Prosperous countries have a socio-economic operating system, which India lacks. This book argues that India must incorporate a structure aligned with its collective identity to compete globally for wealth creation. The book, divided into three epochs—Past, Present, and Future—offers a comprehensive understanding of India as a country, economy, and value system. Print edition not for sale in South Asia (India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Bhutan)
Every successful country has an operating system, a value system on which the country’s socio economic institutions are built. India has had none and therefore the chaos and resultant failure to succeed in a globally competitive environment for capital and correlated wealth creation. The book analyzes why India as a country is a Collective and must incorporate an operating system that is in line with this very logic. Divided into - three epochs- past, present and future, the book attempts to see the bigger picture and understand India as a country, as a value system and as an economy from within.
These essays focus on the various forms of collective violence that have occurred in India during the past six decades, which include riots, pogroms, and genocide. It is argued that these various forms of violence must be understood not as spontaneous outbreaks of passion, but as productions by organized groups. Moreover, it is also evident that government and its agents do not always act to control violence, but often engage in or permit gratuitous acts of violence against particular groups under the cover of the imperative of restoring order, peace, and tranquility. This has certainly been the case in numerous incidents of collective violence in India where curfew restrictions have been used for just such purposes. In this context, secularism constitutes a countervailing practice, and a set of values that are essential to maintain balance in a plural society where the organization of intergroup violence is endemic, persistent, and deadly.
In this far-ranging and erudite exploration of the South Asian past, Sumit Guha discusses the shaping of social and historical memory in world-historical context. He presents memory as the result of both remembering and forgetting and of the preservation, recovery, and decay of records. By describing how these processes work through sociopolitical organizations, Guha delineates the historiographic legacy acquired by the British in colonial India; the creation of the centralized educational system and mass production of textbooks that led to unification of historical discourses under colonial auspices; and the divergence of these discourses in the twentieth century under the impact of nationalism and decolonization. Guha brings together sources from a range of languages and regions to provide the first intellectual history of the ways in which socially recognized historical memory has been made across the subcontinent. This thoughtful study contributes to debates beyond the field of history that complicate the understanding of objectivity and documentation in a seemingly post-truth world.
India’s vibrant civil society sector has become a powerful symbol of political participation in the country. It comprises a wealth of media organizations, caste and religion based associations, farmers groups, labor unions, social service organizations, and an almost limitless number of development organizations. Given this vibrancy, it is difficult to grasp the characteristics of civil society at the transnational or even the national level. Delving beneath the progressive surface to the local level, one finds a murky and multifaceted world of competing interests, compromises, uneasy alliances and erratic victories. The Politics of Collective Advocacy in India critically examines the enormous gap between the ways collective action in India is studied and the ways it operates on the ground. It identifies what influences the relative success or failure of different movements; the tools activists use to overcome obstacles; the traps that derail efforts to frame, politicize, and act on certain issues and assumptions about particular forms of action. The authors synthesize the experiences of a number of organizations and movements to identify the most effective tools that civil society actors at all levels can use to achieve positive social change.
"Founded in 1989, the influential Delhi-based artists' organization Sahmat has offered a platform for artists, writers, poets, musicians, and actors to create and present works that promote artistic freedom and secular, egalitarian values. A companion to an exhibit of the same name at the Smart Museum of Art, The Sahmat Collective explores the contemporary art scene in Delhi while meditating on the power of art as a tool for social change.The Sahmat Collective documents the history of the organization through a series of case studies, each presenting new scholarship, vivid images, reprints of original articles and essays, as well as interviews with artists and organizers of each project. Situating the collective within not only the political sphere in India, but also the contemporary art trends from around the world, this beautifully illustrated volume offers both critical essays on the art produced by Sahmat and texts on the political, social, and artistic climate in India by Smart Museum staff members, philosophers, musicians, members of Sahmat, art historians, anthropologists, and artists. "--
"Chilling...this terrific novel is...propelled by an iron-tight plot that becomes increasingly tense." --New York Times Book Review "It’s a nerve-shredding, emotionally harrowing ride. Don’t miss it.” —Megan Abbott, New York Times bestselling author The USA Today bestselling and Edgar Award–winning author of Never Look Back and If I Die Tonight asks how far a grieving mother will go to right a tragic wrong in this propulsive novel of psychological suspense. Camille Gardener is a grieving—and angry—mother who, five years after her daughter’s death, is still obsessed with the privileged young man she believes to be responsible. When her rash actions draw the attention of a secret group of women—the collective— Camille is drawn into a dark web where these mothers share their wildly different stories of loss as well as their desire for justice in a world where privilege denies accountability. Fueled by mutual rage, the collective members devise and act out retribution fantasies via precise, anonymous, highly coordinated revenge killings. As Camille struggles to comprehend whether this is a role-playing exercise or terrifying reality, she must decide if these women are truly avenging angels or monsters. Becoming more deeply enmeshed in the group, Camille learns truths about the collective—and about herself—that she may not be able to survive
This collection of high policy documents charts Britain’s difficulties in defending the Empire in a time of ’imperial overstretch’. The 20th century saw the rise of several great maritime and military powers and the relative decline of British strength, which created major defence problems for the British Empire. Various solutions were attempted, such as ententes with France and Russia, the settling of differences with the USA and an alliance with Japan. These sufficed until after World War I, when the Empire gained several new territorial responsibilities, all to be defended on a declining economic base. The dominions were encouraged to pay for their own navies, although the Admiralty wished to assume control of them. The increasing threat from Japan made Australia, New Zealand and other Asian colonies nervous and the promised ’main fleet to Singapore’ became less and less likely as the 1930s wore on.
