In this book, Ramin Jahanbegloo converses with twenty-seven leading Indian personalities—social scientists, journalists, activists, artists, and sports persons—to gain an understanding of contemporary Indian society. Jahanbegloo, an Iranian-Canadian philosopher and Gandhi scholar, raises interesting questions about the seeming contradictions of life in India: the long history of religious tolerance juxtaposed with growing religious fundamentalism, democracy being challenged by a persistent caste system, the Indian ethos of equality contested by the low status of women, affluent urban areas that contrast with the impoverished rural tracts, among other issues.

In 1895 Mark Twain conducted a year-long around-the-world lecture tour that formed the basis for Following the Equator. A modern-day journalist recounts Twain's passage through India and offers his own intriguing observations of the same sites a century later.

The Vedic-Puranic literature as well as archaeological, geological, historical, linguistic, and literary accounts have been reviewed to establish the various cultures that evolved in ancient India from about 3500 BCE to the Mahabharata War (1450 BCE). The book describes various misconceptions, e.g., the myth about an Aryan invasion. The following markers are used to establish the dates and geographical locations of various cultures: (i) The rise in sea levels due to melting of land-based snow after the last Ice Age. (ii) Migration of the Dravidian people from the lost continent of Kumari Kandam that submerged under the Indian Ocean. (iii) The dates for the start of farming, use of kiln-baked bricks, domestication of horses, and metal working in the Indian subcontinent. (iv) The dates when Sarasvati River dried up and the Mahabharata War occurred. The book notes that asva-containing or rath-containing names could not have existed before horses were domesticated or chariots were in use. The book also notes that Mathura Krsna is different from Dwarka Krsna; the two are separated by more then 1000 years. During Mathura Krsna’s time, conflicts were settled by hand-to-hand combat or with the use of a mace. In contrast, during Dwarka Krsna’s time, metal arms were used.

A half century after the Fair Housing Act, despite ongoing transformations of the geography of privilege and poverty, residential segregation by race and income continues to shape urban and suburban neighborhoods in the United States. Why do people live where they do? What explains segregation’s persistence? And why is addressing segregation so complicated? The Dream Revisited brings together a range of expert viewpoints on the causes and consequences of the nation’s separate and unequal living patterns. Leading scholars and practitioners, including civil rights advocates, affordable housing developers, elected officials, and fair housing lawyers, discuss the nature of and policy responses to residential segregation. Essays scrutinize the factors that sustain segregation, including persistent barriers to mobility and complex neighborhood preferences, and its consequences from health to home finance and from policing to politics. They debate how actively and in what ways the government should intervene in housing markets to foster integration. The book features timely analyses of issues such as school integration, mixed income housing, and responses to gentrification from a diversity of viewpoints. A probing examination of a deeply rooted problem, The Dream Revisited offers pressing insights into the changing face of urban inequality.

Accompanied by a CD-ROM containing the original Public report on basic education in India (PROBE) by the PROBE Team.

Reversing his parents immigrant path, a young writer returns to India and discovers an old country making itself new. Anand Giridharadas sensed something was afoot as his plane prepared to land in Bombay. An elderly passenger looked at him and said, Were all trying to go that way, pointing to the rear. You, youre going this way. Giridharadas was...

The Survey of Psychology series presents critical reviews of and reflects the major changes in psychological research in India. After a comprehensive introduction, this, the third volume in the series, begins with a chapter that critically highlights the major contributions in the areas of attitudes, social cognition and justice from a theoretical and cultural perspective. The second chapter examines individualistic as well as traditional collectivist Indian values arguing that both can co-exist. This is followed by a chapter on the various dimensions of poverty, the poor and deprivation. Chapter Four reviews the major theoretical approaches to the subject, and the next chapter presents the prevalent trends and shortcomings of the conceptual and methodological problems in the relatively new area of environmental psychology. Chapter Six provides various pertinent issues related with motivation, leadership and human performance within a conceptual framework and with theoretical perspectives. The last chapter critically examines the changes and the general shift in the content of research as well as the strength and weaknesses of the discipline of psychology at the start of the new millennium.

The welfare state has been under attack for decades, but now more than ever there is a need for strong social protection systems—the best tools we have to combat inequality, support social justice, and even improve economic performance. In this book, José Antonio Ocampo and Joseph E. Stiglitz bring together distinguished contributors to examine the global variations of social programs and make the case for a redesigned twenty-first-century welfare state. The Welfare State Revisited takes on major debates about social well-being, considering the merits of universal versus targeted policies; responses to market failures; integrating welfare and economic development; and how welfare states around the world have changed since the neoliberal turn. Contributors offer prescriptions for how to respond to the demands generated by demographic changes, the changing role of the family, new features of labor markets, the challenges of aging societies, and technological change. They consider how strengthening or weakening social protection programs affects inequality, suggesting ways to facilitate the spread of effective welfare states throughout the world, especially in developing countries. Presenting new insights into the functions the welfare state can fulfill and how to design a more efficient and more equitable system, The Welfare State Revisited is essential reading on the most discussed issues in social welfare today.