Permanent Black

SUMIT SARKAR The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal 1903–1908 (New Edition) with a new preface by the author and critical essays by Neeladri Bhattacharya and Dipesh Chakrabarty ‘From the moment of its first printing about thirty-five years ago, The Swadeshi Movement in Bengal has always held a special place in the historiography of modern India. Very few monographs, if any, have ever rivalled the meticulous research and the thick description that characterized this book, or the lucidity of its exposition and the persuasive power of its overall argument … Sarkar’s research improved on existing historiography in a major way by bringing out many unknown or hitherto neglected aspects of the history of the Swadeshi movement: the complex divisions that marked its different trends, the labour movement and mass mobilization of the period that few knew about in our time, Swadeshi anticipation of many of the Gandhian techniques of protest … this book, which should have enjoyed a steady and buoyant mar...

PORTFOLIOS OF THE POOR HOW THE WORLD'S POOR LIVE ON $2 A DAY About forty percent of the world’s people live on incomes of two dollars a day or less. If you’ve never had to survive on an income so small, it is hard to imagine. How would you put food on the table, afford a home, and educate your children? How would you handle emergencies and old age? Portfolios of the Poor is the first book to explain systematically how the poor find solutions. The authors report on the yearlong “financial diaries” of villagers and slum dwellers in Bangladesh, India, and South Africa. The stories of these families are often surprising and inspiring. Most poor households do not live hand to mouth, spending what they earn in a desperate bid to keep afloat. Instead, they employ financial tools, many linked to informal networks and family ties. Their experiences reveal new methods to fight poverty and ways to envision the next generation of banks for the “bottom billion.” Indispensable for those in...