Aruna Roy reflects on [a] life of deep engagement, weaving the personal and [the] political. A great inspiration.' - Amartya Sen & Jean Dreze 'A brilliant and riveting feminist manifesta for social change.' - V (Formerly Eve Ensler) 'There are many who speak, but very few who act. This book is a testimonial to the fact that change comes only with action and reinforces the proverb "Actions are the best words spoken".' - Perumal Murugan Magsaysay Award-winning social activist Aruna Roy's remarkably forthright memoir is the story of two parallel journeys---a fifty-year-long engagement with public action in India, and a personal narrative that traces how the author has striven to convert her ideological convictions into practice. For long decades, Aruna Roy has lived with and worked for the benefit of marginalized communities in rural India, fighting for the right to survive in a hostile environment. Alongside accounts of the plight of the vulnerable and the transformative power of mass-based grassroot social movements, her recollections are marked with stories of resilient individuals and communities and their extraordinary resistance to oppression. Roy recounts a powerful lesson learnt from her extraordinary life: that every issue, whether it is poverty, discrimination, inequality or corruption, has personal as well as political ramifications. It is only by connecting the personal and the political, Roy says, that each one of us can make a difference.
Who are the people of India? What are their rights? What are their claims on the Indian Constitution and on democracy? As a part of Samruddha Bharat Foundation's series Rethinking India, We the People brings together a collection of essays that explores the interesting process of the germination and growth of undisputed universal rights, and of them being developed as tangible entitlements in India. The essays also examine the continuing challenge of establishing, realizing and protecting these entitlements. The authors are academics, activists and practitioners with a strong relationship with social movements and therefore uniquely placed to link practice to theory. Their narratives trace the use of the rights-based framework of the Indian Constitution by socio-political movements in order to strengthen the economic, cultural and social rights of ordinary Indians. The multiple perspectives draw upon and contextualize the complex relationship of the citizen with the state, society and the market in democratic India. Their sharp critiques have a counterpoint in stories of creative, successful alternatives designed by peoples' collectives. There is both an explicit and implicit challenge to conservative notions of 'market-led development' that see competition and profits as central to 'progress' and success. These essays look at the theoretical demands for changing the status quo, but also for working out the nuts and bolts of such change. The essays showcase the continuing dialectic between established constitutional rights and shifting state policy. The crisis unleashed by the response to COVID-19 has exposed the fault lines of this dilemma dramatically. It is an irony that when the government has to exponentially expand its capacity to deliver health, employment and food to people, it has no recourse but to the framework of the same rights-based legislation it has constantly tried to run down. These essays provide invaluable insight at a time when many sacred pillars of neoliberal 'globalization' are crumbling, and the capitalist superstructure is itself turning to the state for survival. They will promote understanding, scholarship and enliven debates as we continue to search for answers in uncertain and challenging times.
Aruna Roy resigned from the IAS in 1975 to work with peasants and workers in rural Rajasthan. In 1990 she helped co-found the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS). The MKSS struggles in the mid 90s for wages and other rights gave birth to the now celebrated Right to Information movement. Aruna continues to be a part of many democratic struggles and campaigns. This book is a collective history that tells the story of how ordinary people can come together and prevail against great odds, to make democracy more meaningful.
A lively retelling of the Bhawal sannyasi case ... a real-life mystery that continues to intrigue to this day' AMITAV GHOSH In the winter of 1909, Ramendranarayan Roy, the ailing second prince of the Bhawal zamindari, proceeds to Darjeeling with his wife Bibhavati, brother-in-law Satyendranath and a retinue of officials and servants, after being advised a change of air by his physicians. Three weeks later, a telegram from Satyendranath arrives at the Bhawal estate, carrying news of the prince’s demise and subsequent cremation. Soon peculiar rumours start circulating around Bhawal and the surrounding town. Some say that the prince was poisoned, while others suspect that his body was taken to the burning ghat but not actually cremated. There are also whispers about an incestuous relationship between Bibhavati and her brother. The story takes a bewildering turn when, twelve years later, a mendicant comes to Bhawal, claiming to be the long-lost prince and the heir to the estate. With no resolution in sight, matters reach the court, where the so-called prince and some family members face off against Bibhavati and her brother, aided by the British Court of Wards who are keen on maintaining ownership of the zamindari. The breathless legal drama that ensues will culminate in an incredible series of events, permanently altering the course of the estate’s history. Inspired by the legendary Bhawal sannyasi case and evocative in its recreation of pre-Partition Bengal, The Mendicant Prince is an intriguing tale of dual identity and the inexplicable quirks of fate.
He touched the core of the Bengalis' pain with his words' - Rabindranath Tagore. Saratchandra Chattopadhyay is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest Indian novelists of the twentieth century. His novels, serialized in periodicals and later published in book form, established him as Bengal's master storyteller. Even today, seven decades after his death, Saratchandra remains one of the most popular novelists in Bengal, and is widely read in translation across India as well. This collector's edition of Saratchandra's works in English translation brings together the writer's most renowned and best-loved novels in two omnibus volumes. The first volume features five novels: Srikanta, Devdas, Parineeta, Palli Samaj and Nishkriti. Srikanta is the story of a wanderer who observes the people around him; through them - especially the women he loves and respects, from the sacrificing Annada Didi and the rebellious Abhaya to the housewife Rajlakshmi and the courtesan Pyari Bai - he tries to arrive at an understanding of life. Devdas is the tragic tale of a man who drives himself to drink and debilitation when he is unable to marry his childhood sweetheart Paro. guardian Shekhar, but circumstances conspire to drive the two apart. Palli Samaj (The Village Life) has Ramesh, an engineer, returning to the village of his birth to try and rid it of the backwardness that plagues it, even as he tries to revive his childhood ties with Rama, now a widow. In Nishkriti (Deliverance), the strong-willed Shailaja, the youngest daughter-in-law in a joint family, is made an outcast as a result of a misunderstanding; much later, her elders realize their mistake, just in time to save the family from disintegration. Each of the novels showcases the qualities Saratchandra is famous or: everyday stories told in a simple yet gripping style, strong characters, meticulous plotting, true-to-life dialogue, and unforgettable depictions of life in turn-of-the-century Bengal. Translated especially for Penguin, these classic novels will delight those new to Saratchandra's works as well as those who want to return to them again.
During recent decades, tremendous progress and innovations have been made in rice science with the goal of increasing production to meet the world’s growing demands. This new volume provides a concise overview of rice, covering the background and importance of rice; origin, evolution, and domestication of rice; and the world rice production. It goes on to provide new and important recent research advances on many different aspects of rice science and production. The authors look at advances in rice ideotypes, abiotic stress management techniques, biotic stress affecting crop productivity, new methods and technology for cultivation, and new methods and techniques in rice grain quality analysis and processing. It also describes new rice varieties, new hybrid rice technology, and new breeding methods for rice.
Emotional Intelligence is a new discipline of knowledge, dealing with modeling, recognition and control of human emotions. The book Emotional Intelligence: A Cybernetic Approach, to the best of the authors’ knowledge is a first compreh- sive text of its kind that provides a clear introduction to the subject in a precise and insightful writing style. It begins with a philosophical introduction to E- tional Intelligence, and gradually explores the mathematical models for emotional dynamics to study the artificial control of emotion using music and videos, and also to determine the interactions between emotion and logic from the points of view of reasoning. The later part of the book covers the chaotic behavior of - existing emotions under certain conditions of emotional dynamics. Finally, the book attempts to cluster emotions using electroencephalogram signals, and d- onstrates the scope of application of emotional intelligence in several engineering systems, such as human-machine interfaces, psychotherapy, user assistance s- tems, and many others. The book includes ten chapters. Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the s- ject from a philosophical and psychological standpoint. It outlines the fundamental causes of emotion arousal, and typical characteristics of the phenomenon of an emotive experience. The relation between emotion and rationality of thoughts is also introduced here. Principles of natural regulation of emotions are discussed in brief, and the biological basis of emotion arousal using an affective neu- scientific model is introduced next.
A fundamental question in contemporary astrophysics is the origin of the elements. Cosmochemistry seeks to answer when, how and where the chemical elements arose. Quantitative answers to these fundamental questions require a multi-disciplinary approach involving stellar evolution, explosive nucleosynthesis and nuclear reactions in different astrophysical environments. There remain, however, many outstanding problems and cosmochemistry remains a fertile area of research. This book is among the first in recent times to put together the essentials of cosmochemistry, combining contributions from leading astrophysicists in the field. The chapters have been organized to provide a clear description of the fundamentals, an introduction to modern techniques such as computational modelling, and glimpses of outstanding issues.
This laboratory manual includes the latest tools and techniques involved in genomic research. It starts with an introductory chapter on genomics and the various tools and applications involved. The initial chapters present protocols for basic techniques such as DNA isolation, electrophoresis, PCR, cDNA synthesis etc. The book then goes on to describe more advanced techniques such as next-generation sequencing, exome sequencing, use of RNAi, RNAseq, genome editing, single cell genomics etc. Each topic includes a brief description, information on the principles involved, materials & methods, protocol, and expected results, with diagrams and graphs. All protocols are presented in a very lucid and precise way, to make it easy for readers to follow and replicate them.
What would happen if you got stuck with dreaded Bollywood villains like Gulshan Grover & Ranjeet and they rescue you from being harassed? What would your reaction be if Madhuri Dixit said I Am Sorry to you? As a four-year-old, in the verdant Doon Valley, Aruna would prance about the garden while the great sitar maestro Vilayat Khan would hold his music soirees. At 19, Aruna had Bollywood’s sexiest hero of the time, Sanjay Dutt, say I Love You to her. By the time she began working with hotels Aruna had stars from Bollywood and Hollywood orbiting her galaxy. HOTEL ADVENTURES WITH THE STARS is truly one-of-a-kind autobiography that chronicles several of Aruna's engrossing true encounters with a gamut of celebrities like Hrithik Roshan, Kapil Dev, Jackie Shroff, Dimple Kapadia, Ruskin Bond, Maneka Gandhi, Kiran Bedi, Khushwant Singh and several others. Funny, thrilling and heart-warming in equal measure, Hotel Adventures with the Stars is a collector’s edition Memoir.
The need to negotiate effectively with India is only growing as its power rises. Understanding the negotiating culture wherein India's bargaining behaviour is embedded forms a crucial step to facilitate this process. In the literature on international negotiation, experimental studies point to specific behavioural characteristics of Indian negotiators. Empirical analyses confirm these findings, and many suggest that the sources of India's negotiation behaviour are deep-rooted and culture-specific, going beyond what standard explanations of interest group politics, partisan politics, or institutional politics would suggest. But there are very few works that trace these sources. Extensive sociological and anthropological, and comparative political studies remain confined to their own fields, and do not develop their implications for Indian foreign policy or negotiation. There is a conspicuous lack of works that attempt to unpack the "negotiating culture" variable using literary sources. This book aims to fill both these gaps. It focuses on India's negotiating traditions through the lens of the classical Sanskrit text, the Mahabharata, and investigates the continuities and changes in India's negotiation behaviour as a rising power.
In 1994, BRAC, the world's largest NGO, made headlines by putting women's rights centre stage in Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world. The Gender Quality Action Learning (GQAL) Programme was one of the very first large-scale efforts to mainstream gender equality. Advancing Gender Equality in Bangladesh describes the history, implementation, and results of this major 20 year initiative and discusses what it teaches us about the fight to achieve gender equality outcomes. This in-depth analysis will be of considerable interest to students, researchers and development practitioners looking for new, more effective and practical ideas on how to promote equality and inclusion.
Suralakshmi Choudhury, a gynaecologist based in Delhi, falls in love at the age of thirty-one, marries and has a son. Suddenly, five years after his birth, she abandons everything including the house gifted to her by her father and her flourishing medical career, to travel to an obscure village in Bengal and open a free clinic for women and children. She leaves her son behind but takes along a poor Muslim girl, she has adopted. What makes her take this strange decision? Suralakshmi’s actions confound her relatives and it is from their accounts of the incidents, letters, memoirs, and flashbacks – from a more distant past – that the story comes together and the layers and nuances in the enigmatic character of Suralakshmi are brought to light. In Suralakshmi Villa, Aruna Chakravarti blends the narrative of the novel with history, legend, music, religion, folklore, rituals and culinary practices of both Hindus and Muslims, and creates a fascinating tapestry which reveals the syncretic nature of Bengal and her people.
Genetics and Breeding for Disease Resistance of Livestock is a solid resource that combines important information on the underlying genetic causes and governing factors for disease resistance in food animals and applications for breeding purposes. It describes genomics at each species level to help researchers and students understand disease resistance and immunology using genomics and its application in breeding for disease resistance. This useful reference makes it easy for readers to understand and undergo further research in immunology and disease resistance for livestock. It includes novel applications and research material that is ideal for students, teachers, academicians and researchers. Presents basic principles and protocols to describe research methodologies through diagrammatic illustrations with figures, flow charts, examples, and references Covers various disease occurrences in livestock and the methodologies available to identify the various pathogens responsible for these diseases Includes advanced breeding techniques and practical applications
Nano-oxide materials lend themselves to applications in a wide variety of emerging technological fields such as microelectronics, catalysts, ceramics, coatings, and energy storage. However, developing new routes for making nano-based materials is a challenging area for solid-state materials chemists. This book does just that by describing a novel method for preparing them. The authors have developed a novel low-temperature, self-propagating synthetic route to nano-oxides by the solution combustion and combustible precursor processes. This method provides the desired composition, structure, and properties for many types of technologically useful nanocrystalline oxide materials like alumina, ceria, iron oxides, titania, yttria, and zirconia, among others.The book is particularly instructive in bringing readers one step closer to the exploration of nanomaterials. Students of nanoscience can acquaint themselves with the actual production and evaluation of nanopowders by this route, while academic researchers and industrial scientists will find answers to a host of questions on nano-oxides. The book also provides an impetus for scientists in industrial research to evaluate and explore new ways to scale up the production of nanomaterials, offering helpful suggestions for further research.
This book explores the negotiations at the inter- and intrafaces of knowledge and gender. It analyses the construction of gender and knowledge to reveal how innovations in agriculture either transform existing gender relations or unfold a transcending potential. The case studies on the cultivation of cowpeas, onions and soybeans by Dagombas and Kusasis show that supposedly gender-neutral agricultural innovations become contested fields when men and women are "Trying to Grow". The contextualisation and social connotation of a crop decides over women's participation in rural development. The book throws a fresh light on the management of agricultural knowledge.
The potential of civil society in interfacing with the government for ensuring good governance has gained currency in academic and policy debates in the recent times. This becomes particularly relevant in an old democracy like India where the State has not been able to meet the need for basic things. However, the State provides space and freedom for people to engage in collective action, to critically evaluate the State’s policies and demand a revision in policy for effective implementation of the laws that are elaborately codified in the Constitution and also to improve the functioning of its institutions. This book studies the level of participation of tribal communities in the new Panchayat Raj dispensation introduced in Andhra Pradesh since the PESA Act. It specifically analyses how much the community has achieved or benefited after the introduction of Panchayat Raj. The objective is to determine how the power structures of tribal communities have been influenced by the socio-political changes and institutional innovations, like the extension of representative democracy at the grassroots level; what kind of changes have taken place in the study area with the institutionalization of Panchayats; and the politicization of the tribal people by the different parties. This book also throws light on the role of civil society actors in influencing governance positively as well as the limitations that have inhibited the impact of their influence. The empirical research highlights that the institution of Gram Sabha has been instrumental in bringing transparency and accountability in the working of local bodies. The author has rightly emphasized the need for an attitudinal change both in the political and administrative machinery at State, district and village level. The inter-relationship of the three Ds, i.e. Democracy, Decentralisation and Development, has been brought out beautifully with the support of field study. While the 73rd amendment and PESA Act of the Constitution has mandated the democratization of local self-governments, the process of decentralisation is yet to take concrete shape through real devolution from Lok Sabha to Gram Sabha.
There is no shortcut to success. It is consistent hard work and a continuous journey. Success Sutra decodes success as a multidimensional phenomenon involving a balancing act between the personal and professional aspects of one's lives. This book helps one identify the lacunae in oneself and the efforts by which one can overcome them. It offers numerous coping strategies like Yoga and reconnecting with Nature, to cater to various temperaments. Success Sutra brings together a rare amalgamation of Eastern and Western Thought on the subject. It culls parables and shlokas from the Vedas, Upanishads, and the Bhagvad Gita and also analyses and simplifies theories on psychology by the likes of Karl Jung. Substantiated by quotations from great personalities ranging from Sadhu Vaswani to JRD Tata, Osho to Eleanor Roosevelt and peppered with anecdotes, this is must read for all those looking for sustainable and stress free SUCCESS through one's life.
Aruna Roy resigned from the IAS in 1975 to work with peasants and workers in rural Rajasthan. In 1990 she helped co-found the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS). The MKSS struggles in the mid 90s for wages and other rights gave birth to the now celebrated Right to Information movement. Aruna continues to be a part of many democratic struggles and campaigns. This book is a collective history that tells the story of how ordinary people can come together and prevail against great odds, to make democracy more meaningful.
A sensitive portrayal ofthe hopes and fears,triumphs and defeatsexperienced by thewomen of the Tagorehousehold. in a sprawling novel that spans a unique phase in the history of Bengal and India, Aruna Chakravarti provides a fascinating Iaccount of how the Tagore women influenced and were in turn influenced by their illustrious male counterparts, the times they lived in and the family they belonged to. Jorasanko mirrors the hopes and fears, triumphs and defeats that the women of the Tagore household experienced in their intricate interpersonal relationships, as well as the adjustments they were continually called upon to make as daughters and daughters-in-law of one of the most eminent families of the land. 'In her meticulously researched novel, Aruna Chakravarti has successfully re-created for the reader the world inside the Tagore home, at once glittering and fascinating, but also dark and challenging. The women of the Tagore family who are at the heart of this novel are complex beings who will raise many questions in the modern reader regarding the role of women in today's society' - Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, author of Palace of Illusions and One Amazing Thing.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.