandit Nehru and the Dalai Lama, as well as hitherto unseen personal correspondence and photographs. The book offers an intimate and rounded portrait of an extraordinary woman and Indian, whose life embodied a vision of a modern India, while also celebrating its rich civilization.

The story of Rukmini Devi is more than just the story of a dancer, though she was that in great part. She was a renaissance woman in her own right, from the life she chose, the marriage she made, the arts she revived, the crafts she encouraged, and the institutions she built and nurtured. And Leela Samson is in many ways an appropriate biographer for such a life, following, as she has in Rukmini Devi's footsteps in more ways than one.

In our Biography section, in hardcover, 256 pages, Rs 550, ISBN: 9780670082643

Nationalism's inner eye

Indian National Evolution: A Brief Survey of the Origin and Progress of the Indian National Congress and the Growth of Indian Nationalism, by Amvika Charan Mazumdar is Frontpage, Kolkata's latest book. It has an introduction by Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, whose book Vande Mataram has a similar cover... The two are very different, of course.

Indian National Evolution is a rare first person observer’s account of the history of the Indian National Congress chronicles the movements led to its birth in 1885 as well as the multifaceted growth achieved during the first three decades of its political journey till 1915 when Mazumdar first published Indian National Evolution which is the first history of the Indian National Congress.

Unlike any other history of the Indian National Congress, it is more than a narrative of what during the initial years the Congress and its organs had planned and accomplished under the colonial impediments.

Mazumdar contextualized the Indian National Congress in a wide-ranging history of the growth of political consciousness in British India; the most important feature of this historical account is that Mazumdar, being a pre-Gandhian Congress leader, for the first time, put forward the idea that the Indian National Congress was not just a party, it was also a national movement.

Amvika Charan Mazumdar (1851-1922) was born at Sendiya, in the district of Faridpore in present-day Bangladesh. While studying in Calcutta he met Surendranath Banerjea in 1875 and became involved in the national movement. In the agitation against Partition of Bengal in 1905 Mazumdar was a major leader, and that led to his eventual elevation to the President’s position at Lucknow Session of the Indian National Congress in 1916. One of the stoutest advocates of constitutional development of India, Mazumdar in his presidential speech at Lucknow stated: “Call it Home Rule, call it Self-Rule, call it Swaraj . . . it is representative government.”

Sabyasachi Bhattacharya is the Chairman of Indian Council of Historical Research. He was earlier Professor of History at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (1975-91, 1995-2003), and Vice Chancellor, Visvabharati University, Santiniketan (1991-1995). He has also held teaching and research assignments at the Indian Institute of Management, Kolkata, the University of Chicago, St. Antony’s College at Oxford University, and El Colegio de Mexico.

In our History section, in hardcover 296 pages, Rs 795. ISBN: 9788190884129

Muddle India

Rage, Reconciliation, and Security: Managing India's Diversities by B G Verghese, from Penguin.

Sixty years after Independence, the Idea of India has become part of the very fabric of our democracy and nation-state. Yet much remains to be done to manage the upsurge of diversities that this democracy has nourished, and to confront the challenges and opportunities this presents. In this book, Verghese takes a broad-brush view of some of the country’s pressing concerns today: insurgency and Naxalism in Bihar, Middle India and Andhra; issues of language and culture, Dalits and caste, revivalism and fundamentalism, tribals and minorities; conflicts over land, forests, urbanization, industrialization and globalization; and global warming that demands lifestyle changes.

Tracing the roots of these long-standing and recent troubles and the State’s varying responses to them--often insensitive and repressive--the author shows us how colonial history, self-perceptions, social differentiation, divergent world views, paucity of human rights and dignity, as well as socio-economic imperatives have shaped these present problems. Many layers of such emerging insecurities, Verghese says, have to be negotiated with patience and understanding to achieve a sense of common good. Accepting the volatile ground realities—whether in Manipur, Andhra, Chattisgarh, in SEZs or Singur, Nandigram and Kalinganagar--he pleads strongly for eschewing populist and polarized positions, rooted in nostalgia and dead habit, and for seeking solutions that could lead to ordered change and stability, while fostering diversity.

Candid, critical and thought-provoking, Rage, Reconciliation and Security is important for its vision of building unity from diversity through fraternity and a sense of common citizenship. For it is only through common security that we can ensure the future of India and her people, of other nations and the world.

In our Politics section, in hardcover, 266 pages, Rs 495. ISBN: 9780670081721.

Calliope's cousins

Muse India, the literary ejournal based in Hyderabad. Supported by the CIIL, it has appeared bimonthly in a web-only edition since 2005.

Started and run by a group of writers, Muse India's primary objective is of showcasing Indian writings in English and in English translation to a broad-based global readership. The journal publishes both creative and critical writing and offers a wide range of literary forms - poetry, short fiction, essays, conversations with writers, book reviews and the like. Bearing in mind the general readership on the internet, it will, however, avoid highly academic articles. Besides presenting the work of more established authors, Muse India will also promote talented new and young writers.

Which is how we came on to their site- a Scholars friend asked about Sridala Swamy and her collection of poetry A Reluctant Survivor. Sridala has published some of her work in Muse: one of her poems that one can see online is Pact that starts

I’m wary of people

who say too little

about themselves.

Finding archived material on Muse is a tad difficult- one does wish their site were searchable- but still. They do a great job, do it with enthusiasm, and with a certain style. A great place to discover new Indian writing, and for rediscoveries as well... Enjoy!

Like its name says

Enjoyable Physics Vol. 1 by Neil Chatterjee is indeed enjoyable. A large format book targeted towards the beginning undergraduate, this is the first in a series of four books of the same name. Vol 1 deals with Newtonian Mechanics, and as I read through it, I began to see what the author intends to convey.

Simply put, most books on physics for undergraduates tend to be dull. Either written in a matter of fact manner, or in a "learn this or else" manner, they seem forbidding- with rare exceptions. In any case, most texts written in India cannot claim to be an enjoyable read no matter what their titles are...

Neil Chatterjee is a lapsed Chemical Engineer, having paid his dues at IIT Kharagpur, but then having meandered into JEE coaching schools. That stint has resulted in his being an excellent teacher of physics- which he confesses was his true love in any case- and this book (and its successors, all published by Macmillan, India) is the result.

Mr Chatterjee has an easy style, and he writes engagingly on matters that are conceptually difficult. I particularly enjoyed the manner in which he introduces concepts and problems- interspersing text with Brain Teasers, Funnybone ticklers, and Nutcrackers, all of which do aid in firming up the conceptual foundations.

Business interests dictate that the book is advertised as being useful for all sorts of entrance examinations- the JEE being the most obvious. Indeed, the blurb reads Enjoyable Physics, Volume 1 is the first part of a four-part series. The book deals with the fundamentals of Newtonian Mechanics, as it is taught at +2 level and first-year undergraduate level in Indian schools and colleges. These are the most decisive years in a student's career because they appear in IITJEE, AIEEE and a host of other All India Entrance examinations in Science, Engineering and Medical streams during this period.

The utility of this book goes well beyond that... Read it and you may actually enjoy Newtonian mechanics. Study from it, and you may understand mechanics better!

In our Physics section, in paperback, 866 pages, Rs 525, ISBN: 9780230639034

Stylish Verve

Saurabh Dube is Professor of History, Center for Asian and African Studies, El Colegio de México, Mexico.

Yoda Press bring out his new book After Conversion Cultural histories of Modern India that imaginatively addresses issues of modernity and its margins, based upon an interplay between a variety of Western and non-Western perspectives. Saurabh Dube critically considers questions of conversion by examining colonial writings of a vernacular Christianity and by tracking the transformations of caste and sect in South Asia. He provides personal portraits of his anthropologist father as well as of an important visual artist in order to convey the dense sensuousness and moving contradictions of everyday worlds. Together, Dube incisively explores the mutual intersections between culture and power and the past and the present, while prudently unravelling the ways in which academic categories and social worlds come together yet fall apart.

Ann Gold, Professor of religion at Syracuse University says that Dube’s has been an extraordinarily articulate voice providing distinctive perspectives on a wide range of subjects in modern Indian history for over two decades. After Conversion offers diversely focused but conceptually integrated and characteristically ambitious essays.

And Ajay Skaria of the University of Minnesota: Dube’s writings have always been characterized by a stylish verve and the ability to approach old issues in interesting and intriguing ways, and that is again the case here.… By decentering the conventional privileging of the moment of conversion, Dube provides a very differently nuanced understanding of conversion….This is going to be a book that will be valuable to scholars across disciplines because of the patience, theoretical rigour, and empirical wealth with which it pursues its questions.

In our Essays and Nonfiction section, 232 pages in paperback, Rs 325. ISBN:9788190618663

Unfunny

Whose Development? by Sharad Sharma and विकासकाले विपरीत बुद्धि are two comics anthologies on Development recently published by World Comics India.

The genre of Comic Book journalism is a new effort by World Comics, a Delhi based outfit who are actively working to promote the idea. Grassroots comics - drawn by the affected parties in most cases- are used by activists for communication purposes in their respective organisation and area.

Stories from Jharkhand tell how Adivasis are being affected by big development projects and also about the Uranium mine radiation. The story from Assam shows fisherman's harsh life conditions while that from Goa is about tourism. From Kolkata comes the story of a slow moving tram and from Rajasthan, the plight of a Dalit.

The books are priced at Rs. 100 inside India and €8 outside India. In our General Books Section. Write to us.

Clothes maketh the movie

Bhanu Rajopadhyaye Athaiya, the doyen of costume design in Indian cinema, started her career in the 1940s. A gold medallist from Sir J. J. School of Arts, she moved on to become a fashion designer for Eve’s Weekly. Introduced to Raj Kapoor by Nargis, she entered the world of films. Her innovative and aesthetic work, deeply rooted in Indian tradition, and at the same time imbibing modern sophisticated design, has graced over fifty movies in Indian cinema. She was honoured with the Filmfare Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009.

By far she is the best-known costume designer Indian cinema has had. Beginning her career in the black and white era of Raj Kapoor and Guru Dutt, she moved on to the psychedelic sixties and seventies, when her designs for divas like Mumtaz, Sadhna and Vyjyanthimala were the fashion statements of the day. In the eighties, Bhanu created history by becoming the first Indian to win an Oscar for her work in Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi. She continued lending her distinctive style in the next two decades, working for landmark films like Lagaan and Swades.

THE ART OF COSTUME DESIGN, published by Harper Collins, is a record of her achievements. Embellished with hundreds of photographs from the author’s meticulously preserved archives, and backed by her extensive experience in the industry and deep understanding of art history and culture, this unique book is a collector’s item for lovers of Indian cinema.

In our Film Studies section, in hardcover, 188 pages, Rs 2500, ISBN: 9788172239435

Human wrongs

Irene Khan, the first woman and the first Asian Secretary General of Amnesty International was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in 2006. Her book The Unheard Truth has become available in an Indian reprint from Viva Books.

Despite economic growth in almost every corner of the world over the last decade, billions of people still live in poverty. Amnesty International Secretary General Irene Khan claims that economic analyses do not provide a full picture and economic solutions alone cannot end the problems of poverty. In a bracing argument enriched with her personal experiences and case studies from around the world, Khan sees poverty as the world’s worst human rights crisis because it traps people in a vicious cycle of deprivation, insecurity, exclusion, and voicelessness. She argues that the foremost challenge is the empowerment of poor people, and makes a passionate and urgent plea for action to uphold human rights in the fight to end poverty.

Mary Robinson, former president of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights says "Poverty is the world’s worst human rights crisis and this book makes a powerful statement about not only why but how we can turn the tide."

In our Development Studies and Law sections, Rs 495, 270 pages in hardcover. ISBN: 9788130913162

Topology, Differential Geometry, and Lie Groups

The latest volume in the TRiPS series (Texts and Readings in the Physical Sciences) published by the Hindustan Book Agency is Lectures on Advanced Mathematical Methods for Physicists by Sunil Mukhi of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, and N. Mukunda of the IISc, Bangalore.

Mukhi and Mukunda are masters of the game, renowned expositors of a field that is often difficult to fathom for the lay mortal. But anyone- mortal or not- who would like to understand many aspects of modern physics, ranging from gravitation to particle and nuclear physics will find this book indispensable.

The book is in two parts. The first provides a simple introduction to basic topology, followed by a survey of homotopy. Calculus of differentiable manifolds is then developed, and a Riemannian metric is introduced along with the key concepts of connections and curvature. The final chapters lay out the basic notions of simplicial homology and De Rham cohomology as well as fibre bundles, particularly tangent and cotangent bundles.

Part II starts with a review of group theory, followed by the basics of representation theory. A thorough description of Lie groups and algebras is presented with their structure constants and linear representations. Root systems and their classifications are detailed, and this section of the book concludes with the description of representations of simple Lie algebras, emphasizing spinor representations of orthogonal and pseudo-orthogonal groups.

The style of presentation is succinct and precise. Involved mathematical proofs that are not of primary importance to physics student are omitted. The book aims to provide the reader access to a wide variety of sources in the current literature, in addition to being a textbook of advanced mathematical methods for physicists.

In our Physics and Mathematics sections, in hardcover, 286 pages. Rs 500. ISBN 9789380250021

Its all in your Genes X

Lewin’s GENES is the definitive pedagogical guide to molecular biology and molecular genetics, gene structure, and gene sequencing, organization, and gene expression.

"The fields of molecular biology and molecular genetics are rapidly changing with new data acquired daily and new insights into well-studied processes presented on a scale of weeks or months rather than years.

The latest edition of GENES, with a knowledgeable new author team, has enlisted 21 subject-matter experts from top institutions to provide revisions and content updates in their individual fields of expertise, ensuring that Lewin’s GENES X is the most current and comprehensive text in the field. Informative new chapters, as well as a reorganization of material, provide a more logical flow of topics and many chapters have been renamed to better indicate their contents. Lewin’s GENES X also contains new pedagogical features to help students learn as they read and an online student study guide allows students to test themselves on key material.

A new chapter, Methods in Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering, provides an introduction to the concepts and practice of laboratory techniques in molecular biology early on in the text. • Another new chapter on Genome Evolution, combines, expands, and updates material that had been spread among various chapters in previous editions, and introduces a number of new topics. The chapter on mRNA Stability and Localization was entirely rewritten and updated to cover more advanced topics, the chapter on Regulatory RNA and micro RNA, was dramatically expanded to include material on RNAi pathways. Many new figures reflect new developments in the field, particularly in the topics of chromatin structure and function, epigenetics, and regulation by noncoding and microRNAs in eukaryotes.

From Jones and Bartlett, India. Lewin’s Genes X by Jocelyn E. Krebs, Elliott S. Goldstein & Stephen T. Kilpatrick. In paperback, 956pages, ISBN: 9780763779924, at a special price Rs. 2395 within India. Write to us.

Hamari Amrita

Amrita Sher-Gil: a self-portrait in letters and writings is a phenomenal two-volume book from Tulika, New Delhi. Edited and annotated by Vivan Sundaram, the artist's artist nephew, the book was released on 16 February at the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi.

This self-portrait of the iconic Indian painter Amrita Sher-Gil (1913–1941) represents more than a life. For this book in two volumes, Amrita’s extant letters and writings are translated and reproduced from the originals, and in their entirety.

The book draws on the primary text of these letters to open up a visual narrative around the artist’s oeuvre, complemented by a parallel text of notes that not only annotate but also entangle the personal in the web of contemporaneity. The editorial intervention expands the setting to include the artist’s voice, photographs from the Sher-Gil family album, reviews from contemporary art critics, and excerpts from autobiographies and testimonies that touched Amrita’s life.

There are full-colour reproductions of 147 paintings by the artist, representing the largest such collection in print, as well as of her early sketches and watercolours. This archival effort makes for a definitive volume on the life, art and writings of Amrita Sher-Gil.

The book has a Foreword by Salman Rushdie; a Prologue and an Epilogue by Vivan Sundaram; a complete list of Amrita Sher-Gil’s 171 known oil paintings with thumbnail sketches and detailed captions; and a select bibliography of writings by and on Amrita Sher-Gil.

Vivan Sundaram, born in Shimla in 1943, studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University of Baroda, Vadodara, and the Slade School of Fine Art, London in the 1960s. He returned to India in 1970 and continued painting. Since 1990 he has turned to making artworks as sculpture, installation, photography and video. These works have been exhibited nationally and internationally. He has also organized artists’ workshops, curated exhibitions and done public art projects. A member of the Sher-Gil family, Vivan Sundaram has been engaged with the Sher-Gil project for over thirty years — as artist, curator, editor, archivist. The Sher-Gil Family, a painting made in 1983-84, and The Sher-Gil Archive, an installation made in 1995, are precursors to his Re-take of ‘Amrita’, a series of digital photomontages made in 2001.

New in our Art section, the book is published as a boxed set of 2 volumes in hardcover and runs to 900 pages. Lavishly produced, the book has approximately 1000 visuals, and is priced at Rs 5750. ISBN: 9788189487591

Till the end of March 2010, though, there is an inaugural discount, and the two volume set is available directly from Tulika for Rs 3750, shipping extra. Do write in to us!

Hindu

Sharankumar Limbale is a well-known dalit activist, writer, editor and critic. His books have been translated into a number of Indian languages, Hindi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Punjabi, Tamil, and of course into English. Presently he is the Regional Director of the Yashwantrao Chavan Mararashtra Open University, Nashik in India. Limbale's autobiography, The Outcaste Akkarmashi (published in 1984 by OUP) was written when the author was just 25.

Hindu by Limbale has only recently been translated from Marathi into English, and is published by Samya, Kolkata. Reflecting contemporary conflicts in India, this novel [...] is set in a village in Maharashtra, where panchayat elections are due. Roused by the new Ambedkarite jalsa, folk theatre, of Tatya Kamble that graphically portrays the dalits’ role in their own enslavement, dalits stand up for their self-respect and turn to political participation. Under the rules of reservation of seats in politics, the post of the village sarpanch falls to their share, and a dalit candidate is successfully fielded by his upper caste employers, leaving the upper castes frustrated and angry. What happens to caste relations, the new political consensus that emerges slowly, if violently, are delineated perceptively.

The text switches from the first person narrative of a dalit, Milind Kamble, a friend of Tatya Kamble and also of the corrupt and dissolute upper caste twins, Gopichand and Manikchand, who aim to make politics a successful business investment. A third person narrator also exists, the text alternating between the two, playing up a dual perspective. Vividly showing the contradictions within most individuals and the plight of women who suffer gender injustice regardless of their caste, this novel points to our own compromises and complicities."

The novel has been translated by Arun Prabha Mukherjee of York University, Toronto.

In our Indian Literature in Translation section, paperback, 185 pages, Rs. 250. ISBN 9788185604954

Maha City

Mariam Dossal's Theatre of Conflict City of Hope: Mumbai 1660 to Present Times is the first book to present such a comprehensive history of Bombay.

Strongly grounded in primary sources and richly illustrated, it maps the radical transformation of Bombay from an agricultural settlement of little significance to a megalopolis. What had originally been seven 'islets' of fishing villages, coconut gardens, rice fields, salt-pans, and vegetable plots, had by the nineteenth century given way to chawls, warehouses, cotton mills, railway lines, and docks.

In recent times shopping malls, skyscrapers and slums have become prominent in the urban landscape. The book discusses several other significant aspects concerned with land use and planning of the city-customary rights versus state regulations, revenue survey, land acquisition, agricultural and industrial growth, housing problems, development of the metropolis and problems confronting the city today.

Dossal, who specializes in the urban and maritime history of modern India is Professor in the Department of History at Mumbai University. She has an earlier book on a related theme, Imperial Designs and Indian Realities: The Planning of Bombay City 1845-1875. This one has, of course, a broader canvas.

In our History and Urban Studies sections,in hardcover, 344 pages (oversize). Rs 2450. ISBN: 9780198064381

Modern Pirates

Ravi Sundaram is one of the initiators of the Sarai programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) which he co-directs with his colleague Ravi Vasudevan.

His research focus is "at the intersection of the city and contemporary media experiences. His current research looks at the enmeshing of urban spaces in India from the 1980s onwards with new electronic cultures (copy networks, cable television, mass music culture and computer networks). In Sundaram’s view, this has resulted in a phenomenon he terms a pirate or recycled modernity (1998), which is dispersed and unconcerned with Western modernity’s classic search for originality and posing fresh theoretical questions for ideas of experience, memory, representation and conflict. Sundaram has spoken and presented on these issues in India and around the world."

The Indian edition of his new book, Pirate Modernity has just been released by Routledge. "Using Delhi’s contemporary history as a site for reflection, Pirate Modernity moves from a detailed discussion of the technocratic design of the city by US planners in the 1950s, to the massive expansions after 1977, culminating in the urban crisis of the 1990s. As a practice, pirate modernity is an illicit form of urban globalization. Poorer urban populations increasingly inhabit non-legal spheres: unauthorized neighborhoods, squatter camps and bypass legal technological infrastructures (media, electricity). This pirate culture produces a significant enabling resource for subaltern populations unable to enter the legal city. Equally, this is an unstable world, bringing subaltern populations into the harsh glare of permanent technological visibility, and attacks by urban elites, courts and visceral media industries. The book examines contemporary Delhi from some of these sites: the unmaking of the city's modernist planning design, new technological urban networks that bypass states and corporations, and the tragic experience of the road accident terrifyingly enhanced by technological culture. Pirate Modernity moves between past and present, along with debates in Asia, Africa and Latin America on urbanism, media culture, and everyday life.

This pioneering book suggests cities have to be revisited afresh after proliferating media culture. Pirate Modernity boldly draws from urban and cultural theory to open a new agenda for a world after media urbanism."

Gyan Prakash of Princeton has this to say of the book: Empirically rich and interpretively ambitious, Pirate Modernity sparkles with brilliant insights on postcolonial urbanism. There is no work like this.

In our Culture, Media, and Urban Studies sections. Rs 495, 248 pages in paperback. ISBN: 9780415409667

The summer of '98...

Sarai, the programme of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi will be 10 years old this year!

The idea of Sarai, however, goes back to the summer of '98... As they say, it was "a time for many new beginnings in the city of Delhi." And what a beginning!

The Sarai Initiative embraces interests that include cinema history, urban cultures and politics, new media theory, computers, the Internet and software cultures, documentary filmmaking, digital arts and critical cultural practice.

Founded on the basis of a collaborative vision - that of Ravi Vasudevan & Ravi Sundaram (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies) and the Raqs Media Collective (Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula & Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Sarai has been bringing out an amazing variety of creative material in various forms.

Their Readers- annual compilations of articles on a theme- are superb, both in content as well as in production, and explore cutting edge topics. Like this year's. FEAR examines the premise Modernity’s great promise – the freedom from fear - now lies in ruins. One can argue that this vision was always compromised.

On 12th February, 2010 at their premises in the CSDS on Rajpur Road, they celebrate their 10 years, with a release of Sarai 08 in an afternoon long program of talks, discussion and more.

They will also discuss Tinker. Solder. Tap, a graphic novel, Trickster City (published by Penguin), and the Hindi translation of Wolfgang Schivelbusch's Disenchanted Night).

On T.S.T We live in a tumultuous media environment. There is widespread confusion, uncertainty and awe at the inventiveness of the thousands of people in media networks who innovate, copy, tinker, recycle, produce, remix and relay. The protagonists of Tinker.Solder.Tap bring alive the ways in which the relationship between life and the media has been re-scripted in the various neighbourhoods of our cities. The story begins in the mid-80s, when a man returns home with an object called a VCR. The chain of effects that follows transforms irreversibly the social life of the neighbourhood and its reverberations can be felt all over the world.

One other new offering from the Sarai Media Labs is t0, the first sonic compilation to be released under the Sound Reasons banner and is produced at the Sarai Media Lab. Sound Reasons to has been put together to linearly construct 'sonic spaces' we inhabit, and the moods these sounds subject us to. The omnipresent nature of sound involves us in a continuous engagement with the objective world; 'in music' we connect to the subjective self and the sonic universe that surrounds us. It is via these two perceptions that these tracks have been woven together, using field recordings and musical composition, where one suggests and leads the other.

t0 is a highly experimental album featuring various artists from all over the world like SoundSkill, monoton, diF, Audio Pervert, da-Saz, DJ Spooky, edGeCut and more.

The Ecological History of India

Volume 36 in the Tulika Books, New Delhi series, A People’s History of India, Man and Environment: The Ecological History of India by Irfan Habib has just been published.

"Increasing interest has been shown in recent decades in matters relating to ecology, especially under the influence of the debate on climate change. The scope of ecology is, of course, much wider than that of climate alone, and involves in addition not only human relation with all species of animals and plants but also those conditions of human societies (material and intellectual) that influence our responses to the opportunities and challenges posed by nature. It is with this wider sense in mind that the history of ecology has been treated in this volume.
Prepared under the scheme of A People’s History of India, this volumes strives to conform to the approach, style and conventions followed by the preceding volumes of the series. Extensive extracts from sources have been provided; and there are special notes on Ecology, Climatology, Zooarchaeology, Natural History and Forestry. The reader may find in the Bibliographical note appended to each chapter a useful guide to further reading; the notes do not, however, aim at setting forth all the source material that has been explored for this book."

Irfan Habib, Professor Emeritus of History at the Aligarh Muslim University, has written extensively on matters historical. He is General Editor of the series, A People’s History of India, and has authored five of its volumes (including the present one), and co-authored two.

Man and Environment is in our History and Ecology and Environment sections, in hardcover, Rs 315, ISBN 9788189487669

Acqua Naturale

Manthan Adhyayan Kendra is a centre set up to monitor, analyse and research water and energy related issues, with a special focus on the latest developments resulting from the liberalisation, globalisation and privatisation of the economy. Located at Badwani, a district town in the state of Madhya Pradesh in India, they are just five kilometers away from the banks of Narmada, a river that has come to symbolise so many of these issues in recent years. While the focus of their work is on water and energy issues, they are also deeply concerned about equitable, just and sustainable development.

Public-Private Partnerships in Water Sector: Partnerships or Privatisation? is their new book, available for download from the Manthan website.

Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) are supposed to provide solutions to many of the existing problems related to infrastructure projects – in both execution and operation. Currently, there are PPP projects in almost all the sectors including roads, ports, airports, water, sewerage, solid waste management and transport among others. It is, therefore, important to do a reality check on PPP projects and their efficacy in addressing the problems faced by the public sector water supply services and other infrastructure sectors as well.

The report looks at various aspects of PPPs, beginning from why PPPs have come to be regarded as the major approach for infrastructure development in the country, the circumstances that lead to the change in approach from direct privatisation to public-private partnerships, the current status of the PPP projects that are being executed in India, especially in the water sector, to the current estimates and projections of investment requirements for infrastructure development in India by governments and International Financial Institutions (IFIs).

The report analyses the arguments given in favor of PPPs, the structural issues with PPPs and the larger governance issues associated with PPPs like transparency, people’s participation, access to information and regulation. It also looks for evidence and experiences of PPP projects in various parts of the world. It draws lessons that need to be learnt and cautions that need to be taken on board when advocating PPPs in public services like water and sanitation.

The report also studies the impact of the PPPs on some of the social obligation issues like the responsibility of provision, service delivery and equity when the private sector is involved in delivery of public services like water.

If you would like a hardcopy of the book, that can be got from Manthan. We would also be very happy to help- write to us!

Realpolitik

Muthaiah Alagappa is Distinguished Senior Fellow at the East-West Center, Hawaii. His The Long Shadow: Nuclear Weapons and Security in 21st Century Asia has become available in an Indian edition, from Oxford University Press.

Reviewing it in The Hindu, C Uday Bhaskar says Alagappa’s edited volume is a veritable tour de force of this complex subject — the long shadow cast by the nuclear weapon — and how it is perceived in the national security strategy of individual states in the extended Asian context.

Others have also been laudatory: I know of no other book about nuclear weapons and international security produced since the end of the Cold War that has the breadth of The Long Shadow. It combines a reconsideration of key strategic concepts and policies with a remarkably comprehensive survey of countries from the Middle East through East Asia whose nuclear status, aspirations, or potential will shape the Asian security order in the twenty-first century, from Avery Goldstein, Professor in the Political Science Department, University of Pennsylvania, and A well-rounded, comprehensive analysis of the roles and implications of nuclear weapons in the Asian security region. In light of the growing importance of Asian security issues, this book will be a valuable resource. from Charles Glaser, Professor at the University of Chicago.

This "is the first comprehensive examination of the roles and implications of nuclear weapons in the post-Cold War security environment, focusing on a broadly defined Asian security region. It investigates the strategies for the employment of nuclear weapons, and the consequences for security and stability in a dramatically altered strategic landscape, and a substantially different nuclear environment. The canvas of study includes the six nuclear weapon states-China, India, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, and the US; several nuclear weapon-capable states-Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan; and the aspirants-Iran and North Korea.

A key conclusion of the study is that nuclear weapons influence national security strategies in fundamental ways; and that deterrence continues to be the dominant role and strategy for the employment of nuclear weapons. It further infers that although there could be destabilizing situations, on balance nuclear weapons have reinforced security and stability in the Asian security region.

As nuclear weapons will persist in the foreseeable future, it is important to re-examine 'old' ideas, concepts, and strategies, and develop 'new' ones relevant for the contemporary era. In line with this, the global nuclear order should be constructed anew based on present realities."

In our Strategic Affairs and Politics sections. In Hardcover, 590 pages, Rs 995. ISBN: 9780198063599

And yet...

Jolly Mohan Kaul's memoirs, In Search of a Better World, is published this month by Samya, Kolkata.

"In his lifelong mission to make the world a better place, Jolly Kaul takes us to the heart of what concerns India and, indeed, any nation: its values, politics and governance. At the age of nineteen in 1941, convinced that only the Communist Party could fight effectively the fascist and imperialist forces and bring about a more just society, Kaul abandoned his family, any possible career, and went underground. He did not know what he was going in for, he admits, but knew that he must give ‘his all’. He was to remain a dedicated and disciplined member till January 1963 when he left the Party, shocked by the China-India war and by the forthcoming split within the Party. The points he raised in his resignation letter resonates today.

An unusual contribution is Kaul’s incisive critique of the developments within the Party based on the twenty-two years he spent in it, first as a trade union organizer and later as Secretary of the Calcutta District Committee. Jolly Kaul built three additional careers: in the corporate world as the head of public relations for Indian Oxygen Ltd, as a journalist with a news agency, editing the economic journal, Capital, and, finally, as a social activist in the Gandhi Labour Foundation at Puri."

Jolly Kaul is an inspiration! Active at 89, he still treks in the Himalayas, and is constant in his endeavour to improve society ... The book has a foreword by Dr. Amlan Datta, and an afterword by Aditi Roy Ghatak, a well-known journalist.

In our Biography section, in hardcover, 400 pages, Rs 550. ISBN 9788185604992