India: Another Millennium?

Author: Romila Thapar
Publisher: Penguin/Viking
Year: 2000
Language: English
Pages: 317
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0670896456

Description

Thought provoking and incisive, this work compels us to look at the hard choices before India in the early decades of this millennium.

The concept of the millennium encompasses a sense of progress and the hope for a better future. Pursuing this notion, the present collection of essays with an introduction by Romila Thapar explores the challenges before twenty-first-century India in its quest for a democratic and just society.

Globalization and the revolution in information technology provide a new context to the problems faced in contemporary times by Indians. But will globalization ensure rapid economic growth and development in the face of low literacy, rising population, the gradual withdrawal of the State from social commitments and the hesitant formation of a responsible civil society?

Will imitation westernization and the consumerism that comes it, further a just society? Political institutions will require strengthening in order to manage the delicate balance of democracy. What are the strains that it will be subjected to in the struggles for empowerment by groups currently marginalized, and the growing social and economic disparities, accompanied by violence and terrorism? How will India's multiculturalism be affected by the upsurge of various identities and the attempts of exclusionist nationalism to play a hegemonic role?

Will the family as an institution be transformed to enhance gender justice. Will India become a world-class IT player? Will new technology ensure the autonomy of the media, where such an autonomy can become a pre-requisite for democratic functioning? Can the mauling of the Indian landscape be halted? Fourteen of India's foremost scholars and specialists in various fields reflect upon these diverse issues in the essays collected here.

Contents

Note on Contributors

Will a Millennium be Coming Our way?
Romila Thapar

Slow and Almost Steady
Krishna Kumar

The Present in the Past:
Trajectories for the Social History of Science
Dhruv Raina

The Idea of Gender Equality:
From Legislative Vision to Everyday Family Practices
Bina Agarwal

Thinking Through Culture:
A Perspective for the Millennium
Rustom Bharucha

India’s Unmodern Modernity
Dipankar Gupta

The Balance of Democracy
Sunil Khilnani

Dalits in Pursuit of Modernity
Gopal Guru

A Minority Moves into Another Millennium
Javeed Alam

The Age of Inequality
P. Sainath

The Future of Marxism
Prabhat Patnaik

Whither India? The Prospect of Prosperity
Kaushik Basu

Making India a significant IT Player in This Millennium
N.R. Narayana Murthy

The Great Indian Media Bazaar:
Emerging trends and Issues for the future
N Ram

The Future of the Environment:
Beyond Utopia and Doomsday
Mahesh Rangarajan

Index