Empowering or burdening women?

In many developing countries like Nepal, women are vocationally trained in ‘women-friendly’ professions, encouraging them to enter the labour market. Amidst discussions concerning the role of gender-stereotyped Vocational Training (VT) programmes in empowering women, this research makes a qualitative study of the training and post-training experiences of women graduating from two ‘women-friendly’ VT programs – tailoring and beautician. Data obtained from interviewing 12 beauticians and 7 tailors have been analysed to assess the precariousness associated with these professions and also women’s sense of empowerment through the World Bank Empowerment Framework 2005. Discussions suggest that women are often nudged into low-income occupations owing to their gender roles, lower attainment of formal education and limited access to finances. In addition to their domestic and care work, women are forced to sell cheap labour and work longer hours in a highly competitive market, which signifies the extremity of precariousness they encounter. Although VT programmes give women some agency through assets like income (albeit low), skill, information and social capital, the translation of this agency to empowerment remains questionable. Despite being professionals, women are still not the ones making decisions for their future and thus have limited social and political power. Even institutions designed to empower women leave them out of their board rooms – proving women quite  powerless even while walking the recommended paths of ‘empowerment’. This research concludes that gender-stereotyped VT programmes in Nepal exacerbate gender differences, burden women with precariousness and exclude them from economic, social and political capital-earning opportunities

Epistemologies of Land Relations in India’s Tribal Frontier

This article contributes to the burgeoning critical literature on Naga lifeworlds by using a heterodox Foucaultian and Marxist framework. The analysis is structured as a genealogy that reinterprets the ways that historical epistemologies have shaped contemporary land relations in Nagaland. Our genealogy draws on place-based interviews to foreground what the history of land relations mean to Nagas today. The discussion sheds new light on (i) the epistemological bearings of gennas on the present-day social realities of Naga-Christianity; (ii) territoriality as an epistemology that reified the village-centered ownership of land; (iii) epistemic ruptures of subjectivation under British colonialism. The paper ends by contextualizing the genealogy of Naga land relations to redress its biased representations and culture of alterity by mainstream media and political outlets in India

Chipko and Beyond

Written in a chronological order, the book has various thematic overlaps. Embracing them, and placing the book in the larger contemporary political context, I offer a critical review of the book. In the first sub-section, I analyse the formation and deformation of the movement as presented in the middle and last chapters of the book. In the second sub-section, I explore the role of the state apparatuses as presented throughout the book. In the third sub-subsection, I explore the politics of 'outsiders' in framing the movement, which is, again, illustrated throughout the book. I conclude the review by offering the only lack and flaw that I could find in the magnificently grounded account of the Chipko Movement

Simic's Shoes

This is a short essay that pays tribute to the Pulitzer Prize winning poet Charles Simic who turned 92 on 9th May.The article looks at one poem by Simic routed through the vision of Van Gogh and the reality of the 16 deaths of migrant workers on the railway track in Maharashtra, India, on 8th May. The article looks at one poem by Simic routed through the vision of Van Gogh and the reality of the 16 deaths on the railway track on 8th May

The Nectar of the Master's Speech

  The famous spiritual personality of mid-Victorian Bengal, Sri Ramakrishna (monastic name of Gadadhar Chattopadhyay) was, like Socrates of Hellenic Athens, an oral prophet.  His method of teaching and preaching was through informal and homely homilies and anecdotes.  These, compiled and subsequently published by his devotee Mahendranath Gupta (alias SriM), have been translated from the original Bāṅglā into numerous languages of India and the world titled as Ramakrishna Kathāmṛta.  The contents of this compilation have universally been considered deeply spiritual albeit delivered in patois Bengali befitting the nearly illiterate speaker.  There are no studies, hagiographical or hermeneutical, examining the Master’s neologisms and his natural gift as a tusitala, that is a story-maker and storyteller, and interrogating the much-publicized spiritual subtext of his logia.  This paper addresses the lacunae of what may be called Rāmakṛṣṇāyana, that, Ramakrishna-related literature. &nbsp

Madeleine Slade (Mirabehn): A Pilgrimage

When two cultures come into contact with each other, there is a play of power and supremacy. This is a social reality and something that people have to deal with not only in the socio-political sense, but also in emotional states. Gandhi and Slade’s relationship shows the reality of emotional unrest. This perhaps is overlooked when there are bigger social and political problems lurking around. This paper attempts to understand the journey of Gandhi and Madeline Slade though the correspondence they shared

Critical Lives

Book review.&nbsp

Unveiling the Lost Voices

Interrogating Identities: Tribals in Bengali Short Stories published by the Centre of Excellence, Department of Odia, Visva-Bharati, Santinketan and the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, Government of India, New Delhi and translated by Dr Saptarshi Mallick aims at unveiling the   lost and suppressed voices of the subaltern. The book has simultaneously worked as a guide that has stimulated scholars in to venturing deeper into the world of ‘the other’ and as a delightful read for book lovers covering all genres. The book admits that it is only a medium through which the subaltern is speaking and does not claim to be their messiah or savior. It moves methodically, showing us census and data and by looking at them we realize the immense poverty and poor standards of living in which the indigenous people reside. In spite of being a research project, it also appeals to our emotion. The narrative moves effortlessly and as a reader it can be affirmed that the translator has done a phenomenal job in translating and to certain extent trans-creating the subject matter. In my review I have tried to emphasize how the book, with the help of textual examples, has facilitated to voice the unheard stories from the margin and acknowledge it as an insider

The Ramayana: A Stage Play and A Screen Play

This is a book review of Bashabi Fraser's book The Ramayana: A Stage Play and a Screen Pla