The Corporation That Changed The World, Outlook India, 10-Jul-06
Robbins starts by asking why the East India Company -- which at one point serviced almost 20 percent of English GDP, controlled ports, warehouses and shipping and dominated the financial world of the City of London as also its physical landscape -- is so singularly absent from the contemporary physical and imaginative landscape of London. He fills us up on the role and influence of East India Company in contemporary British economy and society, how it came to be regulated, how it became a ‘mercantile sovereign’. But this is more than a history of the East India Company. It is also a passionate plea for restraining the power of the modern Corporation and a reminder that unchecked economic power always has political consequences and how monopoly and free trade are mutually exclusive. Can a museum in England today display an 18th century Bengal gown without mentioning the conditions under which it reached England, he asks? Can the statue of Robert Clive continue to adorn the entrance to the Whitehall without our wondering whether the British have really rethought their past? >>>
The Health Scene in Colonial India, The Sunday Tribune, 9-Jul-06
Old Potions, New Bottles
by Kavita Sivaramakrishnan.
Orient Longman. Pages xiv + 280. Rs 795.
Expunging Variola
by Sanjoy Bhattacharya
Orient Longman. Pages xv + 327. Rs 750.
Reproductive Health in India
edited by Sarah Hodges
Orient Longman. Pages ix + 264. Price Rs 620.
Literature on health scene in India is not exactly abundant. Empirical studies – both at macro and micro levels – have been less than adequate, and are certainly not systemised. Public discourse has been lacking too. The scenario pertaining to pre-Independence India is equally dismal in this regard. Therefore, the following three studies published by the Orient Longman –commissioned by UK’s Wellcome Trust – are welcome additions to the corpus. These books focus on different aspects of the health scenario while taking into account the political, social and medical conditions obtaining in India during the period spanning early-mid-19th century to late-mid twentieth century. The common factor in all the three books is the British Raj that, on the one hand, posed a threat to the indigenous medicine and, on the other, introduced and institutionalised modern medicare systems that helped fight such deadly epidemics as small pox and made childbirth a safe phenomenon even as it spurred on vaids and hakeems to "corporatise" indigenous medicine. The books have been reviewed in a chronological order and should interest experts and laymen alike. >>>
by Kavita Sivaramakrishnan.
Orient Longman. Pages xiv + 280. Rs 795.
Expunging Variola
by Sanjoy Bhattacharya
Orient Longman. Pages xv + 327. Rs 750.
Reproductive Health in India
edited by Sarah Hodges
Orient Longman. Pages ix + 264. Price Rs 620.
Literature on health scene in India is not exactly abundant. Empirical studies – both at macro and micro levels – have been less than adequate, and are certainly not systemised. Public discourse has been lacking too. The scenario pertaining to pre-Independence India is equally dismal in this regard. Therefore, the following three studies published by the Orient Longman –commissioned by UK’s Wellcome Trust – are welcome additions to the corpus. These books focus on different aspects of the health scenario while taking into account the political, social and medical conditions obtaining in India during the period spanning early-mid-19th century to late-mid twentieth century. The common factor in all the three books is the British Raj that, on the one hand, posed a threat to the indigenous medicine and, on the other, introduced and institutionalised modern medicare systems that helped fight such deadly epidemics as small pox and made childbirth a safe phenomenon even as it spurred on vaids and hakeems to "corporatise" indigenous medicine. The books have been reviewed in a chronological order and should interest experts and laymen alike. >>>
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