From Meno-pause to Meno(play) : New Delhi and the Indian Tango

Since 1989, Ananda Devi, one of Mauritius' most prolific Francophone writers, has been writing female protagonists who go beyond what Roland Barthes says is the deformed and mythical image of the female, and in the case of Ananda Devi's 2007 novel, Indian Tango, of the aging female. Set in modern New Delhi, a city tugged herself in multiple directions by politics, religion and globalization, we will examine how Subhadra, mother, wife, daughter-in-law and soon to be grandmother, attempts to reclaim her individuality now replaced by the social isolation of menopause, that is, « par la représentation du vide… ». Subhadra exhumes her female body ignored by her husband and shamed by her mother-in-law along the streets of India's capital and consequently undergoes a sexual (re) awakening for which neither she nor her family is prepared. This paper will examine how Devi's female protagonist-outcast uses the sounds and rhythms of the urban complexities of New Delhi to denounce ideologies rooted in patriarchal traditions and restrictions and thus rejecting assumptions menopausal women are asexual and undesirable and consequently underlines how a walk around a New Delhi block in fact (re) defines menopause for Subhadra as a time of liberation and sexual discovery.Desde 1989, Ananda Devi, una de las más fecundas escritoras en lengua francesa, ha estado escribiendo sobre protagonistas femeninas que van más allá, según Roland Barthes, de la contrahecha e imaginaria imagen de la mujer y, en el caso de Ananda Devi en su novela de 2007, Indian Tango, del envejecimiento de la mujer. La novela transcurre en la moderna Nueva Delhi, una ciudad en conflicto con diversas direcciones políticas, por la religión y la globalización. Examinamos como Subhadra, madre, esposa, nuera y pronto abuela, intenta reclamar su individualismo ahora substituido por el estigma social de la menopausia "par la representation du vide…". Subhandra libera su cuerpo femenino ignorado por su marido y ridiculizado por su suegra a través de las calles de la capital india y consecuentemente experimenta un (re)despertar sexual para el que ni ella ni su familia están preparadas. Este articulo analizará cómo la repudiada protagonista de Devi usa los sonidos y ritmos de la compleja urbanización de Nueva Delhi para denunciar las ideología más profunda en las tradiciones patriarcales y las restricciones sociales y, de esta forma, rechaza la suposición de que las mujeres que pasan por la menopausia carecen de atractivo sexual y son indeseables y demuestra de una forma muy explícita, casi como un paseo por los alrededores de Nueva Delhi, que para Subhandra la menopausia es una forma de liberación y descubrimiento sexual

The aam aadmi enters politics: analysing the outcome of Delhi’s State Assembly elections

Siddharth Bannerjee examines the strategies that helped the Aam Aadmi Party make historic gains in last week’s State Assembly elections in Delhi

Kejriwal’s resignation: principled stand or strategic calculation?

Siddharth Bannerjee analyses the circumstances surrounding Arvind Kejriwal’s resignation from his post as Delhi Chief Minister

De la menopausia al meno(juego) : Nueva Delhi y el Tango indio

Since 1989, Ananda Devi, one of Mauritius' most prolific Francophone writers, has been writing female protagonists who go beyond what Roland Barthes says is the deformed and mythical image of the female, and in the case of Ananda Devi's 2007 novel, Indian Tango, of the aging female. Set in modern New Delhi, a city tugged herself in multiple directions by politics, religion and globalization, we will examine how Subhadra, mother, wife, daughter-in-law and soon to be grandmother, attempts to reclaim her individuality now replaced by the social isolation of menopause, that is, « par la représentation du vide… ». Subhadra exhumes her female body ignored by her husband and shamed by her mother-in-law along the streets of India's capital and consequently undergoes a sexual (re) awakening for which neither she nor her family is prepared. This paper will examine how Devi's female protagonist-outcast uses the sounds and rhythms of the urban complexities of New Delhi to denounce ideologies rooted in patriarchal traditions and restrictions and thus rejecting assumptions menopausal women are asexual and undesirable and consequently underlines how a walk around a New Delhi block in fact (re) defines menopause for Subhadra as a time of liberation and sexual discovery.Desde 1989, Ananda Devi, una de las más fecundas escritoras en lengua francesa, ha estado escribiendo sobre protagonistas femeninas que van más allá, según Roland Barthes, de la contrahecha e imaginaria imagen de la mujer y, en el caso de Ananda Devi en su novela de 2007, Indian Tango, del envejecimiento de la mujer. La novela transcurre en la moderna Nueva Delhi, una ciudad en conflicto con diversas direcciones políticas, por la religión y la globalización. Examinamos como Subhadra, madre, esposa, nuera y pronto abuela, intenta reclamar su individualismo ahora substituido por el estigma social de la menopausia "par la representation du vide…". Subhandra libera su cuerpo femenino ignorado por su marido y ridiculizado por su suegra a través de las calles de la capital india y consecuentemente experimenta un (re)despertar sexual para el que ni ella ni su familia están preparadas. Este articulo analizará cómo la repudiada protagonista de Devi usa los sonidos y ritmos de la compleja urbanización de Nueva Delhi para denunciar las ideología más profunda en las tradiciones patriarcales y las restricciones sociales y, de esta forma, rechaza la suposición de que las mujeres que pasan por la menopausia carecen de atractivo sexual y son indeseables y demuestra de una forma muy explícita, casi como un paseo por los alrededores de Nueva Delhi, que para Subhandra la menopausia es una forma de liberación y descubrimiento sexual

The professionalisation of Indian elections: reflections on BJP’s 2014 campaign

Siddharth Bannerjee examines the mediated modalities of the BJP’s incredibly successful political campaign during the 2014 Indian elections

Which electoral strategy will work in India’s upcoming elections?

Siddharth Bannerjee analyses the campaign strategies of the Congress Party, BJP and AAP in the run up to India’s national elections

Modi: man, myth or movement?

Siddharth Bannerjee deconstructs frontrunner Narendra Modi and appraises the electoral prospects of the Bharatiya Janata Party in the upcoming Indian elections

Non-universal scaling and dynamical feedback in generalized models of financial markets

We study self-organized models for information transmission and herd behavior in financial markets. Existing models are generalized to take into account the effect of size-dependent fragmentation and coagulation probabilities of groups of agents and to include a demand process. Non-universal scaling with a tunable exponent for the group size distribution is found in the resulting system. We also show that the fragmentation and coagulation probabilities of groups of agents have a strong influence on the average investment rate of the system

The impact of credit constraints on exporting firms: Evidence from the provision and subsequent removal of subsidised credit

We study the causal impact of credit constraints on exporters using a natural experiment provided by two policy changes in India, first in 1998 which made small-scale firms eligible for subsidised direct credit, and a subsequent reversal in policy in 2000 wherein some of these firms lost their eligibility. Using firms that were not affected by these policy changes as our control group in each case, we find that credit expansion increased the growth rate of bank borrowing and had a positive effect on exports. The subsequent policy reversal in 2000 had no impact on the growth rate of bank borrowing or on exports

Herd Behaviors in the Stock and Foreign Exchange Markets

The herd behaviors of returns for the won-dollar exchange rate and the KOSPI are analyzed in Korean financial markets. It is shown that the probability distribution $P(R)$ of price returns $R$ for three values of the herding parameter tends to a power-law behavior $P(R) \simeq R^{-\beta}$ with the exponents $\beta=2.2$(the won-dollar exchange rate) and 2.4(the KOSPI). The financial crashes are found to occur at $h >2.33$ when the relative increase in the probability distribution of exteremely high price returns is observed. Especially, the distribution of normalized returns shows a crossover to a Gaussian distribution for the time step $\Delta t=252$. Our results will be also compared to the other well-known analyses.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure