I feel enriched, says translator of Gandhi's biography, Newsline 1-Sep-06

My Life is My Message, an English translation of Narayan Desai’s famous biography on Gandhi, Maaru Jeevan Ej Maari Vaani, is one such attempt in that direction. Desai’s voluminous and complete biography of Gandhi is being translated and edited by Dr. Tridip Suhrud, a teacher of Gandhian Studies at Ahmedabad’s DA-IICT. The four volumes of the biography will be published by Orient Longman and is expected to hit bookstores in two years, by October 2, 2008. >>>

English for Engineers & Technologists, The Hindu, 14-Aug-06

The vice-chancellor of Anna University, D. Viswanathan, released a textbook of English for engineers and technologists here on Friday evening. The textbook was first published as part of a project conceived around 20 years ago by the department of humanities and social sciences at Anna University.

The two-part book for first year engineering students has been published as a single book for the new edition and is part of the prescribed syllabus for students at the University and affiliated colleges.

Speakers said that the book represented Anna University's early concern for improving the communication skills of its students. "The book recognises students as having views and opinions of their own and not as locked into a system with no choices," said Usha Aroor, director, Orient Longman, "It provides a student-centred skill based approach to learning language." >>>

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. >>>

The Grip of Change, The Hindu, 4-Jun-06

THE first thing that strikes you about The Grip of Change? Author P.Sivakami's translation makes you forget it was written originally in Tamil. More remarkably, in dealing with life in a Dalit community, it deals with life itself. It is a work of literature, not a manifesto. Avoiding shrillness makes the novel more poignant and powerful.

About centuries-old injustice, and rank destitution, as seen by Gowri, the young daughter of Dalit leader Kathamuthu, the story refuses to drown itself in misery. It shows socio-political shifts bringing about changes, and the faint glow of better tomorrows afar. Not as roseate dreams, but realised in the author's own breaking free from some shackles, and in a cousin who refuses to kowtow to the cannibalising forces within and outside his community. >>>

School, Society, Nation – Popular Essays on Education

Language and communication are something that children learn by taking to one another. But schools consider this an act of indiscipline. Instead we have a special grammar class to learn language! One educationist remarked, 'It is nice that children spend just a few hours at school. If they spend all 24 hours in school, they will turn out to be dumb!' In most schools, teachers talk, children listen. The same is true for other skills also. Children learn a great deal without being taught, by tinkering and pottering on their own. >>>

THE POLITICS AND POETICS OF WATER — Naturalising Scarcity in Western India

This book grew out of a doctoral thesis, but one quickly forgets that origin and loses oneself in the experience of immersion in a fascinating book. The book has several strands: the history of Kutch as a unique area with special ecological characteristics, and also as exemplifying the category of dry lands; the wound inflicted on it at the time of the Partition by the severance of its vital riparian links to the Indus Basin (which were ignored in the Indus Treaty negotiations); the changes in the attitudes to water management that came about with the transition from its erstwhile status as a small princely state to its merger with the Indian Union; caste, socio-economic power and ritual relations in Kutch; divergent perceptions of and responses to water `scarcity' at different levels and among different groups (within Kutch, at the popular level in the State as a whole, and at the State Government level); the relationship between Kutch and the Sardar Sarovar Project; and the kind of thinking that underlies water policy and planning in general. A brief review cannot do justice to the richness and complexity of the book. >>>