Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyaya (1894-1950), a major novelist from Bengal, is one of our greatest writers. His Pather Panchali ( Song of the Road ) has been immortalized through Satyajit Ray's film. Aranyak, composed between 1937-39, was based on Bibhutibhushan s long and arduous years in northern Bihar, where he came into contact with a part of the world that, even now, remains unknown to most of us. In Aranyak, Bibhutibhushan weaves visionary poetry with a stark and uncompromising documentation of the day-to-day lives of the dispossessed subsistence peasants, penurious brahmans, migrant landless labourers and adivasis. To this world the writer brings his own lifelong interest in the natural sciences and astronomy, his study of historical records and surveys and his familiarity with the lore of travel books. This classic novel will be of much interest to all lovers of literature and to those involved with environment/displacement issues the world over. Aranyak has been translated into many Indian languages. This is the first complete translation of the novel in English. Rimli Bhattacharya is a well-known translator and scholar whose area of research has been theatre history, particularly that of turn-of-the-century Bengal. She is currently with the Department of English at the University of Delhi. Her published works include Binodini Dasi, My Story and My Life as an Actress (1998) and a translation of Rabindranath s Tagore s Char Adhyay as Four Chapters (2002).

Mirror of Consciousness ambitiously traverses a wide range of themes pertaining to art, creativity, knowledge and theory. Its unique perspective lies in its exposition of Vedic Science as brought to light by His Holiness Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and in the application of the principles of this science to preliminary analysis of the Vastusutra Upanishad. No other publication has examined art and theory with the same comprehensive vision. To do justice to the topic of universal value in art and theory, the author has delved into several areas that impact the visual arts--late twentieth-century debates in art theory, models of historiography, new definitions of culture and tradition--in the context of the individual`s own consciousness or simplest form of awareness. Though comprehensive and detailed, it will appeal to those who are curious about trends in the visual arts, the advent and impact of new technologies, and the development of collective consciousness in our time.

The book is a survey of the rise and downfall of India with specific reference to the effect of political and social conditions on its educational system. The course of the low percentage of educated population today can be traced in the neglect of education by fanatic Muslim rulers and wrong policy of education wilfully adopted by Britishers.

"Satyacharan is a young graduate in 1920s Calcutta, who, unable to find a job in the city, takes up the post of a ‘manager’ of a vast tract of forested land in neighboring Bihar. As he is increasingly enchanted and hypnotized by the exquisite beauty of nature, he is burdened with the painful task of clearing this land for cultivation. As ancient trees fall to the cultivator’s axe, indigenous tribes—to whom the forest had been home for millennia—lose their ancient way of life. The promise of ‘progress’ and ‘development’ brings in streams of landless laborers, impoverished schoolmasters and starving boys from around the region, and the narrator chronicles in visionary prose the tale of destruction and dispossession that is the universal saga of man’s struggle to bend nature to his will."--Page [4] of cover.

On the life and works of BibhutibhushanĐa Bandyopadhyaya, 1896?-1950, Bengali author.

Debates about public expenditure in the agricultural sector have reopened in many developing and emerging economies because of high budget deficits and changes in public opinion. As a result, agricultural policy in many of these countries is beginning to take a more market-oriented approach to agrarian problems, most notably through the introduction of contract farming. This book explores the policy issues around contract farming and its transformative potential and addresses the lack of empirical research on this topic by focusing on South Asia: principally India, Bangladesh and Nepal. The book first addresses the effects of contract farming (vertical coordination) on productivity, food security indicators (yield, consumption expenditures, prices), employment and input usage. Then it draws lessons from the South Asian case studies on the impact of institutional changes, like contract farming, on income and food security of smallholder households. The core of the book includes case study chapters on several commodities that are produced under contract farming, including vegetables and fisheries in Bangladesh, low-value crops in Nepal and coffee in India. Other chapters also explore contracts, storage, input usage and technical efficiency in these cases. This book serves as an essential guide to academics, researchers, students, legislative liaisons and think tank groups interested in agrarian issues, agricultural economics and agricultural policy in emerging economies and particularly in South Asia.

This book examines current trends in scholarly thinking about the new field of the Environmental Humanities, focusing in particular on how the history of globalization and imperialism represents a special challenge to the representation of environmental issues. Essays in this path-breaking collection examine the role that narrative, visual, and aesthetic forms can play in drawing attention to and shaping our ideas about long-term and catastrophic environmental challenges such as climate change, militarism, deforestation, the pollution and management of the global commons, petrocapitalism, and the commodification of nature. The volume presents a postcolonial approach to the environmental humanities, especially in conjunction with current thinking in areas such as political ecology and environmental justice. Spanning regions such as Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean, Australasia and the Pacific, as well as North America, the volume includes essays by founding figures in the field as well as new scholars, providing vital new interdisciplinary perspectives on: the politics of the earth; disaster, vulnerability, and resilience; political ecologies and environmental justice; world ecologies; and the Anthropocene. In engaging critical ecologies, the volume poses a postcolonial environmental humanities for the twenty-first century. At the heart of this is a conviction that a thoroughly global, postcolonial, and comparative approach is essential to defining the emergent field of the environmental humanities, and that this field has much to offer in understanding critical issues surrounding the creation of alternative ecological futures.