India and the Age of Crisis

India and the Age of Crisis

Author: Michael Gillan

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-03-17

Total Pages: 145

ISBN-13: 1317616855

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Much of the discussion of India in the public sphere has focused on economic policy settings and restructuring, annual growth rates, trade relations and the nation’s status as an economic and political actor within the international system. This collection considers other dimensions of socio-economic transformation in India and its profound impact on society and nature. While economic and ecological fragility are now very apparently problems of a ‘global’ scale they are nevertheless grounded and experienced at the local scale where vulnerable and marginal people located in the urban periphery and in rural areas confront these ‘crises’ most acutely. The studies in this collection encompass many of the most important social and political concerns of India in this age of crisis, namely, the politics of water resources and land acquisition and use; the interaction between food security, markets, and institutions; the politics and strategies of labour movements; narratives and practices of ‘development’ and contestation over forms of agrarian production in India; the link between urbanisation and local class, caste and political actors; and the potential for civil society to either be co-opted or to contest neoliberal logics and forms of governance. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of South Asian Studies.


The Age of Crisis

The Age of Crisis

Author: Alfredo Saad-Filho

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-09-27

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 3030816087

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This book offers an analysis of the causes, development, and likely consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic for global neoliberalism. The analysis will draw upon the author’s previous work on neoliberalism, and on its twin crises: the economic crisis (the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), ongoing since 2007) and, subsequently, the crisis of political democracy that has been associated with the rise of ‘spectacular’ authoritarian leaders in several countries. The approach is grounded on Marxist political economy. The book argues that the Covid-19 pandemic emerges out of this context of deep inequalities and crises in the economy and in politics, and it is likely to reinforce the exclusionary tendencies of neoliberalism, with detrimental implications both for economic prosperity and for democracy. In turn, the pandemic has revealed the limitations of neoliberalism like never before, with implications for the legitimacy of capitalism itself, and opening unprecedented spaces for the left. This book will be of interest to academics in economics, international relations, political science, political economy, sociology and development studies.


Forged in Crisis

Forged in Crisis

Author: Rudra Chaudhuri

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 381

ISBN-13: 0199354863

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Offers a fresh and challenging interpretation of India's relationship with the United States over six decades, revealing the complex and distinctive manner in which New Delhi has pursued its interests.


India Calling

India Calling

Author: Anand Giridharadas

Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com

Published: 2011-02-28

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 1458763099

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Reversing his parents immigrant path, a young writer returns to India and discovers an old country making itself new. Anand Giridharadas sensed something was afoot as his plane prepared to land in Bombay. An elderly passenger looked at him and said, Were all trying to go that way, pointing to the rear. You, youre going this way. Giridharadas was...


Reimagining India

Reimagining India

Author: McKinsey & Company, Inc.

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2013-11-19

Total Pages: 432

ISBN-13: 1476735328

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Reimagining India brings together leading thinkers from around the world to explore the challenges and opportunities faced by one of the most important and least understood nations on earth. India’s abundance of life—vibrant, chaotic, and tumultuous—has long been its foremost asset. The nation’s rising economy and burgeoning middle class have earned India a place alongside China as one of the world’s two indispensable emerging markets. At the same time, India’s tech-savvy entrepreneurs and rapidly globalizing firms are upending key sectors of the world econ­omy. But what is India’s true potential? And what can be done to unlock it? McKinsey & Company has pulled in wisdom from many corners—social and cultural as well as eco­nomic and political—to launch a feisty debate about the future of Asia’s “other superpower.” Reimagining India features an all-star cast of contributors, including CNN’s Fareed Zakaria; Mukesh Ambani, CEO of India’s largest private conglomerate; Microsoft founder Bill Gates; Google chairman Eric Schmidt; Harvard Business School dean Nitin Nohria; award-winning authors Suketu Mehta (Maximum City), Edward Luce (In Spite of the Gods), and Patrick French (India: A Portrait); Nandan Nilekani, Infosys cofounder and chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India; and a host of other leading executives, entrepreneurs, economists, foreign policy experts, jour­nalists, historians, and cultural luminaries. These essays explore topics like the strengths and weaknesses of India’s political system, growth prospects for India’s economy, the competitiveness of Indian firms, India’s rising international profile, and the rapid evolution of India’s culture. Over the next decade India has the opportunity to show the rest of the develop­ing world how open, democratic societies can achieve high growth and shared prosperity. Contributors offer creative strategies for seizing that opportunity. But they also offer a frank assessment of the risks that India’s social and political fractures will instead thwart progress, condemning hundreds of millions of people to enduring poverty. Reimagining India is a critical resource for read­ers seeking to understand how this vast and vital nation is changing—and how it promises to change the world around us.


Violent Fraternity

Violent Fraternity

Author: Shruti Kapila

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2021-11-02

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 0691195226

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A groundbreaking history of the political ideas that made modern India Violent Fraternity is a major history of the political thought that laid the foundations of modern India. Taking readers from the dawn of the twentieth century to the independence of India and formation of Pakistan in 1947, the book is a testament to the power of ideas to drive historical transformation. Shruti Kapila sheds new light on leading figures such as M. K. Gandhi, Muhammad Iqbal, B. R. Ambedkar, and Vinayak Savarkar, the founder of Hindutva, showing how they were innovative political thinkers as well as influential political actors. She also examines lesser-known figures who contributed to the making of a new canon of political thought, such as B. G. Tilak, considered by Lenin to be the "fountainhead of revolution in Asia," and Sardar Patel, India's first deputy prime minister. Kapila argues that it was in India that modern political languages were remade through a revolution that defied fidelity to any exclusive ideology. The book shows how the foundational questions of politics were addressed in the shadow of imperialism to create both a sovereign India and the world's first avowedly Muslim nation, Pakistan. Fraternity was lost only to be found again in violence as the Indian age signaled the emergence of intimate enmity. A compelling work of scholarship, Violent Fraternity demonstrates why India, with its breathtaking scale and diversity, redefined the nature of political violence for the modern global era.


The Crisis of Secularism in India

The Crisis of Secularism in India

Author: Anuradha Dingwaney Needham

Publisher: Duke University Press

Published: 2007-01-18

Total Pages: 436

ISBN-13: 9780822338468

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In this timely, nuanced collection, twenty leading cultural theorists assess the contradictory ideals, policies, and practices of secularism in India.


The Jobs Crisis in India

The Jobs Crisis in India

Author: Raghavan Jagannathan

Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Published: 2018-10-18

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 1529016371

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If you’ve read about self-driving cars, blockchain, and the internet of things (IoT), registered for a massive open online course (MOOC), considered dealing in cryptocurrencies, or asked Alexa to play your favourite song, the chances are you are one of the select few Indians adjusting to the reality of a brave new world driven by technology and automation. But somewhere you will also acknowledge the growing disquiet in society, where there is job-deficient growth, rising farm distress, and youths from different communities agitating for job reservations in government or the public sector. Like elsewhere on the globe, in India, too, the worlds of those with skills to handle technology, and those without, are diverging. This book presents us with insights, explanations, and possible solutions to the aggravating jobs crisis in India. Raghavan Jagannathan comprehensively and skillfully explains the various micro and macro factors that impact the overall job scenario, including the rise of the ‘gig’ economy, the use of robots, new technologies and artificial intelligence (AI) that displace human labour on the shopfloor and in the services sector, and the economic uncertainties that lie ahead. Archaic labour laws designed to protect employees from exploitative employers are not helping matters at a time when capital is cheaper than ever. The world of long-term and predictable jobs and careers is shrinking. The only people who will benefit in this scenario are those who are willing to constantly upskill, relearn, and relocate to improve their job and income prospects. The world is getting older demographically, and older people always find the speed of change difficult to cope with; India, with its younger population, can do better, but government and business have not got their act together yet.


Life, Interrupted

Life, Interrupted

Author: Amrita Tripathi

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2022-02-22

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 8195131778

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"A timely book that can help us have potentially life-saving conversations" - DEEPIKA PADUKONE, Actor & Founder, LiveLoveLaugh “A shocking fact and huge wake-up call is that suicide is the leading cause of death for young Indians. As a country — across all our expertise and fields of interest — we need to pay closer attention, and this book urges us to do just that, with clear policy level suggestions and a call to action.” -ABHINAV BINDRA In India we tend to have a fatalistic attitude towards suicide, tending to believe that nothing can be done to prevent it, focusing only on the politically volatile issue of farmer suicides, or periodically, when there is a death by suicide of a prominent personality or suicides in vulnerable groups (for example, students especially after Board exam results), there is a hue and cry in the popular press with opinion makers demanding immediate action. Why should you care? Because a disproportionate number of young Indians die by suicide and these are preventable deaths. The resulting knee-jerk reaction from policymakers is to offer some immediate solutions (appointing counsellors in colleges, etc.) which have little evidence of success. After a while, everyone forgets the issue, until the next such event and the cycle repeats itself. This book aims to present evidence-based strategies to tackle suicide, using interviews, case studies and conversations that lay readers can make sense of, while proposing an outline of steps that policymakers, journalists and key stakeholder groups can collaborate on to provide better solutions and save precious lives in India.


The Nutmeg's Curse

The Nutmeg's Curse

Author: Amitav Ghosh

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2022-09-07

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 0226823954

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In this ambitious successor to The Great Derangement, acclaimed writer Amitav Ghosh finds the origins of our contemporary climate crisis in Western colonialism’s violent exploitation of human life and the natural environment. A powerful work of history, essay, testimony, and polemic, Amitav Ghosh’s new book traces our contemporary planetary crisis back to the discovery of the New World and the sea route to the Indian Ocean. The Nutmeg’s Curse argues that the dynamics of climate change today are rooted in a centuries-old geopolitical order constructed by Western colonialism. At the center of Ghosh’s narrative is the now-ubiquitous spice nutmeg. The history of the nutmeg is one of conquest and exploitation—of both human life and the natural environment. In Ghosh’s hands, the story of the nutmeg becomes a parable for our environmental crisis, revealing the ways human history has always been entangled with earthly materials such as spices, tea, sugarcane, opium, and fossil fuels. Our crisis, he shows, is ultimately the result of a mechanistic view of the earth, where nature exists only as a resource for humans to use for our own ends, rather than a force of its own, full of agency and meaning. Writing against the backdrop of the global pandemic and the Black Lives Matter protests, Ghosh frames these historical stories in a way that connects our shared colonial histories with the deep inequality we see around us today. By interweaving discussions on everything from the global history of the oil trade to the migrant crisis and the animist spirituality of Indigenous communities around the world, The Nutmeg’s Curse offers a sharp critique of Western society and speaks to the profoundly remarkable ways in which human history is shaped by non-human forces.