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We're working, what fun!
Sidika Sehgal
Turning a hobby into a business and also making a profit can go together. As a rock climber, Yvon Chouinard ...
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The gritty fight for equality
Usha Rai
Aruna Roy, the IAS officer who gave up the civil service to live and understand life in rural India, is ...
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Gurcharan Das on being a liberal in these times
Civil Society Reviews
THIRTY years ago, Gurcharan Das decided to give up his life in the corporate sector, to be a writer. He ...
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Rajiv's legacy: Putting the facts in place for posterity
Meera Shankar
IT was with the largest electoral victory in independent India that Rajiv Gandhi’s term began after Indira Gandhi’s assassination in ...
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Discovering the ecosystem of the tiger in Corbett
Sukanya Sharma
ANY mention of Corbett Park tends to be about its tigers and Jim Corbett, the colonial game hunter after whom it ...
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Satyarthi co-traveller with every rescued child
Sukanya Sharma
EVEN today, across India, children from impoverished families are subjected to unspeakable horrors. Because of poverty they work with their ...
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Life lessons: How to succeed with failure
Civil Society Reviews
SOME months ago, this magazine published a tally of young students who had taken their lives while preparing for competitive ...
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Freedom as it came and how it is remembered
WHEN Independence Day arrives each year, how should the spirit of the freedom struggle be remembered? There are speeches, flag-hoisting ...
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Beating the bookstore curse
AT a time when bookstores are rapidly closing across India, Kunzum is a rarity. It is Delhi-NCR’s fastest growing chain ...
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A bird listing in Sanawar
Bharat Dogra
LAWRENCE SCHOOL Sanawar, described by its headmaster, Himmat S. Dhillon, as “arguably the oldest co-educational boarding school in Asia, if ...
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Hyderabad's chronicler has rare stories to tell
Civil Society Reviews
IT was Hyderabad’s famed biryani that first seduced Serish Nanisetti when he came to the city to work for Deccan ...
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A reporter abroad: How to unpack a country for readers
Civil Society Reviews
INDIA’s globalization efforts will always be incomplete without a deeper understanding of other societies and connections that don’t just stop ...
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The deep forest and its many treasures in Arunachal
Civil Society Reviews
IT was the search for plants that hornbills feed on which brought Navendu Page, a botanist and wildlife expert, to ...
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From the Hindutva beat, real Modi and Ayodhya stories
Rita Anand
WHEN Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay began reporting on the RSS-BJP-VHP combine in the 1980s, it was not a popular beat amongst reporters. ...
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The iconic garden
Susheela Nair
EVERYONE knows Lal Bagh but much remained to be told about it. It's all here now in an anecdotal narrative. ...
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Tracking monks and pilgrims
THERE was a time when monks and wanderers travelled seamlessly from India to a swathe of territory across Central Asia ...
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Pre-loved books, anyone? Here is some shelf help
Civil Society Review
IF you happen to enjoy reading and are also a compulsive buyer of books, no doubt in the fond hope ...
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Social business: a prof offers theory, insights
Civil Society Reviews
SOCIAL enterprises have been proliferating in India as a result of the benefits of growth not being evenly distributed and ...
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Not just another air pollution story
Civil Society Reviews
THERE was a time when concern over air pollution used to be treated as an exaggeration. Now it is just ...
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What did you do in the lockdown?
Civil Society Reviews
The lockdown forced people to retreat into their homes and lead a different life, a life of social isolation and ...
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Eureka is in a new home happily with CMYK
Sidika Sehgal, New Delhi
In the midst of the pandemic, a small business which had closed down sprang back to life. Eureka, the iconic bookstore ...
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Deep dive: Inside story of wildlife reserves
Civil Society Reviews
INDIA’s wondrous natural heritage is still a hidden gem for most Indians. Not for them the deep jungle, the steep ...
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Poverty and the elderly in India
Sidika Sehgal, New Delhi
Across the world, the coronavirus pandemic has drawn attention to the elderly. India has a considerable population of older citizens ...
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Uncivil Delhi: Cars, cows and rickshaws
Civil Society Review
How far has green activism by Delhi’s middle class benefited the city? It hasn’t resolved a single problem and it has ...
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Ups and downs of India's bumpy democracy
Jagdeep Chhokar
While there seems broad agreement about Brazil, the Philippines, and Turkey being erstwhile democracies moving progressively away from democratic principles, ...
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The 'halla bol' world of Safdar Hashmi
Sidika Sehgal
Safdar Hashmi was all of 34 years old when he died. He was performing a street play with his theatre ...
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Teachers as heroes and rural schooling
Civil Society Review
An unusual yatra from March 2017 to November 2018 gave S. Giridhar the material for this heartwarming book. In his ...
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Insider's account of India's nuclear setup
Sanjaya Baru
A decade ago this book would have hit the headlines. It is a testimony to media’s short memory that Anil ...
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Mapping Delhi's water heritage
Narayani Gupta
Vikramjit Singh Rooprai’s disarmingly modest pocket book is truly a contribution to the cause of seeing baolis as heritage. It ...
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Workplace harassment
Civil Society Review
We know that women have the right to a safe workplace under the law. But what do we really know ...
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No limits to poll-time messaging
Civil Society Review
When India Votes is about the use of media by political parties when they campaign for elections. Reaching out to ...
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Small and big stories of women's rights
Civil Society Review
Kalpana Sharma, the author of The Silence and the Storm, is admired for her insightful reporting of people living on ...
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Kerala's fishermen: Heroes of a terrible flood
Civil Society Reviews
Disasters make headlines and are remembered because of the disruption they cause. Life just can’t be the same after an ...
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Stories from a dissenting India
Usha Rai
Battling for India, A Citizen’s Reader, edited by writers Githa Hariharan and Salim Yusufji, is very timely. It looks back ...
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"There are different shades of the mind"
Sidika Sehgal, New Delhi
The editors of Side Effects of Living, Jhilmil Breckenridge and Namarita Kathait, met at a poetry event in Delhi. They ...
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Partition in the mind
Civil Society Reviews, New Delhi
The medical discipline of psychiatry in India is going through a phase of introspection and widening its horizons. The Psychological ...
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An Adivasi's search for love
Anita Anand
In 2017, Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar found himself at the centre of a storm when his book, The Adivasi Will Not ...
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Gautam Vohra on DRAG, the NGO he and many others created to get tribals their benefits
The 1980s were probably the NGO sector’s most idealistic phase. Young, middle-class people, often with a blue chip education, ...
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Yashica Dutt grew up a Dalit and spent her youth hiding her identity
In Coming out as Dalit, Yashica Dutt skilfully weaves her life story of growing up as a Dalit with the ...
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Sudipta Sen takes us down the Ganga on many rare journeys
By Sudhirendar Sharma
The Ganga strangely represents the physical manifestation of an accepted mythological duality — to be divine and vulnerable at any ...
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Girl from a ghetto: Dreams, ambitions of Muslim women
he archetypal perception about Muslim women is that they are victims of Islam and of patriarchy. So they don’t have ...
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On Campus: Essays on the problems in education
Civil Society News
Education at the Crossroads is about a range of issues that bedevil higher education and school education in India. Edited ...
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Timeless ideologies: Why Bhagat Singh is immortal
Murad Ali Baig
Everyone knows that Bhagat Singh was one of the most celebrated martyrs of India’s freedom movement but very few know ...
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Fighting for tigers: Their rise and fall in Panna
Usha Rai
Project Tiger, launched in 1973, had many successes and some failures, says Raghu Chundawat in his latest book, The Rise ...
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Barefoot historian says good bye to Kolkata’s streets
Soumitra Das
The village yogi never gets alms. Thus goes the oft-repeated Bengali saying. In other words, familiarity breeds contempt. And that ...
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In Nagaland, a wet paddy field has infinite value ?
In her remarkable book, The Flavours of Nationalism, Nandita Haksar recalls the important role food played in her life’s journey ...
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Jugaad’s great, but comes with limitations
Subir Roy
Jugaad has come to stand for a distinctive Indian way of finding solutions driven by the need to be frugal ...
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Partnerships and big ideas where they really matter
Ratna Viswanathan
The Path Ahead is a collection of essays penned by people who are experts in the sectors they write about. ...
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MFI to small bank: Ujjivan's amazing story
Ratna Vishwanathan
The story of Ujjivan, one of the largest Microfinance Institutions (MFIs) and its transformation into a Small Finance Bank (SFB)takes ...
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Finding P.T. Nair among his old books in Kolkata
Soumitra Das , Kolkata
At a time when every armchair heritage activist cries “blue murder” whenever an alleged ancient building is torn down in ...
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What battered Indians say
Anita Anand
Harsh Mander’s collection of stories is by no means a reader’s delight. Nor are they meant to be. Rather, they ...
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Bengali cooking decoded
Anita Anand
If you have not been to the two Bengals (east and west), one in India and the other in Bangladesh, ...
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Tracing India's art cinema
Saibal Chatterjee
The importance of this book, authored by V.K. Cherian, a film society activist and communications professional in New Delhi, is ...
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Matters of the mind
Anita Anand
At the recent release in Delhi of a book featuring writings by various psychotherapists, somebody asked: Are all families dysfunctional? ...
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The bitter marriage
Anjana Basu
Malika Amar Shaikh was the daughter of the Marathi Communist trade union leader and folk performer, Shahir Ahmed Shaikh, and ...
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Story of a Dalit woman
Anjana Basu
Kautik on Embers is about life in a village in Umravati district of Vidarbha, infamous for farmer suicides. The novel ...
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Female street politics
ANITA ANAND
Who would imagine that Bala, a leader of the Shiv Sena women’s wing in Mumbai, would ride ...
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The pull of a past life, other reality
ANITA ANAND
In the 21st century the world is often divided between believers and non-believers of one kind or another — be ...
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The lost young migrants from the northeast
Nandita Haksar’s recent book, The Exodus is Not Over: Migrations from the Ruptured Homelands of Northeast India, features first generation ...
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‘Decline in working women is worrisome’
Civil Society News, New Delhi
In recent years, news about the declining number of women in the workforce in India has surprised economists and feminists. ...
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Young Indian urban women and their search for careers
Anita Anand
In a time of skewed sex ratios, violence against women and girls and continued old and new kinds of discrimination, ...
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‘Empathy is important for meaningful medical care’
Kavita Charanji
Dr Fazlur Rahman’s inspirational new memoir, The Temple Road: A Doctor’s Journey, begins with his mother’s sudden death during childbirth. ...
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How PV’s middle way sought to strike a balance
Sanjaya Baru
A few years before P.V. Narasimha Rao passed away a former official of the finance ministry asked him how much ...
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A better life at Swift Wash
Gauri Gharpure
Beautiful Women — Journeys from despair to dignity,' is a first-person narrative of 10 women who left a life of ...
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‘Migration not fully understood as yet’
Civil Society News, New Delhi
MIgration is leading to mingling of identities across India. People migrate mostly for survival, jobs, education and marriage. Nowhere is ...
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‘SEZs need enabling environment to succeed’
Civil Society News, New Delhi
Ten years after the SEZ (Special Economic Zones) Act was passed, India has over 500 SEZs scattered all over the ...
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The perils of research into societies in conflict
Amit Dasgupta, Mumbai
This is undoubtedly a brilliant book that will be discussed for a long time. It is the product of an ...
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‘Bant remains a Dalit icon whose voice rings true’
Civil Society News, New Delhi
When Bant Singh’s daughter was brutally raped in 2000, he was just another Mazhabi Sikh in the caste-wracked countryside of ...
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Being queer isn’t an illness
Civil Society News, New Delhi
For most members of the queer community, their interface with the medical community is distressful. Middle-class families invariably think being ...
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The Bangladesh story
Kavita Charanji
Professor Rehman Sobhan says he has sung four national anthems during his lifetime: God Save the Queen, Jana Gana Mana, ...
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Reporting from hotspots
Civil Society News, New Delhi
Shyam Bhatia is back for a week at his mother’s house in New Delhi. It is the launch of his ...
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Searching for Shiva in Pakistan
Civil Society News, New Delhi
In the face of rising extremism and intolerance Haroon Khalid, journalist and educationist, sets off on a journey in the ...
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