This book covers the sensitive real-life story of Gulzari and Parvati, their marriage in Lahore in 1942, the eruption of violence and carnage, their flight to New Delhi just a month before the partition and their aristocratic lifestyle that slowly crumbled (so did their love for each other).An interesting account of a man who struggles to keep up with his swanky lifestyle he once enjoyed as one of the richest landed families of Lahore, who never knew what it meant to work for a livi...

Education in India is a site of intense contestations. Instead of addressing the multiple inequalities of caste, class, and gender that are embedded in the social fabric, the neoliberal state has privileged only the rhetoric of ‘development’, ‘modernity’, and the ideals of the Right to Education. Growing populist authoritarianism, consumerism, an all-enveloping mass media, and the rise of new aspirational classes have compounded the problem further. However, despite these significant limit...

'One of the world's most prominent radical scientists', Vandana Shiva demolishes the myths propagated by corporate globalisation in its pursuit of profit and power, revealing the devastating environmental impact of corporate capitalism.Shiva argues that consumerism lubricates the war against the earth and that corporate control violates all ethical and ecological limits. She takes the reader on a journey through the world's devastated eco-landscape, one of genetic engineering, indu...

Sociology: A Complete Introduction is designed to give you everything you need to succeed, all in one place. It covers the key areas that students are expected to be confident in, outlining the basics in clear, jargon-free English and providing added-value features like summaries of key experiments and even lists of questions you might be asked in your seminar or exam.The text is split into four parts, with an emphasis throughout on understanding and treating all concepts ...

World-renowned environmental activist and physicist Vandana Shiva calls for a radical shift in the values that govern democracies, condemning the role that unrestricted capitalism has played in the destruction of environments and livelihoods. She explores the issues she helped bring to international attention—genetic food engineering, culture theft, and natural resource privatization—uncovering their links to the rising tide of fundamentalism, violence against women, and planetary death. S...

In this fascinating collection of writings, Srilatha Batliwala, feminist thinker and practitioner, explores the many dimensions of what empowerment means for, and to, women. Looking back on a life lived through commitment to a cause—rather than to an organisation or to a sector—and working for it at many levels and locations, she traces the evolution of the concept from the late 1980s till now, unravelling its ambiguities, highlighting insights gained through practice, and analysing how an...

Reclaiming the Commons: Biodiversity, Traditional Knowledge, and the Rights of Mother Earth lays out the scientific, legal, political, and cultural struggle to defend the sovereignty of biodiversity and indigenous knowledge. Corporate war on nature and people through patents and corporate Intellectual Property Rights has unleashed an epidemic of biopiracy resulting in important legal battles fighting efforts to patent the rights to many plants, including basmati, neem, and wheat. The autho...

Rural development is a strategy designed to improve the economic and social life of the rural people. Rural development involves extending the benefits of development to the poorest among the population. The concept of rural development has now undergone a change and has become more comprehensive. This book covering all the topics of Rural Development as per UGC syllabus.

Human Rights and Social Work: Towards Rights-Based Practice helps students and practitioners understand how human rights concepts underpin the social work profession and inform their practice. This book examines the three generations of human rights and the systems of oppression that prevent citizens from participating in society as equals. It explores a range of topics, from ethics and ethical social work practice, to deductive and inductive approaches to human rights, and global and loca...

A lot has changed in Indian social and economic planning since the introduction of the grand rural employment guarantee scheme, now known as the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Act (MGNREGA). The act has been implemented, suffered setbacks, established land-marks, drawn criticism, and collected accolades in all these years. But most significantly it has profoundly changed the character of the Indian women at large. Whether these changes are good for Indian democracy is a matter of...

Anthropological interest in new subjects of research and contemporary knowledge practices has turned ethnographic attention to a wide ranging variety of professional fields. Among these the encounter with international development has perhaps been longer and more intimate than any of the others. Anthropologists have drawn critical attention to the interfaces and social effects of development’s discursive regimes but, oddly enough, have paid scant attention to knowledge producers themselves...

Politicians and economists fixate on “growing the economy”—measured by a country’s gross domestic product. But this yardstick counts harmful activities such as greenhouse gas emissions, plastic waste, and cigarette sales as gains, and it ignores environmental protection, voluntary community work, and other benefits. What we measure is a choice, and what is and isn’t counted determines what sorts of policies are enacted. How can we shift the focus to well-being and quality of life?