India Beyond Metros: Dekho Apna Bharat, is a travelogue of around 50-odd Tier 2/3 cities from across the nation. The book does not cover the already well-known major metropolitan cities in the country, but gives you a glimpse of small-town India and the hinterland. Each chapter is dedicated to one city and spells out what to see, where to stay, how to go, and even what to shop for there. It is ideal for corporate travellers who visit these cities for official work or families who want to spend holidays/ weekends exploring their own country.
As India's middle class grows and disposable incomes rise, "modern" retail is becoming the next hot sector of the Indian economy. Hundreds of millions of new consumers will join this retail revolution, venturing into supermarkets, department stores and air-conditioned shopping malls for the first time. But instead of just window shopping, many of them will be serious buyers with money to spend. To cater for their needs, established players in the modern retail sector such as Biyani, Raheja and Goenka are being joined by the big names of Indian business - Reliance, Birla, Bharti, Tata etc - who plan to spend billions over the next few years rolling out supermarkets, big-box outlets and specialty stores. At the same time, property developers are getting on with the "malling" of India, and looking for high profile anchor tenants to lure customers. On the sidelines of this Indian retail revolution are big overseas players such as Wal-Mart, which already has a tie-up with Bharti to provide much-needed “back office” support. But what Wal-Mart really wants is the right to set up its own stores in India. The same goes for Tesco, Carrefour, Metro and other international players. While the macro outlook appears bright, the problems are astronomical for India retail industry. There is no reliable cold chain, transport logistics are appalling, there is a huge lack of managerial talent, there is no consistency for quality and quantity of supply, there is political opposition from groups such as market middlemen, the mom and pop "kirana" corner stores have to be catered for, as do the farmers who grow the produce that is integral to a successful retail revolution. How well will these disparate players cope with the various pressures of a dynamic and fast-moving industry?
Today, the majority of the world's population lives in a country with falling marriage rates, a phenomenon with profound impacts on women, gender, and sexuality. In this exceptionally crafted ethnography, Sarah Lamb probes the gendered trend of single women in India, examining what makes living outside of marriage for women increasingly possible and yet incredibly challenging. Featuring the stories of never-married women as young as 35 and as old as 92, this book offers a remarkable portrait of a way of life experienced by women across class and caste divides. For women in India, complex social-cultural and political-economic contexts are foundational to their lives and decisions, and remaining unmarried is often an unintended consequence of other pressing life priorities. Arguing that never-married women are able to illuminate their society's broader social-cultural values, Lamb offers a new and startling look at prevailing systems in India today. "This pathbreaking book offers a vital analysis of the rising but unrecognized category of single women in a marriage-minded society such as India. Through beautifully rendered and diverse stories, Sarah Lamb challenges conventional wisdom." -MARCIA C. INHORN, William K. Lanman, Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, Yale University "For fans of Lamb's evocative narratives on Bengali widows, her new book provides another rich look at the negative space of marriage: the rare demographic of single women in Bengal across class and caste." -SRIMATI BASU, author of The Trouble with Marriage: Feminists Confront Law and Violence in India "This lively ethnographic account makes several key contributions to feminist anthropological appraisals of marriage as an institution. Lamb renders a compelling, detailed, and sensitive portrait of compulsory heterosexuality and patriliny as seen from the margins." -LUCINDA RAMBERG, Associate Professor of Anthropology and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Cornell University.
The promotion of an enterprise culture and entrepreneurship in India in recent decades has had far-reaching implications beyond the economy, and transformed social and cultural attitudes and conduct. This book brings together pioneering research on the nature of India’s enterprise culture, covering a range of different themes: workplace, education, religion, trade, films, media, youth identity, gender relations, class formation and urban politics. Based on extensive empirical and ethnographic research by the contributors, the book shows the myriad manifestations of enterprise culture and the making of the aspiring, enterprising-self in public culture, social practice, and personal lives, ranging from attempts to construct hegemonic ideas in public discourse, to appropriation by individuals and groups with unintended consequences, to forms of contested and contradictory expression. It discusses what is ‘new’ about enterprise culture and how it relates to pre-existing ideas, and goes on to look at the processes and mechanisms through which enterprise culture is becoming entrenched, as well as how it affects different classes and communities. The book highlights the social and political implications of enterprise culture and how it recasts family and interpersonal relationships as well as personal and collective identity. Illuminating one of the most important aspects of India’s current economic and social transformation, this book is of interest to students and scholars of Asian Business, Sociology, Anthropology, Development Studies and Media and Cultural Studies.
Urban Mobility Systems in the World provides insight into the geographical organization of urban mobility systems around the world. These “systems” consist of infrastructure networks, existing transport services and people’s travel practices. Adopting a comparative approach, the book highlights the geographical diversity of mobility systems, based on case studies from Africa, North and South America, Asia and Europe. This multi-disciplinary book is organized into twelve chapters, divided into four parts. The first part gives an overview of urban mobility, and then examines the factors that determine everyday mobility in cities, revealing different travel practices among populations (poor, elderly and children). Parts 2 and 3, respectively, focus on urban public transport (trains, metros, minibuses) and active modes of transport (walking, cycling), and the related infrastructure policies. The final section examines the circulation of urban mobility analysis tools and public policy models
Urbanization beyond Municipal Boundaries informs policy priorities to manage India's urbanization. Incisive analysis of the patterns of India's urbanization using geo-referenced data from various rounds of the population and economic census highlights rapid suburbanization of people and fi rms around the country's largest metropolitan areas. However, the move to the suburbs is accelerated by land and housing shortages in metropolitan cores, coupled with high transport costs between the metropolitan core and its periphery, and much worse infrastructure access and quality for water, electricity, and sanitation in the urban periphery. What are priorities for policy reform? First, investing in India's institutional and informational foundations that can enable land and housing markets to function effi ciently while deregulating land use in urban areas. To achieve this, planning for land use and planning for infrastructure must be coordinated so that densifi cation of metropolitan areas can be accompanied by infrastructure improvements. Second, expanding and delivering better infrastructure services to improve livability. Policy makers need to institute reforms that would help providers recover costs yet reach out to poorer neighborhoods and peripheral areas. Last, strengthening physical connectivity between metropolitan hubs and their peripheries to improve those areas that attract the majority of people and businesses over the medium term. Investments in network infrastructure alongside logistics improvements can facilitate the smoother movement of goods. Land policy, infrastructure services, and connectivity--coordinated improvements in this triad can help India reap dividends from improved spatial equity and greater economic effi ciency that come with urbanization.
Economics is a social science concerned mainly with description and analysis of the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Beyond the various theories and models, however, economics has close relationship with day to day life. This book reviews the economic journey of India over the last seventy years, and seeks to stimulate the readers’ thinking on some major issues and potentialities facing the Indian economy. Five main themes flow through the book – India’s potential to be the World’s third largest economic power by 2030, the challenges of socio-economic equity that India faces, the several opportunities that India has in that journey, the critical role of governance, leadership, management and administration, and the importance of mindset changes to power India’s futureeconomic growth. A special focus is laid on the role of government policies and projects in socio-economic development. The book sensitises the readers, including college students in general, and students of economics in particular, to the happenings around us which have significant economic import. The book makes all through its seventy chapters several suggestions to power India’s growth as a global economic superpower, on a plank of socioeconomic equity. This book serves as an expansive thought primer and focussed execution guide for an economically independent and resurgent India.
In this edition, we have featured the developments about the Delhi Metro which celebrated its 27th anniversary recently. We have discussed how the world’s first metro rail system was built in London? Based on feedback received from the readers, we have also started a knowledge series to keep readers updated on metro rail technology. We have covered the interviews of Mr. Achal Khare, Managing Director, National High Speed Rail Corporation (NHSRCL), Mr. Ashutosh Shukla, Director (Transportation & Mobility), Schneider Electric India and Mr. Luong Vo Ta, General Director, Vinh Hung JSC, Vietnam. These leaders have made a huge success in their respective fields despite the covid-19 impact on the industry.
