Author: Romila Thapar
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 317
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0140298835
Description
Now available in paperback edition, this volume, edited and accompanied by Romila Thapar's introduction, features fourteen of India’s foremost scholars and specialists in various fields exploring the challenges that lie before twenty-first century India in its quest for a democratic and just society.
Globalization and the IT revolution provide a new context to the problems faced by contemporary India. But will globalization ensure rapid economic growth and development in the face of low literacy, rising population, and the gradual withdrawal of the State from social commitments? Will imitation westernization, and the consumerism that comes with it, further a just society? What are the strains that democracy will be subjected to in the empowerment struggle by marginalized groups, and the growing social and economic disparities that are often accompanied by violence and terrorism?
How will India’s multiculturalism be affected by the upsurge of various identities and of exclusionist nationalism? Will the family as an institution be transformed to enhance gender justice? Will new technology ensure the autonomy of the media? Can the mauling of the Indian landscape be halted? Covering a large canvas, INDIA: Another Millennium? compels us to look at the hard choices before India in the early decades of this millennium. The volume includes essays by Bina Agarwal, Javeed Alam, Kaushik Basu, Rustom Bharucha, Dipankar Gupta, Gopal Guru, Sunil Khilnani, Krishna Kumar, NR Narayana Murthy, Prabhat Patnaik, Dhruv Raina, N Ram, Mahesh Rangarajan and P Sainath.
REVIEWS
This is a book that deserves to be read, but not casually.
-Bhaskar Ghose, Outlook
Very comprehensive.
-Financial Express
The ideals and arguments…are well considered and well laid out no essay leaves one disappointed.
-Deccan Herald
Contents
Note on Contributors
Will a Millennium be Coming Our Way?
Slow and Almost Steady
The Present in the Past:
Trajectories for the Social History of Science
The Idea of Gender Equality:
From Legislative Vision to Everyday Family Practices
Thinking Through Culture:
A Perspective for the millennium
India’s Unmodern Modernity
The Balance of Democracy
Dalits in Pursuit of Modernity
A Minority Moves into another Millennium
The Age of Inequality
The Future of Marxism
Whither India? The Prospect of Prosperity
Making India a Significant IT Player in This Millennium
The Great Indian Media Bazaar:
Emerging Trends and Issues for the Future
The Future of the Environment:
Beyond Utopia and Doomsday
Index