Books

RESTRUCTURING THE INDIAN COUNCIL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE RESEARCH. Report of the Committee to Review the Indian Council of Social Science Research, Delhi, 2007.

IN more ways than one, the ICSSR mirrors the state of India’s higher education, more specifically for the substrata of the academia involved with research in the social sciences. Set up in 1969 as the premier national body to fund, support and provide direction to the research community – funding research projects, providing fellowships at various levels, supporting travel and publication and, above all, helping set up specialized research institutions – over the nearly four decades of its existence, how well the council functions, who controls it, who it patronizes and legitimizes has preoccupied mandarins of the social science fraternity. Clearly, what happens to it and what direction it takes is a matter of considerable concern. Little surprise that the report of the Fourth Review Committee set up to examine the working of this august body and indicate directions for the future was awaited with keen expectation. More so, since this committee was constituted two decades after the Third Review Committee submitted its report way back in 1986. Strange, since such reviews are expected to be carried out every five years.

In this hangs a tale. Way back in 1969, the setting up of the ICSSR was greeted with anticipation. Funds for research were difficult to come by – the only sources being the University Grants Commission and the Planning Commission. Research inclined academics were finding the university environment stifling – the campuses were astir with protest – and seeking avenues elsewhere. Given the controls over external and Indian corporate funding, the government was the primary agency for potential support. In its early years, the ICSSR not only took over the research support functions of the Planning Commission but also helped spawn a considerable number of new specialized research centres. Here was the birth of a new system, where researchers could focus on their business of problem-oriented research and thus help decision-makers find solutions. It helped that the early generation of research entrepreneurs and institution builders enjoyed considerable respect.

Over the years, the situation has dramatically changed. The research environment now is bewilderingly complex – not just in numbers and quality or sources of support but also location, as the generation of knowledge is no longer confined to the university departments or publicly set up research institutes. Nor is the research market any more dominated by national players. To state sharply, bodies like the ICSSR are now, and have been for some time, minor players in the expanding research scene, with few researchers seeking its support or patronage. More significantly, unlike in the 1970s when it was considered an honour to be associated with the ICSSR – as a member of the council, its representative on various research institutes, a recipient of its grants and fellowships and even as staff – this is much less evident now.

Take for instance the matter of staff. In 1969, the officials of the ICSSR were substantially better paid than their counterparts in the UGC system. In the early 1970s, after the third pay commission, they received considerably less. A director in the ICSSR was now equated to a Reader in the university. Further, look at their working conditions and what they were expected to do. Unlike their ‘academic’ counterparts they were not expected to carry out any research, but instead push files like government servants. More humiliating, they enjoyed little autonomy on academic decisions with all judgments outsourced to consultants and committees. Reduced to a post office function and focusing primarily on matters of finance, the ICSSR was no longer an attractive employer for anyone actually interested in research. In short, it became a babu organization involved essentially with fund disbursement.

The general consensus is that the ICSSR has gone the way of many, if not most, official and semi-official bodies – bureaucratic, stifling, unresponsive and ill-equipped to ascertain and respond to the rapidly changing environment. Little surprise that it has in recent years even failed to meet its disbursement targets, proving that there are fewer takers for what it has to offer.

Barring inflexions, not many would seriously challenge this story of decline. This in any case is a fairly standard narrative – an erstwhile ‘golden era’ followed by a long period of decline. Unfortunately, such an analytical frame neither does justice to the actual history nor does it help us locate the source of the ills so that correctives could be attempted. More significantly, it does not help us understand the actual degrees of freedom available to any constituent player in the larger academic market. To state more sharply and draw an analogy from the corporate world, it may be possible for agencies like the ICSSR to rework and reform themselves so that they become more attractive to the researching community vis-à-vis other competing agencies. Nevertheless, they can do little to affect the larger environment itself.

The Fourth Review Committee, rather heroically, attempts both tasks – to provide a broad overview of the changing nature of the social science research environment as also indicate ways in which the ICSSR could begin to reposition itself. Unfortunately, it falls short on both counts.1 A recent symposium on the Review Committee Report (EPW, 2 February 2008) provides an instructive entry into some of its shortcomings. To this, let me add some of my own.

The major analytical shortcoming of the report lies in its failure to appreciate the shift in the relative importance of the ICSSR in the research market. In its early years, it was a significant, if not dominant actor; today it is rarely an agency of first choice. Combine this with the equally dramatic shifts in the location of research with the entry of consultancy agencies and NGOs as important actors in the production of knowledge as also a proliferation of avenues where this new knowledge is disseminated and discussed. No longer is the formal academia the primary agency in the world of knowledge. A similar shift can be traced in the world of funding and support with non-official and non-national players, at least in certain sectors, supplanting the official, government agencies. Securing a worthwhile market share thus demands a careful analysis of one’s own strength and weaknesses, as also the degrees of freedom available.

To be fair, the Fourth Review Committee does attempt to address some of the concerns. For instance, it recommends that the ICSSR diversify its sources of funding. It also recommends a diminution of governmental control to recover the ICSSR for the social science research community. It advocates greater autonomy to redesign the rules of business – who it hires, at what terms, for what purposes and so on. Nevertheless, even if all this was politically feasible, difficult under the audit rules related to government funds, for the ICSSR to begin a process of recovery it also needs to re-specify its mandate. For instance, it is never clear why the ICSSR has a publications programme or wants to bring out journals given that, so far, it is primarily a fund disbursing agency whose staff is neither encouraged nor equipped for research.

If in the early days the ICSSR was both a source of support and legitimacy such that it was seen as a privilege to be associated with the agency, over the years it has come to be seen primarily as a source of funds and patronage. Little surprise that all those who can do without it, choose to do so. Those who still continue to approach it, do so either because they have few other choices or because they feel that networking with the agency is needed to open up other avenues.

One can add to the list of problems – the tension between sponsored and free research, support to the research institutes under its umbrella or the broader community, the degree to which the ICSSR must depend on government funding, and so on. There are no easy answers, more so since our knowledge of the higher education sector – the institutions and the personnel – is so limited.

Many of the issues that the review committee is rightly concerned about – the declining interest in an academic research career, brain drain, and so on – demand a larger change of environment, in particular of colleges and university departments. A restructured ICSSR – a leaner, less bureaucratic and academically equipped agency with a more focused mandate – can become part of this re-imagination. But, to seek to recover the mythical glories of the past is possibly not the best way to approach the future.

Harsh Sethi

 

1. In interest of full disclosure, it must be stated that the reviewer was an employee of the ICSSR from 1977 to 1986 and was associated with the labours of the Third Review Committee which submitted its report in 1986.

 

STATE OF DEMOCRACY IN SOUTH ASIA: A Report. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2008.

HOW does one make sense of South Asia? Is it merely a geographical construct or is it a real and living political region comprising of modern nation states that not only share a common colonial past but possibly their present and future? What about the failure of the efforts to strengthen SAARC as a regional forum or the intractable bilateral issues that keep simmering? Then, in what sense do we think of ‘new’ democracies in South Asia, given their chequered career in most countries of the region? How can one determine whether these countries are becoming more or less democratic, and with what criteria, given the absence of a universal definition or even a commonly accepted yardstick of what it means to be democratic? Does one think of ‘democracies’ in South Asia or are they comparable enough to even think more ambitiously of a ‘South Asian variant’ of democracy? And finally, what has South Asia done to democracy and what has democracy done to South Asia?

Before looking for possible answers to the above questions, the report under review, a result of the CSDS-Lokniti led research collaboration of academics from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka who carried out a first ever simultaneous survey of people’s attitudes to democracy based on a large and representative sample, begins by democratizing the thinking about democracy itself in numerous ways. This it does both by arguing in favour of a vibrant pluralist notion of democracy which is not stifled by the West-centric culturist and essentialist textbook kind of explanations of democracy, as also by shifting the locus of democracy discourse away from the global North to ‘most of the world’ (read Asia, Africa and Latin America). In making a thorough assessment of South Asian democracies, the study adopts a pluralist methodology that brings back the focus on people in the democracy discourse: foregrounding their views, perceptions and experiences; drawing on dialogues with the social and political activists; and learning from specific concrete case studies across the region rather than rely on a one-dimensional/mechanical checklist as employed by experts, enamoured as they are with the ongoing global agenda of democratic transitions/transformations.

Does South Asia qualify to be a distinct political region? Yes, the report claims, at least in the way democracy continues to be the reigning ideology and most favoured political arrangement, reflective of the aspirations of the people’s of the region. This shared consciousness in favour of the idea of democracy might puzzle most experts, as South Asia lacks almost all the ingredients that are supposed to make for a liberal democracy. Post-colonial South Asia continues to be marked by low levels of literacy and development as also a hierarchical social order which is structurally opposed to the idea of political equality among caste, class and gender. Nor has the flaring up of the ethnic, cultural and religious cleavages among diverse communities across the region in the recent past helped the democratic cause either. Finally, countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh have spent most of their post-independence years under military rule whereas Nepal has just ceased to be a Hindu monarchical state.

South Asia, argues the study, happily confounds conventional wisdom on democracy in two other ways. First, unlike the rise of ‘anti-politics’ in the developed liberal democracies of the North, political parties in South Asia continue to thrive and remain relevant, and political/electoral participation is popularly viewed as an instrument of collective interest aggregation rather than merely a means for self-fulfilment, even in the ‘democracies’ with a chequered past like Pakistan and Bangladesh. Yet, reducing democracy to signify only elections is indicative of the reported low levels of trust people have in the efficacy of other democratic procedures and forums.

Second, unlike what happened in the erstwhile Soviet Union post the collapse of communism, democratic politics in South Asia has primarily been the mode through which social and political identities are being articulated and asserted, often assuming a form of social and political coalition. In a multicultural democracy like India, for instance, the differences are not only being recognized and accommodated, but also given representation. In this, the report repeatedly insists, South Asian democracy is much more than merely an Indian narrative, and every other country in the region has equally crucial lessons to offer.

The SDSA team presents what it calls seven big ideas that enable us to better understand the nature of South Asian democracies and how the ‘South Asian variant’ of democracy has broadened and therefore enriched the global discourse on democracy. First, South Asian countries with their distinctive languages, institutions and practices impart new meaning to the conventional notions of democracy. Like in the case of people of other ‘new’ democracies, the South Asian people also have their own take on democracy, informed by their cultural specificities and concrete realities. For instance, in South Asia, the idea about rule of law and institutional-procedural dimensions of democratic governance are not as strongly associated with democracy as those of freedom, equality and justice related outcomes. Unlike in the West, it is the capacity to provide basic necessities and equal rights to the communities that is viewed as more essential to democracy than freedom of expression or even power to change the government.

Second, the overwhelming acceptance of democracy in South Asia as an idea, despite the absence of what are considered prerequisites for its success, enables political theorists to rework the received wisdom about preconditions for and outcomes of democracy. Just to illustrate, seven out of eight respondents in the region held that representative democracy was ‘suitable’ or ‘very suitable’ for their own country; two-third of the respondents including those who live under military dictatorships, preferred democracy over authoritarian rule. Even when presented with more subtle forms of non-democratic alternatives rather than explicitly anti-democratic ones, the ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ democrats together far outnumbered the ‘non-democrats’. Here for a change conventional wisdom held as the socially privileged (the elites, the men, urban dwellers, economically well-off) showed far greater support for democracy.

Third, the South Asian experiences help us to bring back the centrality of the ‘political’ to the present and future of new democracies in the way it shapes people’s interests and identities. Fourth, people’s orientations to democracy, contrary to the dominant western perception, are being primarily shaped by their political experiences and exposure to modern education and media rather than their ethno-religious identities. Thus the belief in the post 9/11 world about the dissonance between Islam and democracy, which might get credence by the fact that democracy has had a troubled history in the Muslim majority states in South Asia (like ‘most of the world’), is not supported by the survey findings that show that the level of support for democracy among Muslims varies by the country they live in. Rather than religion, it is the majority-minority status that appears to be a decisive factor with the minorities, be they Muslims in India or Hindus in Sri Lanka.

Fifth, the strength of South Asian democracies lies in their ‘exceptionalism’ in terms of their reworking received formal democratic ideas and institutions and their roles. These departures often become the source of innovations in terms of institutional strategies which allow these democracies to adapt and rework themselves in their given complex social formations. Sixth, South Asian cultural specificities have contributed to the undermining of the democratic substance of many formal democratic institutions. At the same time, however, there are home-grown institutions that despite lacking in formal constitutional-legal sanctity, contribute to democratic notions of participation and contestation. Seventh, the disconnect between subjective perceptions and objective realities in terms of what people think and say, and what official data, experts/activists say about South Asian democracies, provides space for democratic contestations and negotiations, underlining the uninterrupted march of the idea of democracy in the people’s domain.

This hugely informative, rich in data-graphics and insightful study addresses many contentious issues in the ongoing liberal discourse on democracy. The volume comes at a time when the present, and possibly the future, of democracy looks promising in South Asia, which goes well with a general sense of optimism about the ‘widening and deepening democracy’ (credo of CSDS-Lokniti) that the study conveys. Regrettably, in the process, disconcerting voices sometimes get subdued and heard mostly in the later part of this elegantly produced volume. Perhaps this is a result of the questionnaire that is more concerned with the political rather than social aspects of democracy relying as it does on globally funded ‘barometer’ studies.

Finally, despite its claim to present ‘inconvenient facts’, the SDSA Report seems to give credence to the neo-liberal assumptions that market economy and liberal democracy are not merely compatible, but complementary.

Ashutosh Kumar

 

DALIT ASSERTION IN SOCIETY, LITERATURE AND HISTORY edited by Imtiaz Ahmad and Shashi Bhushan Upadhayay. Deshkal Publications, Delhi, 2007.

THE various chapters of the book, initially presented at a national seminar held in 2004 at Bodh Gaya under the auspices of Dalit Resource Centre, Deshkal Society, cover a wide range of issues related to the assertion of dalits, i.e., identity formation, status of women (gender question), impact of Ambedkarism as well as education of dalits. The book has been divided into four parts: dalits and society; dalits and literature; dalits in history; and, caste inequality among Muslims. As Shashi Bhushan Upadhayay explains in the introduction, dalit assertion means the resistance of dalits to their real and perceived oppression.

On account of their originality and topicality, essays by Ashok Singh, Shashi Bhushan Upadhayay, Imtiaz Ahmad and Yoginder Sikand deserve special attention. Ashok Singh discusses changes in power relations between dalits and Rajputs in his village of north Bihar in the last four decades. Earlier the dalits were subjected to physical violence and social and cultural indignities by Rajput high castes and suffered from social exclusion. The shift is attributed to economic changes in the villages created by migration, education, mass media and propaganda by the government which enhanced political consciousness among dalits. Ashok Singh’s narrative, however, leaves some relevant questions unanswered. What about the leadership, ideology, organization, and patterns of mobilization of dalits? He writes about how in 1971 he had sought to convince dalits about the need to participate in a procession, and acquainted them with the names of Marx, Gandhi and Ambedkar. What happened in the subsequent period and did their ideas have any impact? These are some missing links in the essay. Overall, the chapter comes across as an isolated case unrelated to the changes in other villages of Bihar.

Shashi Bhushan Upadhayay’s essay deals with representation of dalits in the writings of Premchand. He points out that while one group considers Premchand as a sympathizer of dalits who realistically depicted their position in society, another group represented by the dalit Hindi writers argues that Premchand was incapable of portraying a true picture of dalits. Upadhayay concurs with the first understanding and substantiates his contention by analysing some of the writings of Premchand which focus on dalits. Among several aspects of Premchand’s writings which Upadhayay highlights, the gender question seems to be the most important. In his reading of Premchand, dalit women are stronger in relation to their men than their counterparts among the high castes. Though the ideology of caste has a hegemonic influence on dalits, they continue to resist discrimination in collective and individual ways. Upadhayay’s is a rich contribution to the contemporary debate on dalits in literature.

The two essays in the final part of the book acknowledge the existence of caste inequality among Muslim dalits. Imtiaz Ahmad raises the question, ‘Can there be a category called dalit Muslims?’ Drawing on the work of Muslim ajlaf (mean and lowly) intellectuals and activists, his own insights and field work, Ahmad suggests the existence of a category of dalit Muslims in India. He contends that most sociological research on caste among Muslims is impressionistic, lacking proper empirical research; castes (zat/biradari) among them have territorial specificities with their respective associations or biradari panchayats and marriage restrictions; there is an occupational hierarchy corresponding to caste; caste among Muslims is as rigid as among the Hindus; the caste system and system of biradari and zat cannot be separated from each other. Ahmad suggests that there is a need for ‘rich and focused ethnographic research’ on Muslim dalits or arzal category, including the attitude of non-arzals towards arzals.

Yoginder Sikand holds that though social inequality among Muslims does not flow from the principles of Islam enshrined in the Qur’an, he questions the claim that this is solely due to the cultural influence of Hinduism. Such an understanding at best provides a partial explanation. It ignores the role of a section of ulema, scholars of Islamic jurisprudence, belonging to the ashraf category (high castes) who justified the prevalence of inequality among Muslims in the light of the rules of fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence) associated with notion of kafa’a (matters of marriage) which seeks to prohibit marriage among unequals, i.e., the low and high caste Muslims. Arguing that such an interpretation is a misinterpretation and distortion of Islam, Sikand favours contemporary thinkers like Maulana Abdul Hamid Nu’mani who advocate a radical revision of the rules of Islamic marriage.

Jyotsna Macwan and Suguna Ramanathan contend that divisions within the dalits continue to prevent the formation of a common dalit identity. Essays by Padma Velaskar and Smita Patil deal with the gender question. Velaskar argues that dalit women share common disadvantages with non-dalit women and share class membership with the working class in general. Discussing the position of women in the writing of dalit men and women, Smita Patil points to the lacuna in dalit literature to provide adequate space to the gender question.

Most of the essays make a common observation: dalits have by and large been neglected in academic discourse. Most, however, reassert commonly known facts about dalits which, given the importance and sensitivity of the subject, is a little disappointing.

Jagpal Singh

 

POWER AND CONTESTATION: India Since 1989 by Nivedita Menon and Aditya Nigam. (Global History of the Present Series.) Zed Books, London, 2007.

THE book belongs to a series that looks at different parts of the world since 1989. Even though the date is pre-decided by the publishers, according to their assessment of events that have happened largely outside India, it is a happy coincidence that large and fundamental transformations in Indian polity, economy and culture can also be traced back roughly to that time. The authors have decided to focus on seven critical areas: caste; Hindutva; globalization as shaped by the neo-liberal pattern of development, its costs in terms of human displacement and its possibilities in terms of large-scale struggles of protest; globalization, also in terms of peoples’ use of new communication networks and technologies; changes in the mainstream left and the presence of alternative and radical left movements; the nation state and its limit cases – Kashmir and the North East; changes in foreign policy.

It is quite evident that the themes cover much that is significantly new and important in Indian lives, dealing with some issues that are familiar, but also introducing problems that are rather unexpected, though no less relevant. As feminists, the authors have shown good sense in not setting out a separate demarcated sphere of gender, thereby ghettoizing and remarginalizing it. But gender is a running theme through the entire book, animating and explaining much of caste, Hindutva and globalization politics. All this is covered, moreover, in a matter of 181 pages. Obviously, this is a case where every word counts. It soon becomes clear that they could not have been made to count more.

The introduction provides a short but comprehensive historical context of the two decades under study. The major shifts and breaks in Indian political and economic policies have been traced back to Nehruvian times, and certain decisive events have been narrated to explain and describe them. It is hard to see what else could have been added to this account, but one does miss a reference to the 1984 anti-Sikh genocide since it definitely created a pattern for communal pogroms that are organized by the ruling party. The introduction also lays out the founding values and frameworks for the book with admirable clarity. The authors refuse the conventional starting points that are used in descriptions of contemporary India: an exoticized view of contrasts and varieties, a celebration of its growth rate and technological marvels. Instead, they point at social contradictions and the paradoxes and ironies of development.

The authors have worked within the framework of analysis that Partha Chatterjee has famously elaborated over the years: the splitting of Indian politics into two opposed zones – civil society, where elites concern themselves with abstract rights, and the vernacular domain of popular democratic politics where people negotiate with state agencies according to their own contingent strategies. On this, the authors have somewhat loosely imposed yet another binary division of the modern and non-modern, aligning the modern with the civil, bourgeoise sphere, and the non-modern with the popular-vernacular.

I find some problems with both the framework and its proclaimed relevance for the book though it is meticulous enough in its actual accounts and analyses to deal with complexities that overrun the model continuously. This is particularly evident in the chapter on Globalization I. The model is thereby shown to be untenable, an obstacle rather than an enabling framework. If it is used as a heuristic device, then a binary division would be the least interesting method to follow, as its logic is basically simple and reductive. I repeat that in its own explorations, the book leaves behind that framework most of the time. But, at points, when it returns to it and tries to simplify its material according to that axis, it damages its own possibilities by forcing them into over neat and limited slots.

The chapter on the ‘recalcitrance of caste’ begins with the anti-Mandal agitations which threw up, with brutal clarity, the fundamental importance of caste values and politics which our modern polity had denied and ignored up to that point. The authors not only show the fragility and myopia of this elite vision but also the distortions created by such a politics of denial.

There is a very useful account of the new forms of caste politics, especially in its Bahujan Samaj variant in contemporary UP. The authors are careful not to over-romanticize this politics: according to them much of the anti-dalit atrocities today happen under ‘backward’ caste direction. They could have dwelt on its implications in greater detail, since it is increasingly a constitutive contradiction in popular politics. The emphasis on the BSP somewhat obscures alternative dalit political traditions, especially that of the Phule-Ambedkar-Periyar variety. The authors designate the pragmatism of Mayawati as the typical face of dalit response as well as of the vernacular, non-modern, popular political formation. The Phule-Ambedkar-Periyar alternative, however, deliberately interacted with western liberal and radical traditions and spoke of rights and justice in an unambiguously modern diction.

There is, I think, too emphatic an endorsement of all facets of the new dalit politics – incidentally, Menon and Nigam could have pointed out that the word dalit is actually eschewed by the BSP. The espousal of global corporate enterprises by some of their leaders, the occasional alliances with Hindutva, the suspicion of the left are all sought to be justified on pragmatic grounds of greater dalit empowerment as well as on the grounds of their equidistance from the elitism of both left and right. That implicit justification seems problematic. Hindutva forces often work with urban vernacular small time elites, very similar to the base of the new caste politics. Moreover, the equidistance from both left and right, or rather the occasional turn towards the right, cannot be seen entirely as a rejection of civil society mores. If that brings the right into power then the consequences will not be a defeat of elitism, but an inauguration of fascism.

In the chapter on Hindutva, there is an excellent narrative of the growth and activism of Hindutva organizations. There is an acute and sensitive discussion of the anxieties that such organizations mobilize to build and expand their political bases. There could have been a little more about the everyday cultural and social strategies and grassroots institutions that build up entertainment, charity, religious, leisure and educational activities to feed the Hindutva ideology into the small veins and capillaries of the social body. There should also have been a separate section on anti-Christian intimidations and terror since they follow a logic and rhetoric that is different from those used for anti-Muslim mobilization.

Menon and Nigam’s definition of the term secular seems to me at once over large and rather limited. It is one thing to say that secular activists come from cosmopolitan and privileged backgrounds, though that need not be a sufficient condemnation. Would it not be worse if their privileges aligned them to the right? Moreover, the fact of an individual’s background cannot equate secularism with privilege alone or with its defence. There is always a gap between background and politics. To reduce secularism to elitism is to overlook the multiphonality of its expressions in elite and popular lives. Moreover, Indian secularism in theory and practice has meant precisely one thing alone: a non-denominational state which does not even mean a privatization of belief, but denotes a state where practitioners of all faiths are ensured equal citizenship because the state itself does not adhere to any particular denomination. It is difficult to see what critiques of secularism would have in its place: a denominational state, which is the very thing that Hindutva wants? There is no middle ground between the two.

The middle chapters – Globalizations I and II – are outstanding. They cover vast and often new ground, both in terms of concrete events and processes, delineating the political economy of Indian neo-liberalism and the logic of the developmental paradigms that unify the state, corporate capital, and the entire spectrum of mainstream parties. The authors have carefully chosen small stories that vividly describe the concrete operation of that logic on land, water and trees, on the survival and livelihood of ordinary people, on the cultures and communities that disappear with the displaced. They weave in the experiences of displacement with those of struggles that are equally unrelenting and determined. It is amazing that so much could be told and explained, and so much of current common sense – carefully calibrated by state and media – could be unravelled in a single chapter.

In a way, though, this account is not a surprise for any leftist who stands outside the mainstream left. What will be startling even for the former is the astonishing Globalization II, where the same technologies that fuel corporate power are shown to be stimulating popular imaginaries, lending themselves to plebeian and vernacular appropriations and creating an underbelly that repeats, yet confounds, the production and consumption strategies of corporate capital: adaptations of the products of technology that express deviant and alternative dreams and needs. There is a dialectical approach to technologies and institutions, their Janus facedness which intermingle possibilities and constraints. These constitute, in some ways, the most difficult and complex of their themes and they have done them more than full justice.

The chapter on the Old and New Left, again, covers a vast ground, looking at both mainstream left parties and the alternative lefts, ranging from the far left to radical NGOs. The account is succinct, but it could have been further enriched by an analysis of the structural elements of the old left politics: the concept of democratic centralism and of the vanguard party, the operations of the Stalinist legacy. It loses something by being annexed, yet again, to the domain of the modern, the elite, the civil society.

There is a short but exemplary summary of the way the ‘problem states’ – Kashmir and the North East – have been visualized, projected and handled by the Indian state. The summary deftly problematizes the very heart of the nation state. The chapter would have gained much from the use of maps to explain the geopolitics of these states better. However, maps are, unfortunately, things that are not made easily available to scholars. The short chapter on India in the World identifies the changes in her foreign policy and world status. Maybe a little bit more could have been said on our new accommodation of Israel.

This remains a truly remarkable instance of the history of our present, a must-read, as much for specialist, as it is for the lay reader.

Tanika Sarkar