Achin Chakraborty

Structural Limits to Equitable Urbanization

The contemporary world is marked by deep inequities in living conditions on the one hand and by serious threats to the prospects of good life in future on the other. These two central problems are often put succinctly as intergenerational and intragenerational injustice. Yet, the typical development planner sees the city as a location where investment, production, consumption and innovation take place. The dominant approach in policy circles is one of competition—the city is supposed to be in endless competition with other cities for markets and for new industries. In this paper, an attempt has been made to understand the tension among the three goals of urbanization—economic growth, sustainability and distributive justice. International development agencies, while articulating a normative standpoint, often combine the three goals in such a way as to create the impression that they form a seamless whole, which could be attained without problems only if the international community had been sensitized about the importance of setting such goals. On the contrary, we unfold the tensions and conflicts, drawing on the Indian urbanization experience and the policy dilemmas to argue that although the imperatives of economic growth in the modern globalized world have an apparent ring of inevitability around them, an articulated view on social justice and appropriate conceptualization of equity through community engagement can help us understand the alternative possibilities with their associated trade-offs, which in turn would help us tread the contested terrain.

Living Arrangement and Capability Deprivation of the Disabled in India

This paper puts forward the argument that the living arrangement of a disabled individual, or her/his marital status in particular, can be taken as a proxy for some very important functionings that constitute her/his well-being, viz. emotions (being able to have attachments to others, able to love etc) and bodily integrity that includes ‘opportunity for sexual satisfaction’ among others. The main source of data is NSS 58th Round (2002), which is supplemented by such other sources as Census 2001. [IDS Occasional paper 41].

Book reviews and notices : C.A. GREGORY, Savage money. The anthropology and politics of com modity exchange (Studies in anthropology and history, vol. 21). The Netherlands: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1997. xvi + 333 pp. Tables, figures, maps, notes, bibliography, index

This anthology is a testimony to the excellent work of scholars on the varied and complex issues involved in social movements. It is not an easy task to standardise the arguments in the context of multiple meanings attached to each struggle/debate or issue. However, one glaring omission is the absence of articles/books published in the recent past in the ’Select Readings’. Except for one book by Gail Omvedt, most of the books/ articles on social movements belong to the early 1980s or 1970s. Despite this, the quality of scholarship in the book is not diminished; the editor and the publishers richly deserve our appreciation and compliments.