Musicophilia in Mumbai: Performing Subjects and the Metropolitan Unconscious by Tejaswini Niranjana, New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2020; pp xii + 225, ` 695.
Jugaad Time: Ecologies of Everyday Hacking in India by Amit S Rai, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2019; pp xix + 208, US $24.95/UK £19.99 (pb); $94.95/ £79.00 (library cloth).
Post-Mandal Politics in Bihar: Changing Electoral Patterns by Sanjay Kumar, New Delhi, California, London and Singapore: Sage Publications, 2018; pp xxviii + 252, ₹995.
Different visions and different meanings of development are at the heart of the Bihar verdict. This article locates the election results in the interactions between the almost 50 years of upsurge of the middle castes and the shifting meanings of slogans like empowerment and development.
Based on extensive fieldwork in Pune, Hyderabad and Bengaluru, this article attempts to chart the migratory life of the Indian knowledge worker who having worked in the West returns to the country. The article focuses on the different aspects of this return back home. It tries to understand how migrants reconstruct their personal and professional life all over again. There is also an attempt to assess the impact made by the knowledge workers on their work environment in India.
Traversing Bihar: The Politics of Development and Social Justice edited by Manish K Jha and Pushpendra, New Delhi: Orient BlackSwan, 2014; pp 368, Rs 850.
There has been little academic attention on the rise and spread of the Bhojpuri music industry in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh. This article tries to size up the industry both in terms of its growing economy as well as significance as a platform for the development of a new form of cultural identity. Based on intensive field-based research covering over 80 artists and other participants of this industry all across the region and cities like Mumbai and Delhi, it argues that a new form of vernacular identity is being formed in the interstices of migration, remittances, secularisation and globalisation.
