Articles by Gopal Guru

Social science practice in India has harboured a cultural hierarchy dividing it into a vast, inferior mass of academics who pursue empirical social science and a privileged few who are considered the theoretical pundits with reflective capacity which makes them intellectually superior to the former. To use a familiar analogy, Indian social science represents a pernicious divide between theoretical brahmins and empirical shudras.

Multiculturalism, Liberalism and Democracy edited by Rajeev Bhargava, Amiya Kumar Bagchi, R Sudarshan; Oxford University Press, 1999; Rs 595, pp 433 (hard bound).

The sugar industry in its present co-operative-dominated form is under threat from the forces of privatisation and globalisation. Sugar factory labour, which has forged all-India solidarity, is fighting for the cooperatives' survival. The possibility of an alliance between these workers and the sugarcane cultivators, hitherto very inadequately mobilised against the threat, has become a real one.

of output due to greater competition may actually lead to a fall in cost if there is a concomitant elimination of internal inefficiency (movement from M to N).

Gopal Guru Politics in Maharashtra by Usha Thakkar and Mangesh Kulkarni (eds), Himalaya Publishing House, Bombay, 1995; Rs 350.
THERE are various ways to review an edited book, but such a book always poses a serious problem when it operates at various levels. The present book poses such problems. To handle this problem I have decided to look at the book within the context of the following definition of politics, which to some may appear arbitrary.