THE INDIAN IDENTITY

A wonderful, awesome, spectacular book. Each and every one of the fifteen essays is worth your time and lends a different perspective into India. I love the way Sen writes and also the way he explains his views. The book was educational to say the least; It talks about how India and its Argumentative tradition played and still plays a part in development, science, art, literature etc. The illustrations and examples drawn across various epochs lend clarity and force the arguments home. According to me it is a must read, especially today, where our Unity seems threatened because of sectarianism in politics(so much so that it has started to spill over on to the internet, even in youtube!). India is a nation which has come forward because of its diversity and also because it has had space for people to question tradition and explore other alternatives(blandly put, there are no stakes for people

who dare to oppose) and of course its ever evolving culture

This chapter mainly starts with the Dorab Tata Memorial Lectures given in India(the first one in Mumbai ,the second one in Delhi).He appreciates the opportunity for several different reasons. First being to be a part of such a ceremony is always special, second being the history and Tatas achievements and Indian industrial revolutionaries, third being some personal reason. Mr. Amartya Sen really admires the Tatas for their work and objective in India especially in Iron and Steel Industry. He says about British investments in tea, coffee, railways, mining, mercantile establishments, and was so hesitant in the field that were the pillar of british establishment to wit cotton textile and iron and steel.

There were lots of companies in Britain in Manchester and elsewhere there is a good deal of empirical evidence of the pattern of British establishments in India. That is because Sen uses it, along with "exoticist" and "curatorial," to describe the three perspectives from which the West has tended to view India (each of which he dissects and discredits with precision and finesse). He is particularly critical of the Western overemphasis on India's religiosity at the expense of any recognition of the country's equally impressive rationalist, scientific, mathematical and secular heritage, fields treated by Orientalists as "Western spheres of success." Here the author mainly emphasises on the tatas that brought the industrial revolution in the country and gave a stiff competition to others. The main aim of J.R.D.Tatas main aim was to 1.Setting up an iron and steel company

2.Generating hydroelectric power

3. Creating an institution that would tutor Indians in the sciences

J.R.D.Tata even accomplish their objective to give india an identity of industrial sector. J.R.D.Tata came up with the :1. Empress mills established in 1877 2. Svadeshi mills estabilished in 1886 3.Taj Mahal hotel estabilished in 1903 4. Hydroelectric Power Plant in Bombay 5. Iron and Steel Plant in Jamshedpur 1903

jamshetji had received support of the new viceroy of India, Lord Curzon and the cooperation of the transport arrangement thus industrial production hence became easier through infrastructural

development. the shift in the government policy certainly changed the Indian trade scenario. In particular,Britain was displaced from its semi monopoly position of exporting Iron and steel to India. Tatas was on a roll then by 1906 dorabji progressed enough to the London money market bt they were unenthusiastic thus there is a link of Indian Identity and Nationalism. When the prospectus of Iron and steel was made in 1907 the svadeshi movement was loud and clear. This brief history is worth recollecting,not only to pay a tribute to one of the leaders of the events described ,but also because it illustrates how our sense of identity and social motivation can indeed play a major role in the determination of our behaviour, including economic behaviour. Evidences says that not only jamsetji or dorab ji and others pursue industrial future of India , but also the people have played a major

role in making things happen. He warns us against the temptation to see globalization as a "one-sided movement that simply reflects an asymmetry of power which needs to be resisted." Throughout history, "different regions of the world have [benefited] from progress and development occurring in other regions." He points out that a millennium ago this movement occurred in the reverse direction-with "paper and printing, the crossbow and gunpowder, the wheelbarrow and the rotary fan, the clock and the iron chain suspension bridge, the kite and the magnetic compass," zero, the decimal system, and advances in mathematics-but he is conspicuously silent about how the unprecedented scale of today's globalization, with its pace and engine of change, instant flights of capital, rapid demographic shifts, and powerful corporations, might differ from that of an earlier age. Sen acknowledges that economic globalization poses risks to the vulnerable and the disadvantaged and his prescriptions appear close to the neo-liberal line: It's inescapable, so let's try to make it more humane and just. Rather than isolating itself or blaming the

"shark" of globalization, India should get behind it and, through smart public policies, tackle specific ills that arise from it, as well as invest in education, health care, micro-credit, land reforms, women's education, and infrastructure (like energy,

communication, transportation). He favors safety nets and well conceived social welfare programs that do less harm than good (who can disagree, but here Sen betrays no awareness that this old problem is known to ensnare even the best kind of reasoning). He has used part of his Nobel Prize money to fund development research in India and Bangladesh. He has persuasively argued that development should be measured not by GDP but in terms of "real freedoms people can enjoy." But Sen's analysis is not without its flaws. He writes: "Global economic interactions bring general benefits, but they can also create problems for many, because of inadequacies of global arrangements as well as limitations of appropriate domestic policies." If (a big if) these were addressedSen seems to suggest economic globalization should create few problems. This is simplistic

at best. Problems can also come from a culture's unpredictable response to it. What novel set of beliefs will it provoke? Will they be broadly liberal, rational, and conducive to economic success? Can we say how the dust will settle? The patient may get worse, or trade one serious illness for another. This recognition, far from turning us against globalization, makes us more realistic about its effects. Factoring in culture, Amy Chua, in herWorld , provides sobering examples that contrast with many of Sen's sanguine assumptions about "the crooked timber of humanity". His book makes us realise how scientific temper has been the hallmark of Indian thought over the millennia. The title is a bit of a tease, since the reader might expect Indians to be portrayed as loquacious and quarrelsome in the book. Hardly! Sen makes the telling point that since the Upanishadic or Mahabharata times, arguments, disputations, questions and dialogues have characterised Indian thought. We often tend to think of science and scientific temper as Western, and brought to us by the colonials. Sen demolishes this thought and points out how the twin

features of internal pluralism and external receptivity have been woven into the development of Indian thought over the ages.