The Social Lens: Insights on Institutions, Inequality, and Innovation

Book Review Colonialism and its Forms of Knowledge: The British in India. Bernard S. Cohn. Princeton University Press, 1996. Xvii+189pp. The acceptance and maintenance of colonial power in any country is not dependent only upon the military strength or the capacity to coerce the voices of masses but also on the development of knowledge to understand the subjects. The development of knowledge by the imperial power of East Indian Company and crown (after 1858) to invent the history of the colonized and see through it the ways and means of ruling and maintaining the empire was the ‘cultural’ domain of the colonial history. Bernard Cohn uses the principles of anthropology in sync with the methods of history to study colonialism and its forms of knowledge. This book consists of four essays, foreword by Nicholas Dirk and introduction to the book. These essays are written in the time period between 1950s and 1980s. In this era, the Chicago school’s method of ‘ethnosociology’ wa...

The trajectory of the development of the concepts of Economics has varied in different forms and after the advent of complex form of market mechanisms Economics left many concepts without giving them proper meaning and definitions like property, labour, money etc. these concepts in economics are like monochrome inhibiting no resplendence. Economics, somehow, alienated human social existence from the macrocosm of economic concepts. The ‘being’ has been totally alienated from the human labour, production process and reproduction of material entity. So, the discipline which finds its root in the writings of those thinkers who were primarily students of morality and ethics like Adam Smith finds no mention of this dimension of social existence in contemporary economics. Economic Anthropology starts from this and sees the economic phenomena in totality to attach all the subjectivity and objectivity in this academic domain. Marx, On the Thefts of Wood, in Rheinische Zeitung (1842) writes th...

A city of Order: the Masterplan and Media Urbanism (Page 52-106) In 1959 a significant gathering of India’s architects took place in Delhi to discuss the future of Indian cities and urban forms and Charles Correa in this gathering criticised Corbusier’s Chandigarh project as  ‘savage’ but the patronage of Nehru to Chandigarh project created  confusions in the minds of present architects about the future of Indian cities. Ravi Sundaram discusses about the MARG’s role in planning, Hume Report of 1930, G.D. Birla Committee Report and the epidemic of 1955 to find the trajectories of the development of Masterplan of Delhi.   The launch of Masterplan in 1962 was inaugurated with many responses from the media, Town Planning Organization and various other groups for the need of ‘urban psyche’ for the transformation of Delhi into well integrated city. This urban psyche was defined as the specific practices of living; work and community organisations and these soci...

The buzz surrounding the Indian elections has been building for the past two years. Disenchantment and disillusionment with the United Progressive Alliance’s policies made people impatient to welcome a new government—one that would drive the country towards prudent economic policies, better governance, the enactment of entitlement-based rights, and robust foreign policies. The name that comes to mind almost synonymously with the 2014 election is that of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) poster boy, Narendra Modi. Narendra Modi has been a long-standing member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and was chosen as the Chief Minister of Gujarat in 2001, following the Bhuj earthquake. During his tenure, Gujarat witnessed a massive anti-muslim communal riot in 2002 after the burning of a train in Godhra. Modi has been named in multiple cases for his alleged involvement in the post-Godhra riots. Some Gujarat government officials also accused him of failing to deploy state machinery...

The biggest festival of India, parliamentary election, is planned in April and May 2014. This is not a mere number game for Indians but this is the question of their survival and a chance to gain prosperity in the economic, political, and social spheres of their life. In democracy, we do not choose only leaders to represent us but also assert our rights to have freedom, liberty, equality, and justice. These are the basic rights that one should have to live a decent life. In this election, everyone knows which party is going to get highest number of seats. The main problem is the formation of government at the centre in a coalition era asserted by ‘regional parties’ based on ‘primordial identities’. This time, the expectations from the government is very high after seeing the misrule for last five years. Irresponsible fiscal and monetary policies, corruption in government and governance, weak foreign policy and especially diplomacy, inefficient administration and insufficient result...

WP-07 Democracy means popular government and the Parliamentary form of democratic system was adopted in India by the nationalist leaders of Indian freedom struggle. The parliamentary or representative form of democracy is best defined by John Stuart Mill in his classic, Consideration on Representative Government . It is a government wherein “the whole people or some numerous portion of them exercise through deputies periodically elected by themselves the ultimate controlling power which in every constitution must reside somewhere… this ultimate power they must possess in all its completeness” 1 Parliamentary democracy allows a form of government in which the people of the nation-state rule through elected representatives in the parliament, chosen by free and fair elections and adult suffrage. There should be existence of two or more political part is necessary, fundamental rights are guaranteed and there must be coordination between the legislature and the executive. The In...

Censorship debates in India are not new, and both the Indian state and its citizens have played roles as both perpetrators and victims in these discussions. The recent controversy surrounding Wendy Doniger’s book, The Hindus: An Alternative History , once again highlighted the reluctance of certain sections of Indian society to accept criticism or alternative perspectives on religion and culture. Despite the constitutional guarantee of free expression as a fundamental right, Section 295A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) grants the state the power to penalize speech that maliciously insults or attempts to insult any religious belief. In this sense, Section 295A operates in a secular manner, as it applies to all religious communities. This provision was not part of the original IPC of 1860 but was introduced in 1927 through an amendment following the Lahore Court’s decision in Rajpal vs. King Emperor (1927) . At that time, legal experts, politicians, and scholars debated the amendment ...

We live in a country that grants us various rights classified into fundamental, legal, and statutory rights. These rights embody absolute values, reinforcing the idea of the "Kantian Man." They provide individuals with the motivation to believe in political and social constructs such as the nation-state, territory, and citizenship. Every human being is deemed equal and enjoys the freedom to practice religion, access information, express opinions, and exercise other fundamental liberties. Additionally, the legal system promises justice in cases of discrimination or crime. In essence, this framework aligns with the "Social Contract" theory, wherein individuals are free to manage their personal affairs while the state ensures broader governance and order. However, when one examines daily news and social events, this idealistic vision of rights and justice appears far from reality. Society is not a binary of black and white but a complex puzzle. The more one attempts ...