Karachi, Youre Killing Me!

Karachi, Youre Killing Me! by Saba Imtiaz from Random House.

A hilarious comedy of manners in which a young reporter working in one of theworld’s most dangerous cities finds that dodging bullets and bombs still isn’t aschallenging as scoring a date. Ayesha is a twenty-something reporter in one of the world’s most dangerous cities.Her assignments range from showing up at bomb sites and picking her way throughscattered body parts to interviewing her boss’s niece, the couture-cupcake designer.

In between dicing with death and absurdity, Ayesha despairs over the likelihoodof ever meeting a nice guy, someone like her old friend Saad, whose shoulder shecries on after every romantic misadventure. Her choices seem limited to narcissistic,adrenaline-chasing reporters who’ll do anything to get their next story—to the spoiltoffspring of the Karachi elite who’ll do anything to cure their boredom.

Her mostpressing problem, however, is how to straighten her hair during the chronic poweroutages. Karachi, You’re Killing Me! is Bridget Jones’s Diary meets The Diary of a Social Butterfly—acomedy of manners in a city with none.

In our Fiction section, Rs. 299, in hardback, 272 pages, ISBN: 9788184004601

Tales of Fosterganj

Tales of Fosterganj by Ruskin Bond from Aleph Book Company.

A memorable novel full of characters both charming and eccentric by India's most beloved storyteller. 'I forget what took me to Fosterganj in the first place. Destiny, perhaps, although I'm not sure why destiny would have bothered to guide an itinerant writer to an obscure little hamlet in the hills. Chance would be a better word. For chance plays a great part in all our lives and it was just by chance that I found myself in the Fosterganj bazaar one fine morning early in May.'

Key Features:

• New novel by one of India's most beloved storytellers.
• Set in a fictional suburb on the outskirts of Mussourie, which he has made famous with his near legendary stories.
• Vintage Ruskin Bond that is bound to delight his readers with his understated humour, wit and effortless storytelling.

In our Fiction section, Rs. 295, in hardback, 152 pages, ISBN: 9789382277477

Rogue Elephant

Rogue Elephant: Harnessing the Power of India's Unruly Democracy by Simon Denyer from Bloomsbury India.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, India seemed to stand on the brink of an exciting new era. Second only to China as the fastest growing major economy in the world, gleaming shopping malls were being built around the country to service a rapidly expanding middle class, and mobile phones were reaching even the remotest villages. The installation of Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister in 2004 seemed to promise more good times ahead. Singh had unleashed shining Indias potential more than a decade before as finance minister, introducing the liberalising economic reforms that had set the country on a new course towards prosperity.

Yet a decade later, the dream has crumbled. A series of corruption scandals has badly tarnished the nations image and undermined its self-confidence, while the economy has slowed and violence against women has dominated the headlines. Their country is no longer shining and Indians are left wondering where the magic has gone. Reporting from across India, meeting activists, farmers, factory and office workers and media figures and interviewing influential political leaders including Narendra Modi, Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal, Denyer exposes the battles taking place all across the nation between powerful vested interests and those trying to foster change.

By delving into many of the countrys most troublesome issues, from gender relations to education, from corruption to populist politics, he analyses the Indian malaise and equally important, discovers signs of new and vigorous life and a deep desire for change. If the worlds largest democracy can control the greed, corruption and bad governance that bedevils it, its future may indeed be truly dazzling.

In our History section, Rs. 599, in hardback, 448 pages, ISBN: 9781408857052

The Accidental Prime Minister

The Accidental Prime Minister : The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh by Sanjaya Baru from Penguin Books India.

In 2004 Sanjaya Baru left a successful career as chief editor of the Financial Express to join Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as his media adviser in UPA 1. Singh offered him the job with the words, Sitting here, I know I will be isolated from the outside world. I want you to be my eyes and ears. Tell me what you think I should know, without fear or favour.

The Accidental Prime Minister is Barus account of what it was like to manage public opinion for Singh while giving us a riveting look at Indian politics as it happened behind the scenes. As Singhs spin doctor and trusted aide for four years, Baru observed up close Singhs often troubled relations with his ministers, his cautious equation with Sonia Gandhi and how he handled the big crises from managing the Left to pushing through the nuclear deal.

In this book he tells all and draws for the first time a revelatory picture of what it was like for Singh to work in a government that had two centers of power. Insightful, acute and packed with political gossip, The Accidental Prime Minister is one of the great insider accounts of Indian political life and a superb portrait of the Manmohan Singh era.

In our Biography section, Rs. 599, in hardback, 320 pages, ISBN: 9780670086740

Being Muslim in South Asia

Being Muslim in South Asia: Diversity and Daily Life by Robin Jeffrey And Ronojoy Sen from Oxford University Press (India).

The 500 million Muslims who live in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka constitute roughly one-third of the world's Muslims. Their lives in the twenty-first century are challenging and diverse. Too often in recent years, they have been unfairly associated with terrorism, as anyone with a Muslim name who has passed through a Western airport will attest.

But South Asian Muslims do what other people do: they educate their children, earn livings, travel widely, discuss their faith, settle disputes, arrange marriages, cope with politics, struggle with governments, and support football teams. United by shared adherence to the Holy Quran and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, Muslims of South Asia speak numerous languages, follow different local customs, and have varied aspirations for their own lives and those of their children.

The essays in this book probe such aspects of Muslim life. The authors' concerns range from great political debates that have affected Muslim lives to marriage on the east coast of Sri Lanka, schools and media in Pakistan, women's groups in Bangladesh, and football teams in Kolkata. This work will interest readers who wish to discover the multifaceted lives of South Asia's Muslims.

In our Sociology section, Rs. 995, in hardback, 400 pages, ISBN: 9780198092063

Looptail

Looptail: How One Company Changed the World by Reinventing Business by Bruce Poon Tip from Hachette India.

Looptail is Bruce Poon Tip's extraordinary first-person account of his entrepreneurial instincts to start and develop G Adventures, the highly successful international travel adventure company - and along the way he reveals his unusual management secrets that not only keep his employees fully engaged and energized but also keep his customers extremely happy.His unique appraoch has worked in marvellous ways. Poon Tip has created an entirely new and refreshing approach to management.

For example, there is no CEO at G Adventures - instead, every employee is a CEO, empowered to make instantaneous decisions to help clients on the spot. But while there's no CEO, there is a company Mayor, who take the pulse of corporate morale. There's no HR department - but there is a Talent Agency and company Culture Club.

It hasn't always been easy to try to balance his desire for a socially responsible company along with the desire to generate profits. But thanks to Poon Tip's vision, G Adventures has floruished and has done its best to maintain its looptail approach. In short, it's been an extraordinary ride, and in many ways G Adventures is at the vanguard of what modern-day companies are beginning to look like.

In our Management Studies section, Rs. 350, in paperback, 304 pages, ISBN: 9780349404592


Launch!: The Critical 90 Days from Idea to Market by Scott Duffy from Hachette India.

About ninety-seven percent of a rocket's fuel is used in the first three feet of its launch. The same is true in launching a new business, product, or service. Those first few steps are absolutely critical. Scott Duffy has developed a practical approach for turning your big idea into a thriving venture by focusing on the crucial period immediately before, during, and after opening your doors (literally or online).

His approach is based on his experiences working with top entrepreneurs like Tony Robbins and Richard Branson, who taught him how to balance the two key sides of entrepreneurship: The personal side, including personal finances, relationships, and health. The business side, including raising capital, building teams, establishing partnerships, and closing sales.

Duffy also draws on the true stories of other big names, such as Howard Schultz, Lou Holtz, and MC Hammer, to offer guidance on turning your vision into a full-fledged enterprise.

In our Management Studies section, Rs. 299, in paperback, 240 pages, ISBN: 9780349404004 

The Connected Age

The Connected Age: Being the Best You Can By Reinventing Your World by Sudhakar Ram from Harper Collins, India.

Taken together, mankind has the capability and resources to make the world a happy home for all life on the planet. Yet, we live in times of great discontent, environmental degradation and individual powerlessness in spite of our access to information and the technological and material prowess we today have.

In these dystopian times, Sudhakar Ram sets out to show the road ahead. He examines how our Industrial Age mindset has been responsible for the current state of the world—where individuals and institutions are forever running on the treadmill of success and operate as independent entities not really talking to each other. He makes a case for going beyond this mindset to embrace a new set of principles and practices that acknowledge the interdependent and connected nature of our existence, thus heralding a new ‘Connected Age’.

‘If the last hundred years are anything to go by, aren’t we justified in expecting dramatic changes in the next hundred?’ asks Sudhakar, the head of IT solutions firm Mastek, as he calls for an overhaul of the way we run our lives, our companies and our planet itself, so that we leave behind a better world for future generations.

Based on his blog ‘The New Constructs’, which has more than 45,000 followers, and drawing on the ideas of several thinkers such as Mahatma Gandhi, E.F. Schumacher, Stephen Covey, Paul Hawken, Bill McKibben and Benjamin Zander, among others, The Connected Age is a futurist’s vision for a new world and a guidebook about personal change that anybody can benefit from.

In our General section, Rs. 350, in paperback, 272 pages, ISBN: 9789351361992 

Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi: The Congress and the Partition of India by D. C. Jha from Knowledge World Publishers.

An intimate memoir of Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress and the prelude to Indias partition with unflagging interest and also a very interesting study of the struggle over partition. The author has done a service to offer vigorous defense of Gandhis vision and of the departure of the Congress leaders from the vision upon their accession to political power. It is a powerful and tragic tale.

In our Biography section, Rs. 595, in paperback, xx+136 pages, ISBN: 9789383649037

Penguin Latest

Conversations with Waheeda Rehman by Nasreen Munni Kabir from Penguin Books India.

Renowned for her natural talent and haunting beauty, Waheeda Rehman s career spans an astonishing array of key films in Indian cinema, including Pyaasa, Abhijan, Mujhe Jeene Do, Guide, Teesri Kasam and Rang De Basanti.

In this engaging book of conversations with Nasreen Munni Kabir, Waheeda Rehman proves to be a lively raconteur, speaking about her life and work with refreshing honesty, humour and insight: from the devastating loss of her parents when she was young to making a life in cinema on her own terms, from insightful accounts of working with extraordinary film practitioners like Guru Dutt, Raj Khosla, Satyajit Ray, Raj Kapoor, Dev Anand and Vijay Anand to her friendship with stars like Nargis and Nanda.

A slice of cinema history told through compelling anecdotes and astute observations, Conversations with Waheeda Rehman provides a rare view of a much-adored and award-winning actress of Indian cinema.

In our Film Studies section, Rs. 499, in hardback, 256 pages, ISBN: 9780670086924



The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh by Sanjaya Baru from Penguin Books India.

In 2004 Sanjaya Baru left a successful career as chief editor of the Financial Express to join Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as his media adviser in UPA 1. Singh offered him the job with the words, Sitting here, I know I will be isolated from the outside world. I want you to be my eyes and ears. Tell me what you think I should know, without fear or favour.

The Accidental Prime Minister is Barus account of what it was like to manage public opinion for Singh while giving us a riveting look at Indian politics as it happened behind the scenes. As Singhs spin doctor and trusted aide for four years, Baru observed up close Singhs often troubled relations with his ministers, his cautious equation with Sonia Gandhi and how he handled the big crises from managing the Left to pushing through the nuclear deal. In this book he tells all and draws for the first time a revelatory picture of what it was like for Singh to work in a government that had two centers of power.

Insightful, acute and packed with political gossip, The Accidental Prime Minister is one of the great insider accounts of Indian political life and a superb portrait of the Manmohan Singh era.

In our Biography section, Rs. 599, in hardback, 320 pages, ISBN: 9780670086740

Boiled Beans on Toast

Boiled Beans on Toast: A Play by Girish Karnad from Oxford University Press (India).

A lonely housewife regains her lost singing voice in a hospice; for a small-town job-seeker the concrete jungle rolling over the shrinking greenery holds promise of untold prospects; for the conservative old lady from the country the race course opens up visions of power; a village woman with an ambiguous past struggles to find a foothold amidst the urban chaos. Girish Karnad's play is vibrant with moments of lyricism, cruelty, and laughter, as it deals with a host of characters, jostling together, clashing, getting entangled, or preying upon each other, in the city of 'Bangalore'.

In our Literature section, Rs. 195, in paperback, 96 pages, ISBN: 9780198098607

The Sixth Extinction

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert from Bloomsbury India.

Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions of life on earth. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. Elizabeth Kolbert combines brilliant field reporting, the history of ideas and the work of geologists, botanists and marine biologists to tell the gripping stories of a dozen species - including the Panamanian golden frog and the Sumatran rhino - some already gone, others at the point of vanishing. The sixth extinction is likely to be mankind's most lasting legacy and Elizabeth Kolbert's book urgently compels us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.

In our Sociology section, Rs. 399, in paperback, 336 pages, ISBN: 9781408857113

Accelerate

Accelerate: Building Strategic Agility for A Faster-Moving World by John P. Kotter from Harvard Business School Publishing.

From bestselling author John P. Kotter (Leading Change, A Sense of Urgency, Our Iceberg is Melting), this new work offers a detailed explanation of his award-winning idea on a new dual operating system that allows organizations to move at the pace of change while providing the necessary structures to help it run successfully.

Torn between staying ahead of the competition, constantly innovating and still delivering this years results, todays leaders need help in the face of competing demands. In this important new book, which expands on Kotters McKinsey Award - winning article in the Harvard Business Review (November 2012), Kotter describes this dual operating systemnetwork and hierarchyincluding how it works and how to build it.

The idea stems from the authors experience in the field helping numerous organizations (public and private) build dual operating systems in recent years. Kotter predicts that such systems are the key to long-term success in the 21st centuryfor shareholders, customers, employees and companies themselves. Accelerate will help organizations keep up with an ever-more-turbulent world, responding to threats and capturing opportunities for true strategic agility.

In our Management Studies section, Rs. 895, in hardback, 224 pages, ISBN: 9781625271747

A Passionate Eye

A Passionate Eye: Textiles, Paintings and Sculptures from the Bharany Collections by Giles Tillotson from The Marg Foundation.

Rarely in the history of collecting art in India has a father-son duo remained involved for as long as the Bharanys of Amritsar and Delhi. This book tells the remarkable tale of the aesthetic adventure of two generations of Bharanys – Radha Krishna and his son Chhotelal, spanning over a century.

It begins with an essay by Pratapaditya Pal placing the role of the Bharanys in the wider context of collecting in this field. This is followed by Chhote Bharany’s personal recollections of learning the trade from his father, and his interactions with many of the leading scholars, experts, famous writers, museum directors and connoisseurs of the 20th century. Giles Tillotson explores Chhote Bharany’s aesthetic, emotional and spiritual response to art in the intellectual context of his time. In Part Two, experts on textiles and other arts each highlight one aspect of the collections, together covering items from as far afield as Himachal Pradesh, Kashmir, Bengal, Punjab, Kerala and Rajasthan.

Showcasing the Bharanys’ personal collection and other objects donated to or purchased by museums, this book will be an eye-opener to those intrigued by how works of art are brought to light, how great collections are put together, and how such works are appreciated and understood.

In our Art and Architecture section, Rs. 2800, in hardback, 156 pages, ISBN: 9789383243006

Paradoxes

Paradoxes of Rationality and Norms of Human Behavior by Amitabh Kundu And Arash Fazli from Manak Publications.

Despite over siz decades of global development efforts involging no dearth of resources and good intentions, we still live in a world in which more than half of humanity lacks the means for a degnified existence, Furher, the gap between the rich and the poor across and within countries continues to viden at an alarming pace.

In our Psychology section, Rs. 600, in hardback, 136 pages, ISBN: 9789378313462

Remembering Pyarelal & Drone Wars

Remembering Pyarelal: Mahatma Gandhi's Secretary and Biographer by D C Jha from Knowledge World Publishers.

Thirty-Four years after Mahatma Gandhi's martyrdom in January 1948, his life-long Secretary and Biographer Pyarelal passed away in October 1982. In an editorial obituary, one of the national newspapers of India recorded the sad event as “passing away of Gandhi's Boswell".

This volume is the collection of tributes that were paid to Pyarelal by friends, colleagues and admirers soon after he passed away in 1982. These were planned to be published, along with a short biography of Pyarelal by his sister Dr. Sushila Nayar, in the form of a memorial volume.

Due to unforeseen circumstances however the planned memorial volume remained unpublished for all these long and many years. At the initiative of D.C. Jha, the compiler and the editor of this book, it was published in 2012 by the National Gandhi Museum.

In our Biography section, Rs. 795, in paperback, xxviii+252 pages, ISBN: 9789383649082


Drone Wars: Ethical, Legal and Strategic Implications by Dr. U. C. Jha from Knowledge World Publishers.

Lethal drones have been used in the last 12 years by the United States to strike targets and eliminate terrorists in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and a few other countries. Details of how armed drones are being used, in or outside of declared wars, are closely guarded secrets by all three states known to use them.

However, these drones have also been responsible for killing and injuring thousands of civilians, including women and children, besides destroying homes and property. The US and its allies have claimed that the drone strikes have been spectacularly successful—in terms of both finding and killing targeted enemies. Drones have been projected as a military necessity and their market is growing fast, especially for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. The use of unmanned drones to target belligerents raises many complex issues.

It is of crucial importance that traditional ethical rules and practices are applied; that rules of international law are observed even while engaging with terrorists. There are a few who justify the use of drones, but their argument is somewhat similar to the argument used for dropping atomic bombs over Japan in WWII. Lethal drones are a weapon of rich nations who have used them to attack poor, defenceless nations. This book discusses the ethical, legal and strategic issues relating to the use of drones in armed conflict.

In our Engineering section, Rs. 880, in hardback, xviii+284 pages, ISBN: 9789381904732

People’s ‘Warrior’

People’s ‘Warrior’ : Words and Worlds of P.C. Joshi by Gargi Chakravartty from Tulika Books.

Faced with many disappointments within the Communist Party to which he had dedicated his life and in the realm of politics beyond, P.C. Joshi turned to a deep and life-long engagement with the history of the Party. It was an engagement that led to the creation of a rich archive on the complex history of the Indian Left. On 1 December 1970, this collection was formally acquired by Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and Joshi himself was the Director of this archive for the first five years, ably assisted by K. Damodaran. In 1974, the archive was set up as an adjunct to the School of Social Sciences, JNU, with its own advisory body. The materials in the ‘P.C. Joshi Archives on Contemporary History’ consist primarily of documents and papers from the personal collection of P.C. Joshi.

The cataloguing style that he developed, along with K. Damodaran, has been retained to the present. As such, it is divided between materials classified by year and those classified by themes. The materials include rare magazines and journals, publications of communist parties and various other Left groups from several parts of the globe; and books, pamphlets, photographs, and copies of important files and letters relating to the Communist Party of India. P.C. Joshi himself had long been writing on a wide range of issues, commenting on contemporary political developments, on Party positions and strategies, on historical events and processes, and on debates and concerns among workers and peasants, artists and writers, students and the youth.

Many of these were published in the journals with which he was associated, though some important reflections remained unpublished. This volume contains a selection from P.C. Joshi’s large body of writing, which will serve as an introduction to the man, his writings and his times. The articles are presented here in a chronological framework, starting with excerpts from P.C. Joshi’s memorable deposition in the Meerut Conspiracy Case and continuing to his last writings before he fell critically ill. The first chapter, titled ‘In His Own Words’, is an autobiographical note that he wrote on z7 November 1970. In addition to a selection of Joshi’s writings, the volume contains invited articles by scholars/ writers which evaluate and contextualize P.C. Joshi and his times.

In our Politics section, Rs. 995, in hardback, xxii+474 pages, ISBN: 9789382381365

The Perfect Theory

The Perfect Theory: A Century of Geniuses and the Battle over General Relativity by Pedro G. Ferreira from Hachette India.

Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity is possibly the most perfect intellectual achievement in modern physics. Anything that involves gravity, the force that powers everything on the largest, hottest or densest of scales, can be explained by it. From the moment Einstein first proposed the theory in 1915, it was received with enthusiasm yet also with tremendous resistance, and for the following ninety years was the source of a series of feuds, vendettas, ideological battles and international collaborations featuring a colourful cast of characters.

A gripping, colourfully told story, A Perfect Theory entangles itself with the flashpoints of modern history. In this first complete popular history of the theory, Pedro G. Ferreira shows how the theory has informed our understanding of exactly what the universe is made of and how much is still undiscovered: from the work of the giant telescopes in the deserts of Chile to the way in which the latest work on black holes is providing a fresh, new perspective on what space and time are truly made of.

As we near the first centenary of Einstein's iconic theory, scientists the world over are wondering once again if we have reached the limits of the theory and just how much of the universe's future it can explain.

In our Physics section, Rs. 550, in paperback, 320 pages, ISBN: 9781408704301

OUP New Collection

The Theatre of Veenapani Chawla: Theory, Practice, and Performance by Shanta Gokhale from Oxford University Press (India).

One of the pioneers of experimental theatre in contemporary India, Veenapani Chawla has long been engaged in creating a unique form of performance methodology. A self-taught artist, she has evolved a new language of theatrical practice that fuses traditional and modern aspects of life and theatre.

Tracing Veenapani Chawla's journey from her schooldays, where she was encouraged to move beyond academics and develop an interest in music and dramatics, to her early plays in Mumbai, this volume goes on to explore her deepening relationship with theatre culminating in the founding of Adishakti Laboratory for Theatre Arts and Research in Puducherry.

Veenapani Chawla's belief in plurality has helped her move beyond earlier notions of what theatre should be and demonstrate what theatre could be. Capturing the multidimensional aspects of her work, this book brings together a wide range of writings—essays, reviews, interviews, and performance texts, as well as papers by the artist herself. Accompanied by a DVD of her most complex play till date, The Hare and the Tortoise, this work offers insights into the artist's creative process and her oeuvre.

In our Performing Arts and Drama section, Rs. 895, in hardback, 352 pages, ISBN: 9780198097037



The Political Economy of Energy and Growth by Najeeb Jung from Oxford University Press (India).

The Gulf Crisis of the 1990s brought the concept of energy security to the fore. Global realities of the 21st century have further altered the concept of national security, and energy has fast become one of its pivotal components. With its dependence on energy imports to fuel basic but critical needs—transportation, communication, education, health delivery systems—India needs to focus on energy security to ensure both its economic growth and national interests.

Combining theoretical and empirical issues and drawing its conclusions from rigorous methodologies and latest data, this volume covers a wide range of global energy issues such as trends in oil markets, oil diplomacy, political economy of reforms, environmental concerns, interaction between macroeconomic policies and the energy sector, technology challenges, and innovations in the oil industry. Assessing the energy sector and its evolution, especially its significance for overall economic growth and development, it also analyses India's national energy policy and its long-term implications towards achieving energy security.

This volume honours Vijay Kelkar, whose contribution to the hydrocarbons sector in India continues to influence academics and practitioners associated with the energy sector.

In our Economics section, Rs. 995, in hardback, 392 pages, ISBN: 9780198099079


Power, Policy, and Protest: The Politics of India’s Special Economic Zones by Rob Jenkins, Loraine Kennedy And Partha Mukhopadhyay from Oxford University Press (India).

India's attempt to spur growth, boost exports, and create jobs by establishing Special Economic Zones remains a paradox. While the policy represents an intensification of the country's increasingly market-oriented development paradigm, implementation has required active government involvement. But an industrialization strategy pioneered in authoritarian China has faced huge political resistance in democratic India.

Protest movements arose in many localities where SEZs were proposed. A crucial point of contention has been the alienation of private and community-owned land by business interests, abetted by the state. To date, no systematic study of the politics of India's SEZ experiment has been undertaken. This volume fills this gap, examining variations in protest movements within and between eleven states where SEZs were proposed.

Detailed case studies investigate differences in the nature and extent of SEZ-related political mobilization and the means employed by governments to manage dissent. By covering a broad range of regional contexts, industrial sectors, and political conditions, this volume furnishes a comprehensive picture of the politics surrounding one of India's most controversial reform measures.

In our Politics section, Rs. 1145, in hardback, 396 pages, ISBN: 9780198097341


Medicine and Law by K. Kannan from Oxford University Press (India).

In the course of practicing medicine, a range of issues may arise that need a legal solution. As a result, the application of law to the field of medical practice has become increasingly important and this has further been strengthened by contemporary developments relating to law and ethics, medical malpractice, and bio-ethics and regulatory requirements for the healthcare industry.

With a comprehensive introduction and an appraisal of the Indian medical education system, this work examines a variety of issues that challenge the legal and medical fraternity in the face of rapidly advancing medical technology. It addresses issues such as organ transplant, euthanasia, surrogacy, abortion, the concept of consent, sex selection, clinical trials, designer babies, cosmetic enhancement procedures, and confidentiality.

Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, the author provides a comparative study with special focus on Indian case law and jurisdictions from other countries including the US and the UK.

In our Law section, Rs. 1595, in hardback, 608 pages, ISBN: 9780198082880

Towards a New History of Work

Towards a New History of Work by Sabyasachi Bhattacharya from Tulika Books.

This collection of essays is the outcome of a conference, organized by the Association of Indian Labour Historians in collaboration with the V.V. Giri National Labour Institute, on the histories of work, from the long-term and comparative perspective. Why did the conference organizers and participants propose to look beyond ‘labour history’ to look at ‘the history of work’? Perhaps because at this moment of history we are in the midst of a huge change which compels our attention to turn to the notion of ‘work’ as distinct from that of ‘labour’. This change appears to us in the form of a technological transformation that affects not just our view of history, but our life itself. Every time we use the computer or the internet or the cyber networks we experience this transformation – which brings home to us the fragility of the conventional boundary between ‘labour’ and ‘work’. The information technology revolution has created a new space for some workers as a result of the relocation and dispersal of work, often to the home of the workers. In fact, this situates such information technology workers in a position analogous to that of the late medieval or early modern European artisans – an interesting recursive pattern in labour history.

Moreover, in the less developed countries where capitalist relations do not exhaustively define all production relations, we have a large proportion of the economically active population without being in someone’s employment, and thus it seems that the term ‘worker’ possibly accommodates them better than the term ‘labourer’. Further, when we consider the long run of history, the same proposition holds for the workers of the pre-capitalist era in many countries – i.e. the artisans and others who remained self-employed even if they were tied to a dependency network. The term ‘labourer’ appears to be inappropriate, as some authors in the present volume have argued, to people of that class in the pre-modern period in India or elsewhere. There are many other issues which need rigorous re-thinking in the agenda of constructing a ‘history of work’. In considering how the nature of ‘work’ is being transformed, the term ‘work’ needs to be defined because in common parlance it means many things. If value addition to a marketed product or service is the criterion, a pro tem working definition accepted since Adam Smith, there are problems to sort out.

For instance, there may be work which is socially useful but not marketed, e.g. the home-maker’s or house-wife’s work, a vital question from the gender history point of view. These and many other questions surface in the segment of the current discourse of ‘the history of work’ represented in this volume. The papers collected in the present volume have been arranged thematically into four sections in order to highlight some issues in focus at the conference and also to allow a cross-national perspective to develop. The first group of papers addresses the long run of history, extending to the late medieval and early modern period. The second section comprises papers on work communities and the development of their identity. The third group of papers looks at two of the oldest occupations in history, that of soldiers and sailors. Finally, we turn to the question: how was ‘work’ or ‘labour’ perceived by those who actually performed it? In the fourth section of the book we have essays which elaborate on that perception of work, the complexities of self-perception and the socially ascribed status of workers in different domains.

In our History section, Rs. 575, in hardback, x+286 pages, ISBN: 9789382381358