Sunday, January 13, 2002		Books

Lenin: still waiting for a definitive biography
Review by Bhupinder Singh
Lenin: A Biography
by Robert Service. Papermac (Macmillan), London. Pages 494. £12 (special Indian price £7.20).
ONE of the first actions that symbolically marked the demise of socialism in the former USSR was the bringing down of the statues and pictures of Lenin.

Pitfalls in rural women development
Review by Ashu Pasricha
Women Development Workers Implementing Rural Credit Programmes in Bangladesh
by Annie Marie Goetz. Sage Publications, New Delhi. Pages 443. Rs. 595.
REDUCING poverty is a political challenge. It involves overcoming class-based interests in inequality and it requires effective institutions to deliver resources to and create opportunities for the poor, frequently in the face of local opposition.

A writer of social realism school
Review by Azad Gulati
Maati Kahe Kumhar Se;
by R.D. Sharma Taaseer; Pages 192; Price Rs 200.
URDU suffered a serious setback after the 1947 divide of India. Punjab, which had always been a cradle of various literary movements, can now boast of a dozen or so Urdu writers and who are actively engaged in literary pursuit.

The genesis and growth of Indo-Pak tension
Review by Jai Narain Sharma
India’s National Security Dilemma: The Pakistan Factor and India’s Policy Responses
by Rajpal Budania. Indus Publishing Company, New Delhi. Pages 312. Rs 500.
MOHAMMAD Iqbal saw the vision, M.A. Jinnah gave it a concrete shape, so goes the popular story about the creation of Pakistan, perhaps the only modern nation other than Israel that owe its existence to a nationalism inspired by religion. But similarity ends there.

It is time to revisit the vibrant North-East
Review by Gobind Thukral
Oral Tradition and Folk Heritage of North-East India. Spectrum Publications, Guwhati and Delhi. Pages 172. Rs 280.
Studies in Literature and Society. Omsons Publications, New Delhi. Pages 102. Rs 140.
Both by Lalit Kumar Barua
FOR the people of the North-West and for that matter even of the West India, the seven states in the picturesque and vibrant North-East mainly come to mind when there is bloodletting or when the nature’s fury strikes.

A tireless wanderer all over ideas and ideals
Review by M.L. Raina
Grammers of Creation
by George Steiner. Yale University Press, New Haven, USA.
Pages 344. $ 29.95.
This is the hour of the lead/remembered, if outlived/ as freezing personas/recollect the snow/first-chill-then stupor — then the letting go — Emily Dickinson
Were the universe to perish, music would endure — Schopehauer

Old obsessions, no new ideas
Review by D.R. Chaudhry
Contributions towards an Agenda for India
edited by Samir Banerjee and Sanjeev Ghotge. Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla.
Pages x+180. Rs 300.
AT the end of 50 years of independence a series of intellectual exercises were undertaken to assess the country’s progress, the health of Indian democracy and other related issues. The book under review is one of them.