Articles by T V Sathyamurthy

The Sentence and the Promise in Development Studies T V Sathyamurthy IN the double metaphor that I have chosen for the title, I have attempted to capture the fate of a majority of people in the industrially less advanced countries during the last 50 years(as well as increasing numbers of people in the less unadvanced countries of the world). The myth of Sisyphus is a familiar one. My guess is that the story of the Barmecide is less well known, In Homer, the myth of Sisyphus constitutes a powerful evocation of endless punishment. The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock uphill to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that, in the words of Camus, there is no more dreadful punishment than "futile and hapless labour", wasted and unrewarding labour, I should like to add, The fabled feast of the Barmecide is described in an Arabian Nights story in which a wandering mendicant, famished and thirsty, was led into the presence of a Barmecide (a prince) presiding over a sumptuously furnished and well-provided desert equivalent of a palace. Having led the visitor to believe that he was about to be served an elaborate feast and choice wines, the Barmecide kept the victim engaged in endless conversation at the same time as keeping his appetite stoked by the delicious culinary smells and the gurgling sound of pouring bottles floating out of the adjacent room. Neither the feast nor the wines materialised, even though the guest was compelled to appreciate a virtual feast to the accompaniment of real gestures with the appropriate senses.

Hindu Nationalism in Indian Politics T V Sathyamurthy The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics, 1925 to the 1990s: Strategies of Identity-Building, Implantation and Mobilisation (with special reference to Central India) by Christophe Jaffrelot, Penguin Books India (Viking),

Emergence from Political Purgatory T V Sathyamurthy Tory reactionary dogma has been emphatically rejected in favour of flexible, pragmatic, just and democratic government (albeit within limits), with a powerful segment of the new Opposition consisting of the Liberal Democrats who found Conservative policies in government and the Tory style of functioning equally repugnant during the years in which they shared the Opposition benches with Labour.

a contribution to the economic history of particular industries as such. There is no attempt made here to compute estimates of output, investment, labour force and other economic variables. While it is appropriate that Tyabji has taken south India as a whole for his study, it would have been interesting if he had extended his coverage to look at the fortunes of industrial development in French India for a comparative analysis. Pondicherry had at the beginning of the first war five cotton milts and one iron-rolling- cum-enginecring works. All of them enjoyed THE steady erosion of democratic practice in post-colonial south and south-east Asia has been a characteristic feature not only of regimes in which military dictatorship usurped civilian political power of the state, but also of governments that have claimed to observe constitutional proprieties and to derive their legitimacy from appropriate electoral institutions. In all countries of south and south-east Asia different brands of undemocratic governance have struck root during the last four or five decades.

Centralised State Power and Decentralised Politics Case of India T V Sathyamurthy The basic dilemma of India's democracy lies in the failure of the post-colonial state to evolve, systematically, norms of democratic conduct in the vertical and hierarchical social and political relationships embedded in the spheres of regional religion-based, and caste derived power which have exerted a profoundly divisive influence on the society as a whole. There are, in fact, two nations in India, separated by an economic gulf. None of the mainstream theories the orthodox liberal orthodox Marxist, functionalist, and consociationalist has addressed this fundamental question which goes far beyond the confines of institutional mechanics or reductionist economism.