Bücher veröffentlicht von Context

About the bookTHIS MUCH-FETED BOOK RETURNS IN A STRIKING, ALL-NEW COVER! A NUANCED AND MUCH-NEEDED REPORT FROM THE GROUND ON TAMIL NADU, AND INDEED INDIA'S, ENDANGERED LIVELIHOODS.In a rapidly urbanising nation, rural India is being erased from the popular imagination. Through her five years of travelling across the villages of Tamil Nadu, Aparna Karthikeyan gets to know men and women who do exceptional-yet perfectly ordinary-things to earn a living. She documents, through ten of these stories, the transformations, aspirations and disruptions of the last twenty-five years. The people she meets force these questions of her, and her reader: What is the culture we seek to preserve? What will become of food security without farmers? How can 'development' exclude 833 million people?Including interviews with journalist P. Sainath, musician T.M. Krishna and writer Bama, among others, Nine Rupees an Hour is a critical portrayal of the drastic and systematic erosion of traditional livelihoods.These engaging narratives unravel a peoples' perspective of work and life, where creative beauty and human dignity merge to matter, even if their worth in market-obsessed economics is merely nine rupees an hour. Evocative and relevant, they jostle our comfort. Statistics and economic analyses of wages and work, juxtaposed with the lives people lead, help us understand the situation on the ground. A book all of us must read' - Aruna Roy, Social activistSustainable livelihoods provide the foundation for a happy life. We owe a deep sense of gratitude to Aparna Karthikeyan for bringing out this useful book based on real-life examples. I hope the book will be widely read. - M.S. Swaminathan, plant geneticist and agricultural scientistAparna Karthikeyan is a storyteller and an independent journalist. She volunteers for the People's Archive of Rural India (PARI) and has written for them, as well as for The Hindu, The Caravan, The Wire

About the BookLITERARY WRITERS OCCASIONALLY WRITE ON THEIR PASSION FOR SPORT. THE TRAFFIC IS SELDOM IN THE OTHER DIRECTION. THIS BOOK IS A SMALL ATTEMPT TO REDRESS THAT-A SPORTSWRITER WRITING ON A PASSION FOR LITERATURE.What do Ved Mehta, Gabriel García Márquez and Agatha Christie have in common-apart from being among the most celebrated writers in the world, that is? Their ability to hook the discerning reader and never let go. What have some of these great writers said of their own work? What, for that matter, makes a writer, or a book, 'great' and canonical while others that sold millions of copies in their own lifetimes fade into oblivion? How much of a reader's appreciation of a novel or an essay stems from their own early reading practices and friendships? And why, oh why, do they not give the Nobel to the writers who most deserve it?These are some of the thoughts that centre this eclectic collection of reflections about writers and writing. They seek out the pleasures and the techniques, the spaces and the memories, the little moments and the life-changing sentences that encompass and enrich a reader's life.About the AuthorSuresh Menon is one of the world's leading cricket writers. He became India's youngest sports editor and then one of its youngest editors with Indian Express. His books include Bishan: Portrait of a Cricketer and Pataudi: Nawab of Cricket. He is married to the sculptor Dimpy Menon, and they live in Bengaluru.

About the BookA DEVASTATING ACCOUNT OF THE WAY IN WHICH VIOLENCE AFFECTS LIVES IN MODERN INDIAWhat makes a man stand by and watch violence being done to another? What does a woman do after her husband has killed a pregnant stranger? What latent tensions and complexes did the instigators of violence draw upon to unleash the carnage of 28 February 2002?Investigations into mass violence in India, and Gujarat 2002 in particular, have focused on the consequences, the victims, the political apparatus. The mob has always been a faceless, unidimensional machine. But the act of turning around and looking at individuals from that crowd changes everything. If we see the mob as amorphous and their hate as shifting, given to complex personal motivations and vulnerabilities, we are much closer to understanding it-and to opening up conversations that can lead to change.Revati Laul's unforgettable narrative, built on a decade's worth of research and interviews, is the very first account of the perpetrators of 2002-and a crucial new addition to the literature on violence.About the AuthorRevati Laul is an independent journalist and activist. She started her career in television with NDTV, then shifted to print, writing for publications like Tehelka, The Quint and the Hindustan Times. As an outcome of her work on political violence, she created the Sarfaroshi Foundation in the district of Shamli in Uttar Pradesh, where she now lives. This is her first book.

COMBINING PHILOSOPHICAL UNDERSTANDING AND POLITICAL INSIGHT, ROHIT CHOPRA MAKES A STRONG CASE FOR THE RELEVANCE OF THE GITA IN THE MODERN, GLOBAL WORLD.The Gita in a Global World examines a very particular claim: can the ancient text that is the Gita offer a framework to negotiate the ethical challenges of capitalist modernity? We live in a world marked by greater existential precarity, and increased political and social turbulence and violence. Could the Gita, for all its philosophical abstraction, help us navigate this space? What can it tell us about global warming and violence, inequality and suffering, pandemics and the savage oppression of vulnerable groups? Rohit Chopra's masterful examination of the Gita interrogates the relevance of its ideas and sees in its articulation of the philosophy of universal being a more just and inclusive idea of human belonging.Combining philosophical discussion, meticulous research and sharp political insight, this book does what that ancient text has done for years-illuminate and provoke while asking each of us to choose how we will act to meet the challenges of the present and future.About the AuthorRohit Chopra is Professor of Communication at Santa Clara University. His research centres on global media and identity, digital media, and the relationship between media, memory and violence. He is the author of The Virtual Hindu Rashtra: Saffron Nationalism and New Media (HarperCollins, 2019) and Technology and Nationalism in India: Cultural Negotiations from Colonialism to Cyberspace (Cambria, 2008), and co-editor of Global Media, Culture, and Identity: Theory, Cases, and Approaches (Routledge, 2011). Rohit also writes extensively in a journalistic capacity on media, politics and culture in global contexts. An expert on the role of social media in fomenting sectarian violence, he works with non-profits, think tanks, and technology and media firms on developing strategies to combat the negative effects of social media. Rohit is also the co-founder and co-host of the India Explained podcast, a conversation on matters related to India (www.soundcloud.com/indiaexplained).

About the BookA NUANCED AND POWERFUL MICROHISTORY SET AGAINST THE SWEEP OF INDIAN HISTORY.Dharmman Bibi rode into battle during the revolt of 1857 shoulder to shoulder with her patron lover Babu Kunwar Singh. Sadabahar entranced even snakes and spirits with her music, but eventually gave her voice to Baba Court Shaheed. Her foster mothers Bullan and Kallan fought their malevolent brother and an unjust colonial law all the way to the Privy Council-and lost everything. Their great-granddaughter Teema paid for the family's ruination with her childhood and her body. Bindo, Asghari, Phoolmani, Pyaari ... there are so many stories in this family. And you-one of the best-known tawaifs of your times-remember the stories of your foremothers and your own.This is a history, a multi-generational chronicle of one family of well-known tawaifs with roots in Banaras and Bhabua. Through their stories and self-histories, Saba Dewan explores the nuances that conventional narratives have erased, papered over or wilfully rewritten.In a not-so-distant past, tawaifs played a crucial role in the social and cultural life of northern India. They were skilled singers and dancers, and also companions and lovers to men from the local elite. It is from the art practice of tawaifs that kathak evolved and the purab ang thumri singing of Banaras was born. At a time when women were denied access to the letters, tawaifs had a grounding in literature and politics, and their kothas were centres of cultural refinement.Yet, as affluent and powerful as they were, tawaifs were marked by the stigma of being women in the public gaze, accessible to all. In the colonial and nationalist discourse of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this stigma deepened into criminalisation and the violent dismantling of a community. Tawaifnama is the story of that process of change, a nuanced and powerful microhistory set against the sweep of Indian history.About the AuthorSaba Dewan is a documentary film-maker. Her documentaries have focused on issues of gender, sexuality and culture. This is her first book and has emerged from her trilogy of films on stigmatised women performers: Delhi-Mumbai-Delhi (2006) about the lives of bar dancers; Naach (The Dance, 2008) on women dancers in rural fairs and The Other Song (2009) about the art and lifestyle of the tawaifs or courtesans. The research and writing of the book was supported by a fellowship from the New India Foundation. Saba lives in Gurgaon.