Book picks similar to
Living Class in Urban India by Sara Dickey


class-labor
indian-economics
indian-nationalism
indian-politics

Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire


Alex von Tunzelmann - 2007
    A re-creation of one of the key moments of twentieth-century history: the partition and independence of India, and the final days of the Raj.

Heroic Hindu Resistance to Muslim Invaders, 636 Ad To 1206 Ad


Sita Ram Goel - 1984
    An analysis of Ram Gopal Misra's Indian resistance to early Muslim invaders, up to 1206 A.D.

The House of Jaipur: The Inside Story of India’s Most Glamorous Royal Family


John Zubrzycki - 2020
    But behind the glittering facades lie stories of forbidden love, forged wills and missing treasures, of lives cut short by alcoholism and of bitter family feuds over assets worth thousands of crores. Revealed for the first time are the untold stories of life behind the palace doors.

Journeys Through Babudom and Netaland: Governance in India


T.S.R. Subramanian - 2004
    just after Babri Masjid. An excellent narrative, clear and thoughtful. a very unique volume that should be read by scholar and layperson alike

लक्ष्यवेध


रणजित देसाई
    Apart from this, many a times each state of each nation has role models from the past but not forgotten history. Maharashtra has its own idols. The greatest and most loved of them all is shivaji maharaj.

काळे पाणी


V.D. Savarkar - 1937
    Since the book is written in pre-independence period, in the guise of love story it serves other purpose of nation building. It subtly pays homage to martyrs of 1857 revolution. It explains strategic importance of Andaman and describes nomadic tribes residing over there. The book also criticizes blind faith prevalent during that time. Savarkar also tells us about the hardships faced by prisoners in Andaman and how these criminal and political convicts helped turn this once inhabitable land into human society.

Coming Out as Dalit: A Memoir


Yashica Dutt - 2019
    For Yashica Dutt, a journalist living in New York, this was the moment to stop living a lie, and admit to something that she had hidden from friends and colleagues for over a decade—that she was Dalit.In Coming Out as Dalit, Dutt recounts the exhausting burden of living with the secret and how she was terrified of being found out. She talks about the tremendous feeling of empowerment she experienced when she finally stood up for herself and her community and shrugged off the fake upper-caste identity she’d had to construct for herself. As she began to understand the inequities of the caste system, she also had to deal with the crushing guilt of denying her history and the struggles of her grandparents and the many Dalit reformers who fought for equal rights.In this personal memoir that is also a narrative of the Dalits, she writes about the journey of coming to terms with her identity and takes us through the history of the Dalit movement; the consequences of her community’s lack of access to education and culture; the need for reservation; the paucity of Dalit voices in mainstream media; Dalit women’s movements and their ongoing contributions; and attempts to answer crucial questions about caste and privilege. Woven from personal narratives from her own life as well as that of other Dalits, this book forces us to confront the injustices of caste and also serves as a call to action.Winner of the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar Award 2020.

Affluence and Influence: Economic Inequality and Political Power in America


Martin Gilens - 2010
    Affluence and Influence definitively explores how political inequality in the United States has evolved over the last several decades and how this growing disparity has been shaped by interest groups, parties, and elections.With sharp analysis and an impressive range of data, Martin Gilens looks at thousands of proposed policy changes, and the degree of support for each among poor, middle-class, and affluent Americans. His findings are staggering: when preferences of low- or middle-income Americans diverge from those of the affluent, there is virtually no relationship between policy outcomes and the desires of less advantaged groups. In contrast, affluent Americans' preferences exhibit a substantial relationship with policy outcomes whether their preferences are shared by lower-income groups or not. Gilens shows that representational inequality is spread widely across different policy domains and time periods. Yet Gilens also shows that under specific circumstances the preferences of the middle class and, to a lesser extent, the poor, do seem to matter. In particular, impending elections--especially presidential elections--and an even partisan division in Congress mitigate representational inequality and boost responsiveness to the preferences of the broader public.At a time when economic and political inequality in the United States only continues to rise, Affluence and Influence raises important questions about whether American democracy is truly responding to the needs of all its citizens.

Hind Swaraj or Indian Home Rule


Mahatma Gandhi - 1909
    In the book Gandhi gives a diagnosis for the problems of humanity in modern times, the causes, and his remedy. The Gujarati edition was banned by the British on its publication in India. Gandhi then translated it into English. The English edition was not banned by the British, who rightly concluded that the book would have little impact on the English-speaking Indians' subservience to the British and British ideas.

Undercover: My Journey into the Darkness of Hindutva


Ashish Khetan - 2021
    He penetrated deep into the world of Hindutva and uncovered a hate-filled universe, where stories of rape and murder are exchanged over a cup of tea. Each time, he returned with reports that shook the country to its core. Equipped with cameras small enough to be clipped to a button on his shirt, Khetan secretly filmed men close to the corridors of power, or indeed in them, admitting to mind-numbing venality during the Gujarat riots of 2002. The men he filmed said the riots could not have happened without the implicit, sometimes explicit, support of the state government. His investigations led to the conviction of Babu Bajrangi, his close aides and Maya Kodnani, and in the Best Bakery case, he proved that the defence had bribed Zahira Sheikh to turn hostile.One of India’s leading investigative journalists, Khetan has broken some of the biggest stories of the last twenty years, but the time he spent in Gujarat, especially a gruelling six-month spell in 2007, left gaping emotional wounds. As he recounts the course of the three investigations, and the long, frustrating legal processes that followed, Khetan fills in the gaps in the Gujarat-model narrative. He also reminds us that this is not the story of something that happened nearly two decades ago—it is a portrait of the present and future of India. The Gujarat playbook is now the India playbook.

Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism


Michael Barnett - 2011
    In contrast to most contemporary accounts of humanitarianism that concentrate on the last two decades, Michael Barnett ties the past to the present, connecting the antislavery and missionary movements of the nineteenth century to today's peacebuilding missions, the Cold War interventions in places like Biafra and Cambodia to post-Cold War humanitarian operations in regions such as the Great Lakes of Africa and the Balkans; and the creation of the International Committee of the Red Cross in 1863 to the emergence of the major international humanitarian organizations of the twentieth century. Based on extensive archival work, close encounters with many of today's leading international agencies, and interviews with dozens of aid workers in the field and at headquarters, Empire of Humanity provides a history that is both global and intimate.Avoiding both romanticism and cynicism, Empire of Humanity explores humanitarianism's enduring themes, trends, and, most strikingly, ethical ambiguities. Humanitarianism hopes to change the world, but the world has left its mark on humanitarianism. Humanitarianism has undergone three distinct global ages--imperial, postcolonial, and liberal--each of which has shaped what humanitarianism can do and what it is. The world has produced not one humanitarianism, but instead varieties of humanitarianism. Furthermore, Barnett observes that the world of humanitarianism is divided between an emergency camp that wants to save lives and nothing else and an alchemist camp that wants to remove the causes of suffering. These camps offer different visions of what are the purpose and principles of humanitarianism, and, accordingly respond differently to the same global challenges and humanitarianism emergencies. Humanitarianism has developed a metropolis of global institutions of care, amounting to a global governance of humanity. This humanitarian governance, Barnett observes, is an empire of humanity: it exercises power over the very individuals it hopes to emancipate.Although many use humanitarianism as a symbol of moral progress, Barnett provocatively argues that humanitarianism has undergone its most impressive gains after moments of radical inhumanity, when the international community believes that it must atone for its sins and reduce the breach between what we do and who we think we are. Humanitarianism is not only about the needs of its beneficiaries; it also is about the needs of the compassionate.

India's Power Elite: Caste, Class and Cultural Revolution


Sanjaya Baru - 2021
    Its point of departure is the political transition under way in twenty-first-century India, with the marginalization of the Congress Party and the staging of a cultural revolution symbolized by the rise of Hindu majoritarianism. Baru deconstructs the morphology of the Indian power elite-comprising remnants of a feudal gentry, kulaks, a metropolitan business class, the civil services and a cultural elite of opinion-makers. He also examines the role of caste, class and culture in the emergence of a 'New India'. Aimed at the socially engaged reader, this book will interest both students as well as those who wield power.

The Rise of Big Data Policing: Surveillance, Race, and the Future of Law Enforcement


Andrew Guthrie Ferguson - 2017
    The Rise of Big Data Policing introduces the cutting-edge technology that is changing how the police do their jobs and shows why it is more important than ever that citizens understand the far-reaching consequences of big data surveillance as a law enforcement tool.Andrew Guthrie Ferguson reveals how these new technologies --viewed as race-neutral and objective--have been eagerly adopted by police departments hoping to distance themselves from claims of racial bias and unconstitutional practices. After a series of high-profile police shootings and federal investigations into systemic police misconduct, and in an era of law enforcement budget cutbacks, data-driven policing has been billed as a way to "turn the page" on racial bias.But behind the data are real people, and difficult questions remain about racial discrimination and the potential to distort constitutional protections.In this first book on big data policing, Ferguson offers an examination of how new technologies will alter the who, where, when and how we police. These new technologies also offer data-driven methods to improve police accountability and to remedy the underlying socio-economic risk factors that encourage crime.The Rise of Big Data Policing is a must read for anyone concerned with how technology will revolutionize law enforcement and its potential threat to the security, privacy, and constitutional rights of citizens.Read an excerpt and interview with Andrew Guthrie Ferguson in The Economist.

TO THE BRINK AND BACK: India's 1991 Story


Jairam Ramesh - 2015
    The book, The Brink and Back, is an account of the events leading to the path-breaking economic liberalisation unveiled by Rao’s government with Manmohan Singh as the Union finance minister

Why I Am Not a Hindu


Kancha Ilaiah - 2001
    In this manifesto for the downtrodden, the author examines the socio-economic and cultural differences between the Dalitbahujans (the majority, the so-called low castes) and other Hindus in the contexts of childhood, family life, market relations, power relations, Gods and Goddesses, death and, not least, Hindutva (ideology of the Hindu Right).