Articles by Kalpana Kannabiran

The role of religious myths in reinforcing and legitimising patriarchal norms is critical and has been difficult to contend with. The interpretation of these myths through the traditional art forms, especially music and dance, carries a powerful effect that works at subliminal levels. Several attempts have been made to use traditional art forms to subvert patriarchal agendas from the women's perspective. Asmita, a resource centre for women, has explored the possibility of using traditional ballet as an instrument of feminist activism.

Initiating a peace process with the Naxalites was not an act of benevolence by the Congress government, but the first step towards fulfilling a commitment on the basis of which it was given a mandate by the people. It is now time to address several questions pertaining to the entire process that spanned eight months, including the role of the media, the bearing of arms in public, the issue of land reforms and that of ?neutrality? in political matters. The ultimate undoing of a laboriously crafted process of democratisation by a newly elected government is cause for serious concern.

One way of expressing solidarity with the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have suffered in this war is to reject offers of collaboration and support in research in the social sciences and humanities from governments that do not know the meaning of accountability.

for the Planning Commission, which was published after some revision in this journal (EPW, May 4, 1991) had placed the level of unrecovered costs (or subsidy) at 14.38 per cent of GDP in 1987-88. Now, despite a reduction in aggregate public expenditures of the centre and states together from 33.4 per cent of GDP in that year to 28.4 per cent in 1994-95, total unrecovered costs still constitute the same 14.4 per cent of GDP as per the latest study, thus implying a significant deterioration in the recovery rates for the user costs of public services. The recovery rate was 34.91 per cent for the centre and 13.91 per cent for the states, or an average of 25.09 per cent, in 1987-88 but they have drastically fallen to 10.7 per cent, 7.0 per cent and 8.2 per cent, respectively. The increase in the reported incidence of subsidy and the drastic fall in the rate of recovery of user costs is neither due to the proliferation of subsidies nor due to an expansion and growth of governmental activities, as it is made out in the government paper. The share of public expenditure as percentage of GDP, as indicated above, has in fact been on a downward trend. Likewise, the 1990s have seen, under the impulse of stabilisation and structural adjustment programmes, a constant endeavour on the part of the governmental authorities to contract subsidies. Thus, the size of explicit subsidies in the central budget as proportion of GDP has come down from (RE). Also, an independent study by the RBI

Kalpana Kannabiran Vasanth Kannabiran What the Rupan Bajaj verdict has accomplished, in an important sense, is the subversion of the patriarehal traditions of the Indian state and a rupture of the boundaries between the political sphere and society, between the home and the world, between the workplace and the street, between classes, forcing us to re-examine our realities and the categories through which we comprehend these realities.