Publications | Humanities & Social Sciences

Publications

Discipline wise list of recent selected publications

What is 'Indian' about Indian Political Thought?

My aim in this paper is to describe and resist two intellectual instincts or tendencies when thinking about how to do political philosophy in India today. The first involves a resistance to ‘Western political thought’, as alien, unfamiliar, or simply inappropriate for thinking about Indian political realities. The estrangement from Western political thought as 'foreign' comes with a concomitant instinct regarding how we should do political theory in India, namely by engaging with Indian thinkers and traditions, both ancient and modern.

Reading Rawls in India

How should philosophers in India approach the work of John Rawls? I argue against the view that his work should be regarded as exclusively within the domain of 'Western philosophy', which needs some distinctive process of translation and contextualization in order to speak to 'Indian conditions'. I also question the idea that 'Indian political philosophy' should be seen as an autonomous discipline with roots specifically in the Indian past.
Published in Sambhasan, Vol 2:4, special issue on John Rawls, 'Rawlsian Engagements with Difference: Postcolonial Reflections'

A few tweaks to your regular habits can help make you happy

As someone rightly put, life is 10% of what happens to you and 90% of how you react to it, says a lot about our state of mind. So even in times of stress and anxiety, you can take proactive steps to lift your mood. Here are some excerpts from our conversation with Professor Kamlesh Singh from the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT-Delhi, about how to stay happy in troubling times

Minimum Support Prices in India: Distilling the Facts

In re­cent years in India, min­i­mum sup­port price (MSP) and gov­ern­ment pro­cure­ment, es­pe­cially of paddy and wheat, have been dis­cussed widely, but these dis­cus­sions have often drawn on ev­i­dence that is dated and in­com­plete. Con­se­quently, such dis­cus­sions have clouded the facts, re­sult­ing in a large num­ber of fac­toids.

Decoding Inequality in a Digital World

Virginia Eubanks’ widely acclaimed book, Automating Inequality, alerted us to the ways that automated decision-making tools exacerbated inequalities, especially by raising the barrier for people to receive services they are entitled to. The novel coronavirus pandemic has accelerated the use of digital technologies in India, even for essential services such as health and education, where access to them might be poor.

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