Mainstream Weekly

Poetics of Subalternity: Remembering Namdeo Laxman Dhasal (1949-2014)

Arvind Kumar — 2014-03-15T20:12:54Z

TRIBUTE
I vividly remember that sweaty summer afternoon of June 2007, when I had the opportunity to speak to maverick poet and activist Namdeo Dhasal who authored the powerful lines quoted below. I wished to speak to him in connection with my study on the 1974 Worli riots in Mumbai and the Dalit Panthers. Having grown up in the grit of a city with a difficult working class history, he was not only an icon for Dalit literature and radical Dalit politics, but for the unequal city itself. (…)

- 2014

Social Justice for Inclusion

Arvind Kumar — 2013-03-10T19:08:41Z

BOOK REVIEW
Non-discrimination and Equality in India: Contesting Boundaries of Social Justice by Vidhu Verma; New York: Routledge; 2012; xv+pp.269; £ 85.00 $36, hdbk; ISBN: 978-0-415-67775-2
The book under review is an unprecedented work on the subject as it has set an agenda in the very opening line of the introduction that the concept of social justice is familiar to most Indians but one whose meaning is not always understood as it signifies a variety of government strategies designed (…)

- 2013

Tunisia - Jasmine Revolution: Lessons Learnt, Challenges Ahead

Arvind Kumar — 2011-02-19T04:40:37Z

On Monday, January 17, while I was waiting at the Frankfurt airport for a connecting flight to Dublin, my eyes were drawn to an editorial in the Financial Times, European edition. The editorial read: “The Jasmine Revolution: Tunisians rid themselves of a corrupt old order”. This editorial made a valid point: noting the collapse of autocracy in Tunisia, it reiterated the notion that no nation will forever be able to endure political repression, denial of civil liberties and rampant corruption (…)

- 2011

Indian Foreign Policy Since The End of Cold War: Containing or Coping with Unipolarity?

Arvind Kumar — 2011-01-31T01:00:00Z

BOOK REVIEW
by Arvind Kumar
Indian Foreign Policy in a Unipolar World by Harsh V. Pant (ed.); Routledge: Taylor and Francis Group, London, pp. IX + 378; Price: £ 70.00
With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union many realists argue that unipolarity has arrived…the USA, in other words, is the sole great power. It has achieved global hegemony, a feat no other country has ever accomplished. Other realists, however, argue that the post-Cold War system is multipolar, (…)

- 2011

The Democracy Question in Indian Foreign Policy

Arvind Kumar — 2010-11-30T23:17:25Z

BOOK REVIEW
India's Foreign Policy: The Democracy Dimension (With Special Reference to Neighbours) by S.D. Muni; Cambridge University Press India Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi; pp. VII + 178; price: Rs 495.
Not many of us know that the ‘democracy-Icon' of Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi, who was released this Saturday (November 13) was educated at Delhi's Lady Shri Ram College where she studied Political Science and grew up as a political activist to ensure ‘democracy' back home in Myanmar. While the (…)

- 2010

Education for All : An Introspection

Arvind Kumar — 2008-10-01T20:15:20Z

More than two years ago Krishna Kumar, in an article published in the The Hindu, had fervently argued for our collective responsibility towards children and making a legislation for universal elementary education. Since then the government has gone a long way in enacting a law to this effect and allocating budgetary support for education separately. The government has taken a right step in ensuring universal education upto the age of fourteen years under the programme ‘Education for All'. (…)

- September 27, 2008