Understanding India

New Understanding of Indian Society by SR Mehta

Indian Institute of Advanced Studies. Pages: 658. Price: Rs. 995/-

With its antecedents dating back to ancient times, the Indian society is an ever-evolving, pluralistic and highly complex phenomenon. Its paradigmatic definition is impossible, therefore rendering it extremely difficult to be comprehended in totality. Yet, from time to time, scholars have made attempts to understand some, if not all, of its aspects. Mehta’s is one such attempt. Although the book claims to adopt a sociological approach, it in fact is more a multi-disciplinary attempt to look at its socio-cultural, economic, political and historical evolutions.

First of all, in this volume Prof. Mehta, a prolific writer on diverse sociological-economic phenomena, has dwelt upon India’s traditional social structure. Thereafter, he has tried to understand the dynamics of Indian society’s development – not just in economic terms but in political and institutional sense too. He has compared the pre-liberalization scenario with the conditions obtaining in the post-liberalization socio-economic-political milieu in an attempt to discover whether globalization is a challenge or opportunity to the Indian society.