Articles by A M Shah

Many villages gradually get included in cities and urban people also migrate to villages transforming them into towns. Both phenomena require intensive study, including an examination of the defi ning criteria of a "town", and the estimates of urban population.

The results of the December 2007 elections in Gujarat show that the declining role of tribe and caste identities and increasing cultural uniformity due to extensive urbanisation helped Narendra Modi hammer home the 'Gujarati asmita' (Gujarati identity) slogan and successfully counter the Congress' charge of communalism.

This article is mainly an introduction to a monthly periodical, The Indian Sociologist, edited by the well known Indian freedom fighter Shyamaji Krishnavarma in 1905-14 and 1920-22, successively in London, Paris and Geneva. While it takes the history of Indian sociology back in time to 1905, it has wider sociological significance also.

Higher Education and Research Roots of Mediocrity The fact that standards of higher education and research in universities in India have declined during the last few decades is widely recognised, but the fear that there are no signs of improvement is growing. Solutions have been sought mainly at higher levels of funding, particularly for hardware, and in minor administrative changes. Hardly any attempt is made to address the problems arising out of the long established basic structure of the university system and to deal with the changing ground realities. An attempt is made in this paper to draw attention to these and suggest a few thoughts on structural reform.

The Matter of Facts A M SHAH There is an increasing tendency among our sociologists and social anthropologists to be careless about facts and fly high in theory. The latest example is Anant Kumar Giri