Category Archives: Book Reviews

Rights to the forest

[First published in The Hindu dated 15/4/17] Rights to the forest have been among the most contested subjects since colonial times. In Democracy in the Woods: Environmental Conservation and Social Justice in India, Tanzania and Mexico, Prakash Kashwan uses a comparative political analysis approach to show how India, Tanzania and Mexico, with their varied forestland regimes, haveContinue reading “Rights to the forest”

Jairam Ramesh profiles Indira Gandhi as a naturalist

[First published in The Hindu dated May 21, 2017] Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them. – William Shakespeare While reading the “unconventional” biography of Indira Gandhi — Indira Gandhi: A Life in Nature — one cannot help but wonder if the mantle of her father and India’s first PrimeContinue reading “Jairam Ramesh profiles Indira Gandhi as a naturalist”

India’s Development Paradox Explained

First published in Biblio: A Review of Books, Vol. XVII Nos. 9&10 Sep-Oct, 2012. (Accessed online at http://www.biblio-india.org)  Why is the India story a paradox of high growth rates on the one hand and abysmal human development indicators on the other? The Indian welfare state, with its innumerable development programs, is supposed to have wipedContinue reading “India’s Development Paradox Explained”

Between Gandhi and Hitler

The dust raised by the “Indian spring” is yet to settle and Mukul Sharma’s book ‘Green and Saffron’, recently published by Permanent Black, has arrived to raise another storm. An entire chapter in this book has been devoted to a careful exposition of the politics behind the Gandhian leading India’s much-watched anti-corruption movement – AnnaContinue reading “Between Gandhi and Hitler”

A timely treatise

[First published in Biblio – A Review of Books, issued dated July-August 2010] This is the book that Home Secretary G.K.Pillai is said to be reading nowadays to better understand tribal alienation in mining areas. It is said that if things are not what they often seem to be, then it is the job of the anthropologist to unravel what lies beneath. Felix Padel and Samarendra DasContinue reading “A timely treatise”