Featured Articles
What Made the East India Company So Successful?
Analysis Goes Missing in Dalrymple
William Dalrymple's book on the East India Company is written very well and has a great deal of detail. But the writing of good History needs more. It calls for a consideration of all relevant facts and a comprehensive analysis. This is unfortunately missing.
What Should We Do About the Indian Economy?
A Wide-Angled Perspective
In the absence of structural reforms for transformative growth, a rural-led growth strategy is the only option for economic revival at this point of time. Growth may be slower but it will be sustained. Supply-side measures like corporate cuts will not help.
Gandhi: A Player of Infinite Games
Even radical dissenters have experimented within some boundaries. Gandhi played with boundaries themselves in nearly every domain of life — politics, sexuality, culture, knowledge. He was uniquely a player of infinite games with a vision of life as play.
Structural Violence of Casteism
A Personal Narrative by an Adivasi University Teacher
In West Bengal, the symbolic violence of caste is more intense than physical violence. A university teacher describes the everyday exclusionary experiences of adivasis in education spaces and the operation of caste-based glass-ceilings when they do find jobs.
India’s Biggest Challenge: The Future of Farming
India has enough food; does it have too many people working in agriculture? The pressure on land is an outcome of policy, which condemns most people to marginal farming. India needs a different set of solutions for agriculture and for those working the land.
Understanding the History of Kashmir, Art. 370, and Speculating on the Future
At the Manthan Samvaad in Hyderabad on October 2, Srinath Raghavan gave a lucid exposition of the troubled history of Kashmir, presented the facts since 1947 and cleared the fog around Article 370. Watch this excellent talk here. (Courtesy Manthan)
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The Story of My English
Can an autobiographically-inclined social history reveal the role of English in shaping caste privilege, regulating class mobility and enabling individual agency? This essay risks an answer.
The Republic and the Kashmir Valley
From Federalism to “Internal Colonisation”
India’s political experiment over seven decades had shown that federalism can accommodate diverse policies for diverse identities and thus strengthen democracy in a plural society. That has now been set aside by the Government of India’s actions in Kashmir.
Ujjwala Yojana Needs to be More Ambitious to End Pollution in Rural Kitchens
The free LPG connection scheme has seen a huge increase in the number of poor rural homes with gas stoves; more needs to be done to make LPG affordable and encourage the use of this clean fuel, thereby ending indoor pollution and improving women's health.
Article 370, Federalism and the Basic Structure of the Constitution
Article 370 is a permanent and not temporary provision of the Constitution that assures Jammu and Kashmir autonomy. Its content may have been hollowed out but it remains important for the people of Kashmir. Calls to scrap it are based on a misinterpretation.
Tiffin
About tiffin
A Cuban Travelogue
Close to half a century after K. Vela Velupillai tried to visit Cuba, he finally travels to the island in the Caribbean Sea. He sees changes taking place; there is also confirmation of the Cuban project. A diary of a 11-day visit in early 2019.
Ye Olde English Humourists
An Old-Fashioned Tribute
An affectionate tribute to the low-brow humorists of the British Empire who wrote in the early-mid 20th century. Or is this a symptom of "a post-colonial condition brought on by the native collaborator’s false nostalgia for colonial master narratives"?
Forum/Letters
Forthcoming
On the National Medical Commission, Academic Appointments, and Memories of a City
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