Summary
Contents
This collection analyzes and assesses the complexities of contemporary India's socio-economic reality from multiple perspectives. The contributors comprise eminent thinkers and grassroot activists from diverse fields like the judiciary, social development, environment, education, contemporary science, and art. Unlike the bulk of available literature on emerging India, which focuses mainly on the positives, these articles posit contrary views, necessary for a balanced, objective understanding of the issues.
The Other India: Realities of an Emerging Power talks of an India far removed from the India of glass and steel high-rises and air-conditioned schools; glistening malls and multiplexes; and fashion shows, Bollywood, and T20 cricket. It explores issues like the role of spirituality in social justice, conflicts associated with false religious identities including terrorism, the dangers of mindless destruction of nature and the consequent disempowerment of people dependent upon it, and so on. In this volume, dispassionate analysis of history and contemporary forces alternate with straight-from-the-heart narratives of grassroot activists. Candid despair shares space with encouraging stories of collective action bringing about real change.
This book will hold tremendous appeal for the general reader and will also be useful for academics and thinkers working in the fields of sociology, environment, education, human rights, law and justice, development issues, and politics.
From the Age of Anxiety to the Age of Fear*
From the Age of Anxiety to the Age of Fear*
When the likes of W.H. Auden and Erich Fromm announced the age of anxiety a few years after World War II, it was obvious that their point of reference was the modern West, with its full-blown middle-class culture, increasingly unfettered individualism, and its triumphant vision of an urban-industrial future for the humankind. In such a world, there was place for fear, but for only those fears that were adjuncts to modern society and its anxieties—the fears of loneliness, anomie, alienation, and other such lofty states of mind. Anxiety, after all, was a modern disease. Even psychoanalytic theory seemed to endorse the modern connection; it proclaimed that ...