A life of an ordinary Indian - An exercise in self-importance PDF Download

Author: Anil K Rajvanshi
Publisher: Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute
ISBN: 8190578154
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 5

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Book Description
This is an autobiography of Anil K Rajvanshi. Dr. Rajvanshi is a graduate of IIT Kanpur and a US trained engineer who left a lucrative career in US in early 1980s to come back and work in rural Maharashtra. He runs a small NGO called Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute, which works in the areas of agriculture, renewable energy, animal husbandry, and rural and sustainable development. He believes that technologies for rural areas should be developed by the use of high technology. Besides his technology work, he also writes regularly on issues of spirituality and technology and believes that the mantra of India’s development should be “spirituality with high technology”. He believes in simple living and high thinking and tries to live a sustainable life in rural setting. In essence, he is a spiritual engineer. This book is an attempt to tell his story on what forces shaped him during his journey from childhood to being a spiritual engineer.

Author: Anil Kumar Rajvanshi
Publisher: Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI)
ISBN: 8190578111
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
This is the story of a young idealistic student of IIT Kanpur who in 1974 at the age of 24 went to USA to pursue higher education. He left a very lucrative career in US to come back and work in rural India in 1981. This is also the story of that idealist who came back against all advice and in the process discovered himself. Dr. Anil K. Rajvanshi has written in an engaging and lively style the memoirs of his stay and experiences in America in 1970s. It is an inspiring story and should appeal to all Indians, specially NRIs and students aspiring to go abroad and who want to make a difference in India, especially the rural India. An advance copy of the book was put on the web and it elicited tremendous positive response worldwide.

Author: Rohit De
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691210381
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
It has long been contended that the Indian Constitution of 1950, a document in English created by elite consensus, has had little influence on India’s greater population. Drawing upon the previously unexplored records of the Supreme Court of India, A People’s Constitution upends this narrative and shows how the Constitution actually transformed the daily lives of citizens in profound and lasting ways. This remarkable legal process was led by individuals on the margins of society, and Rohit De looks at how drinkers, smugglers, petty vendors, butchers, and prostitutes—all despised minorities—shaped the constitutional culture. The Constitution came alive in the popular imagination so much that ordinary people attributed meaning to its existence, took recourse to it, and argued with it. Focusing on the use of constitutional remedies by citizens against new state regulations seeking to reshape the society and economy, De illustrates how laws and policies were frequently undone or renegotiated from below using the state’s own procedures. De examines four important cases that set legal precedents: a Parsi journalist’s contestation of new alcohol prohibition laws, Marwari petty traders’ challenge to the system of commodity control, Muslim butchers’ petition against cow protection laws, and sex workers’ battle to protect their right to practice prostitution. Exploring how the Indian Constitution of 1950 enfranchised the largest population in the world, A People’s Constitution considers the ways that ordinary citizens produced, through litigation, alternative ethical models of citizenship.

Author: Pawan Dhingra
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804782024
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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Book Description
Indian Americans own about half of all the motels in the United States. Even more remarkable, most of these motel owners come from the same region in India and—although they are not all related—seventy percent of them share the surname of Patel. Most of these motel owners arrived in the United States with few resources and, broadly speaking, they are self-employed, self-sufficient immigrants who have become successful—they live the American dream. However, framing this group as embodying the American dream has profound implications. It perpetuates the idea of American exceptionalism—that this nation creates opportunities for newcomers unattainable elsewhere—and also downplays the inequalities of race, gender, culture, and globalization immigrants continue to face. Despite their dominance in the motel industry, Indian American moteliers are concentrated in lower- and mid-budget markets. Life Behind the Lobby explains Indian Americans' simultaneous accomplishments and marginalization and takes a close look at their own role in sustaining that duality.

Author: Rohinton Mistry
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
ISBN: 1551991381
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 834

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Book Description
A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry’s stunning internationally acclaimed bestseller, is set in mid-1970s India. It tells the story of four unlikely people whose lives come together during a time of political turmoil soon after the government declares a “State of Internal Emergency.” Through days of bleakness and hope, their circumstances – and their fates – become inextricably linked in ways no one could have foreseen. Mistry’s prose is alive with enduring images and a cast of unforgettable characters. Written with compassion, humour, and insight, A Fine Balance is a vivid, richly textured, and powerful novel written by one of the most gifted writers of our time.

Author: Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam
Publisher: Universities Press
ISBN: 9788173711466
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Avul Pakir Jainulabdeen Abdul Kalam, The Son Of A Little-Educated Boat-Owner In Rameswaram, Tamil Nadu, Had An Unparalled Career As A Defence Scientist, Culminating In The Highest Civilian Award Of India, The Bharat Ratna. As Chief Of The Country`S Defence Research And Development Programme, Kalam Demonstrated The Great Potential For Dynamism And Innovation That Existed In Seemingly Moribund Research Establishments. This Is The Story Of Kalam`S Rise From Obscurity And His Personal And Professional Struggles, As Well As The Story Of Agni, Prithvi, Akash, Trishul And Nag--Missiles That Have Become Household Names In India And That Have Raised The Nation To The Level Of A Missile Power Of International Reckoning.

Author: Anil K Rajvanshi
Publisher: Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI)
ISBN: 8190578138
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 118

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Book Description
This digital book presents a brief history of renewable energy work carried out since 1981 at Nimbkar Agricultural Research Institute (NARI). Too often the record of research and development (R&D) is written up as articles in journals and books. The human interest story of the way the research was done, interactions with the stakeholders and the pushes and pulls in doing it are left out of the record. This book is an attempt to record these details. It also shows how R&D can be done in a small rural institute and should provide inspiration to other NGOs who want to do a similar type of work. The aim of the book is to inspire youngsters to enter the field of rural innovations and to provide challenging ideas for research and development to those who already are converts. Dr. Rajvanshi has written in an engaging style about the romance of doing research in rural setting and has shown that with meager resources and few members of staff, very meaningful and satisfying R&D work can be done. It is often said that good R&D requires lot of equipment, money and manpower. Work on renewable energy at NARI has shown that it is possible to do good work in little money and resources”, said Dr. Rajvanshi. There are six chapters in the book, out of which five describe the hardware development work carried out in household energy (cooking and lighting); gasification; electric cycle rickshaws and water-related problems among others. The last chapter deals with the philosophical issues and hence gives a roadmap for the future development of rural India. The book is a very interesting read as it emphasizes the human interest aspect of problem solving for rural India. The future research areas described at the end of each chapter will certainly be very useful for persons who are planning to develop a career in research and development for rural areas. The book is available free of cost and is available on NARI website http://www.nariphaltan.org/roi.pdf. This book has been written in the hope that it may inspire bright engineers to be engaged in rural R&D and thus making the book available free may help in this effort.

Author: Crispin Bates
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134513755
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
Subalterns and Raj presents a unique introductory history of India with an account that begins before the period of British rule, and pursues the continuities within that history up to the present day. Its coverage ranges from Mughal India to post-independence Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, with a focus on the ‘ordinary’ people of India and South Asia. Subalterns and Raj examines overlooked issues in Indian social history and highlights controversies between historians. Taking an iconoclastic approach to the elites of South Asia since independence, it is critical of the colonial regime that went before them. This book is a stimulating and controversial read and, with a detailed guide to further reading and end-of-chapter bibliographies, it is an excellent guide for all students of the Indian subcontinent.

Author: Joseph Lelyveld
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307389952
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
A highly original, stirring book on Mahatma Gandhi that deepens our sense of his achievements and disappointments—his success in seizing India’s imagination and shaping its independence struggle as a mass movement, his recognition late in life that few of his followers paid more than lip service to his ambitious goals of social justice for the country’s minorities, outcasts, and rural poor. “A revelation. . . . Lelyveld has restored human depth to the Mahatma.”—Hari Kunzru, The New York Times Pulitzer Prize–winner Joseph Lelyveld shows in vivid, unmatched detail how Gandhi’s sense of mission, social values, and philosophy of nonviolent resistance were shaped on another subcontinent—during two decades in South Africa—and then tested by an India that quickly learned to revere him as a Mahatma, or “Great Soul,” while following him only a small part of the way to the social transformation he envisioned. The man himself emerges as one of history’s most remarkable self-creations, a prosperous lawyer who became an ascetic in a loincloth wholly dedicated to political and social action. Lelyveld leads us step-by-step through the heroic—and tragic—last months of this selfless leader’s long campaign when his nonviolent efforts culminated in the partition of India, the creation of Pakistan, and a bloodbath of ethnic cleansing that ended only with his own assassination. India and its politicians were ready to place Gandhi on a pedestal as “Father of the Nation” but were less inclined to embrace his teachings. Muslim support, crucial in his rise to leadership, soon waned, and the oppressed untouchables—for whom Gandhi spoke to Hindus as a whole—produced their own leaders. Here is a vital, brilliant reconsideration of Gandhi’s extraordinary struggles on two continents, of his fierce but, finally, unfulfilled hopes, and of his ever-evolving legacy, which more than six decades after his death still ensures his place as India’s social conscience—and not just India’s.

Author: IJIP.In
Publisher: Lulu International & RED'SHINE Publication. Inc
ISBN: 136503416X
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 215

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Book Description
This gives me an immense pleasure to announce that ‘RED’SHINE Publication, Inc’ is coming out with its third volume of peer reviewed, international journal named as ‘The International Journal of Indian Psychology. IJIP Journal of Studies‘is a humble effort to come out with an affordable option of a low cost publication journal and high quality of publication services, at no profit no loss basis, with the objective of helping young, genius, scholars and seasoned academicians to show their psychological research works to the world at large and also to fulfill their academic aspirations.