Over the past decade, India has seen a significant rise in both passion for enterprise and pride in heritage. The two have converged to form successful ventures and imaginative social initiatives centred around Indic ideas that encompass yoga, Ayurveda, textiles, Sanskrit education and temple conservation, among others. In The Indic Quotient, Kaninika Mishra celebrates the efforts of ordinary Indians as they reclaim their native identity with ingenuity – from a team of economists working to put long-forgotten millets on urban Indian plates in Delhi to a group of art enthusiasts working to bring back stolen artefacts from museums abroad; an ex-investment banker formulating Ayurveda-inspired beauty products in Chandigarh to a yoga teacher from rural Bihar setting up a successful teaching practice in Gurugram; and a former engineer working to revive traditional textiles in Assam to a corporate professional in Bengaluru making India's first Sanskrit animation film. With intimately told stories of dynamism and entrepreneurship, the book tries to examine the relevance of traditional wisdom and culture in modern India, and what they mean for India's economic future and soft power.
Humans have let their creative juices flow since early times; the invention of fire, proto-writing, pottery, arts and crafts, agriculture and metal-making would bear ample testimony to this. Among early contributions to science and technology, the contributions made by early Mesopotamians are highly impressive. They made stellar contributions to metal-working, glass and lamp making, architecture, the production of textiles and weaving, flood control, water storage and irrigation. They also invented the earliest form of true writing, namely Cuneiform in the middle of the fourth millennium before Christ. Writing was usually mastered by scribes who were small in number in relation to the total population, and was composed on clay tablets. The Epic of Gilgamesh is among the world’s earliest literature, and is attributed to ancient Mesopotamia. Libraries are also believed to have existed in Ancient Mesopotamia. Mesopotamians made stellar contributions to mathematics, map making, medicine and astronomy too, though true intellectualism in the modern sense of the term probably did not exist then. Egyptians made important contributions to new technologies and concepts such as mummification, medicine, irrigation, agriculture, glass-making, engineering, astronomy and grand architecture. They also invented paper, their own form of hieroglyphic writing, and built libraries, too. Indian science too took off in a big way in early ancient times, and Indian innovation can be traced back to Mehrgarh, a preIndus valley civilization site, now in Pakistan. Harappans developed metallurgy, irrigation, agriculture, architecture, their own form of writing besides other inventions and innovations such as weights and measures. Alphabetic scripts and iron-making took off in Post-Harappan cultures in the Gangetic plains, where there was some continuity with Harappan cultures, and Ancient Indians made contributions to mathematics, astronomy and medicine too. In the fifth century BC, the grammarian Panini made important contributions to the study of Sanskrit grammar. An account of Ancient India is provided by Megasthenes in his book Indica which is now considered to be lost. Indians also contributed greatly to philosophy and intellectual thought as evidenced by the Upanishads and Buddhism as well. In sum, Indian philosophical traditions include both orthodox (or Astika) systems which include the Nyaya, Samkhya, Vaisheshika, Purva-Mimamsa (or Mimamsa), Yoga and Vedanta schools of philosophy, and unorthodox (or Nastika) systems, examples being Buddhist and Jaina traditions. Ancient Indian scholars and intellectuals included Bhaskara, Varahamihira, Sushruta, Bramhagupta, Aryabhatta and Bihana....
In recent decades it has become obvious that mathematics has always been a worldwide activity. But this is the first book to provide a substantial collection of English translations of key mathematical texts from the five most important ancient and medieval non-Western mathematical cultures, and to put them into full historical and mathematical context. The Mathematics of Egypt, Mesopotamia, China, India, and Islam gives English readers a firsthand understanding and appreciation of these cultures' important contributions to world mathematics. The five section authors—Annette Imhausen (Egypt), Eleanor Robson (Mesopotamia), Joseph Dauben (China), Kim Plofker (India), and J. Lennart Berggren (Islam)—are experts in their fields. Each author has selected key texts and in many cases provided new translations. The authors have also written substantial section introductions that give an overview of each mathematical culture and explanatory notes that put each selection into context. This authoritative commentary allows readers to understand the sometimes unfamiliar mathematics of these civilizations and the purpose and significance of each text. Addressing a critical gap in the mathematics literature in English, this book is an essential resource for anyone with at least an undergraduate degree in mathematics who wants to learn about non-Western mathematical developments and how they helped shape and enrich world mathematics. The book is also an indispensable guide for mathematics teachers who want to use non-Western mathematical ideas in the classroom.
This book examines the current situation, levels of adoption, management practices, and the future outlook of conservation agriculture in India, and also in other tropical and subtropical regions of the world. While conservation agriculture is proposed as an important means to combat climate change, improve crop productivity and food affordability, and to protect the environment, the adoption of conservation agriculture in India, and south-east Asia more broadly, has been slow. This volume reflects on the current status of conservation agriculture in India, asking why adoption has been slow and putting forward strategies to improve its uptake. The chapters cover the various aspects of crop management such as soil, water, nutrients, weeds, crop residues, machinery, and energy, in a range of environments, including irrigated and rainfed regions. The impact of climate change and the economic considerations behind the adoption of conservation agriculture are also discussed. The volume concludes by discussing the future outlook for conservation agriculture in India, in particular drawing out parallels with other tropical and subtropical regions of the world. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of conservation agriculture, sustainable agriculture, crop and soil management, and environmental and natural resource management.
The aim of this book is to familiarize the readers with topics that make news, with the subjects that invariably draw the attention of the journalists because they may matter to the audience, and with the themes that are newsworthy and recurring. The book explains those words that could be confusing, and which are utterly Indian or may not echo all over the country. The book is useful for student journalists and media professionals; for those whose interests or careers are closely related with journalism, media and public relations; and for those who want to know and report on India, or from Bharat, or out of Hindustan. KEY FEATURES • Highly useful and informative • Covers all platforms of journalism and media: newspapers, magazines, radio, television and Internet • A Journalism and Media Calendar at the end • Reference to news items, published in real newspapers/websites
Indian history and culture are dynamic, spanning back to the beginning of human civilization. It began with a mysterious culture that flourished along the Indus River as well as among the farming communities in the southern lands of India. And the history of India is punctuated by constant integration of migrating people with the diverse cultures that surrounded India. Available evidence suggests that the use of iron, copper, and other metals was widely prevalent in the Indian sub-continent at a fairly early period, which is indicative of the progress that this part of the world had made by the end of the fourth millennium BC. History is the chronological study of the life and civilization of human beings. To develop linkage with the past and the present through continuous dialogues between the experience of past and that of the present is the fundamental mission of history. So, the historian E H Car aptly says that the great writing of history becomes successful only when the search done by the historians illuminates and involves it with the problems of present age. The tested truth is that achieving knowledge from the experience of history acts as constant in the different socio-economic and political contexts. But the approaches to studying history are continuously informed by the changing circumstances and consequently modified from time to time in keeping with the demands of time and space. New ideas and views develop in the present and futures times in the light of experiences of history.
