Mainstream Weekly

New Questions in Naya Bihar: The Cry of Vernacular Academics

Dev N Pathak — 2012-02-27T07:08:38Z

“I wonder whether Nitish Kumar is an offshoot of Jayaprakash Narayan's movement; he seems to have emerged from Laloo Yadav's movement,” said Prof Nawal Kishor Chaudhury, with a wink of sarcasm, in an informal conver-sation during a seminar in Saharsa (Bihar). Prof Chaudhury, an economist of eminence, affiliated with Patna University, had to disclose another barbed wit, that he turned down the offer of ascending to the position of Vice-Chancellor of one of the old universities in Bihar. For, (…)

- 2012

Nero's Sublime Flute-recital: Teaser for Teacher-education in India

Dev N Pathak — 2011-06-20T06:20:56Z

Emperor Nero did intend it to happen, rumours suggested. The fire broke out in the city area of Rome and metamorphosed into a mythological inferno swallowing the eleven districts of Rome out of total fourteen. Numbers of all and sundry helplessly charred to death and fumes of destruction leaving the ruins behind: the vivacious dance of death. The proverbial flute (lyre) recital of Nero was well atop the flames that burnt down the city of fame. Recollecting this instance, at a time when Nero (…)

- 2011

Honour and Disgrace: Meditation for the Politics of Protest

Dev N Pathak — 2010-07-22T13:41:35Z

We protest, for we feel there is an amiss affecting us. But to sustain a protest, so that it does not end up as a Rang De Basanti-style cosmetic candle-light protest at the India Gate or SMS protest by the slaves of convenience in the metro-cities, we need to engage with the notion of social honour and disgrace. The politics of protest presupposes an alternative notion of social honour, to combat those who believe that protest in itself is anti-honour and hence disgracing. Also, an (…)

- 2010

The Slum, the Dog and the Millionaire

Dev N Pathak — 2009-08-16T14:06:57Z

Carried away by the effect of the Oscared Slum Dog Millionaire (SDM) and tend to take its leitmotif for something eternal? Then Rolland Barthes was so very right. Bourgeoising myth redefines everything for a specific purpose and metamorphoses the mundane into extramundane, socio-cultural into natural, and temporal into eternal. Stretching a bit further, if it is a popular myth of our times, then the fascinating categories, the mythological icons, are the slum, the dog, and the millionaire. (…)

- August 2009

Desperate Capitalism, Disparaged State, and Doctored Democracy

Dev N Pathak — 2009-02-19T09:59:50Z

Satyam! Shivam! Sundaram??
The nation wakes up to the news of the day on January 16, 2009: The Prime Minister addresses the captains of industry, sending a message to India Inc. at the Trident Oberoi hotel in Mumbai. The content: ‘Everything is back to normal.. India is safe.. please come back.' It is a day after the front page of almost every newspaper splashed the silent waters. Reports could not resist the analytical temptation and passed suspicion-laced comments. The (…)

- February 2009

Quotidian Consequences of Terror-strikes

Dev N Pathak — 2008-10-17T16:04:35Z

It lasts until the next blast: the empirical-causal manifestations of a terror-strike. Everybody fears it while feeding on the gory details repeatedly dished out by every means of media. Everybody however grows exceedingly intimate with it. An exemplary oxymoron of our times: an awesome fear, akin to the thick plot of a Hitchcock drama, that springs from terror-strikes. Even though we dismiss the hyperbole in it, there is a chance validity for the question as to how any fear becomes awesome. (…)

- October 11, 2008

Politics of Protest in the Global Context

Dev N Pathak — 2008-04-27T14:43:39Z

Instances of assent and dissent to the relay of the Olympic torch, along with the protests in the European streets and one in India, reminds us once again that protest is one of the effective arsenals ‘we the people' have at our disposal to articulate the tacit as well as repressed. In the wider gamut of discourse, organised as well as otherwise, protest acquires dubious distinctions. It is not so simple as some Members of Parliament walking out in protest, or in an organised manner bringing (…)

- April 26, 2008

Implications of Unimaginative Politics

Dev N Pathak — 2007-06-25T13:01:35Z

The doyen of sociologists, M.N. Srinivas, wrote toward the fag end of his sociological engagement, distilling his understanding on the inevitable connection between caste and politics in India, that Indians are ‘living in a revolution'. (1986) The revolution was quintessential of a democracy such as India and the moorings of this revolution were the constitutional elements of adult franchise, protective discrimination and land reforms. He foresaw a violent turn in the revolution pitched in (…)

- June 22, 2007

Where ‘to kill' is the Byword for Growth

Dev N Pathak — 2007-05-04T00:35:53Z

The rampage on Virginia Tech university campus reminds us of some pessimistic predictions about the future of modern society. Be it Peter Berger speaking of the ‘homeless mind' or Habermas dwelling upon the ‘legitimation crisis', a dark picture of the rational world occupies our imagination. We do not attach significance to anything other than the means-end calculation in such a world. Herbert Marcuse draws our attention to the ‘one-dimensional man' entrenched in parochial instrumental (…)

- April 28, 2007