Monthly Archives: May 2008

In one of the worst cases of attack on an NREGA activist, Lalit Kumar was murdered this week in Palamu Right from the word go combating corruption in the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) has been a major agenda of activists of the Right to Food Campaign. Needless to say, it brings activists into conflict with the vested interests that are deeply rooted in India today. This week in Palamu, a young and committed activist – Lalit Kumar – was murdered, perhaps a result of his actions to secure the poorest of people their rights. I am reproducing an […]

Murder of Lalit Kumar, NREGA activist in Palamu, Jharkhand

A growing collection of Ambedkar’s works are available online at Ambedkar.org Ambedkar is easily one of the finest Indian thinkers ever. Academically, he has a degree in law, a Masters in economics (from London School of Economics), and a doctorate in social sciences (from Columbia University). At Columbia he majored in sociology and economics for his M.A. with a smattering of anthropology, politics and philosophy as other subjects. He also had a stint at University of Bonn. His experience ranges from being a untouchable boy to the principal architect of India’s Constitution. He started and ran a political party and […]

Babasaheb Ambedkar’s works online: Books, articles, talks

The questions of an 8 year old reveals the gendered nature of rules that govern our lives

Mernissi’s Dreams of a trespass: Best feminist work I have ...

Creating neat bibliographies can be a pain, Word 2007 makes it easy Note: There is an easier way to cite in MS Word and it’s free. Check out my note on Zotero citation tool. There are hundreds of formats for citations like Chicago, APA, etc. The only thing in common between them is that each of them is a nightmare! I cannot imagine how people did extensive citations before the coming of automated help. I am a big fan of refworks, endnote and other bibliography managers. Unfortunately, these are costly and cannot be afforded by everyone. For those who did […]

Citations using Word 2007: Bibliographies made easy

O India produz mais filmes que todos outros país do mundo… …Muito mais. Tal vez tu sei que há muitas linguas na India. Muitos disso tem um grande indústria do cinema. O muito famoso é o indústria do Bombay chamo “Bollywood”. Muitos estrangeiros pensem que só Bollywood produz filmes na India; mas ha muitos outros centros do produção. O grande centro é Madras no sul do India. Também há Hyderabad, Calcutta, Kerala e outros centros. Tal vez, o filmes do Bengal são o mais famoso depois que o Bollywood. Begal é famoso para produzir os filmes artísticas e seu director […]

Introdução aos cinema Indiano

A Panchayat president I interviewed recently told me sweetly that people listen to her because she’s plump. Two years and twenty additional kilos earlier, I would have missed the import of the statement, but now I don’t. Let me give you a quick background before I start. I was very thin and was often called a skeleton, stick of a coconut leaf and other colourful adjectives. I left to the US in 2005 and after two years of Americanisation I got on the weighing machine. I pushed the scales to a familiar position and it remained upright. I nudged it […]

The importance of a pot belly

Thanks to a Historian, I now see the sublime where I merely saw superstitions The district gazetteers provide a good background to the important events of a district in a historical perspective. They were originally written by British civil servants and was then taken over by people appointed for the task with India’s independence. The British “manuals” (as they are often called) offer colourful details about the wars, positions taken by various parties, etc. The post independence gazettes (at least in the Madras Province) have a greater slant towards understanding development in a historical perspective. I was going through some […]

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