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The article focuses on the book "Social Mobility in the Caste System in India. An Interdisciplinary Symposium," edited by James Silverberg. In the book, author aim to further an understanding of the nature, extent and significance of social mobility in a caste system and to uncover the mechanisms and determinants involved. The book offers a review of the sociological concern with social mobility in the caste system as a general set of processes. A set of four papers presents and evaluates evidence concerning social mobility, based in three instances on recent first-hand observations and in the fourth on data extracted from the medieval period by the techniques of the historian. The first two papers are the products of anthropological field research in rural communities: a South Indian case by researcher Edward B. Harper, who combines ethnographic and ethnohistorical methods; a North Indian case by researcher William L. Rowe, who gathered his ethnographic data not only among the Caubans of the village in which he lived but also from their city-dwelling caste fellows, the politicians and other professionals whom he interviewed in Bombay, India and several urban centres of North India.

This article reviews the book "India Traders of the Middle Ages: Documents From the Cairo Geniza (India Book)," by Shelomo D. Goitein and Mordechai Akiva Friedman.

Reviews the book 'Ecological Genetics and Evolution: The Cactus--Yeast--Drosophila,' edited by J.S. Barker and W.T. Starmer.

The article discusses the book "Peasants in History: Essays in Honor of Daniel Thorner," edited by E.J. Hobsbawm, W. Kulla, A. Mitra, K. N. Raj and I. Sachs. The article points out that the book is an impressive memorial to Daniel Thorner, a prolific scholar in the distinction of the contributors and the wide range of issues, which have been taken to be representative of Thorner's concerns. The collection is an interesting reflection not only of Thorner's interests, but also of the current state of the literature on peasants. The book is divided into different sections and the first section of the book contains papers relating to European peasantries. The second section focuses on India and Asia and the third section raises policy issues relating to economic development. Themes of peasants and capitalism, differentiation amongst the peasantry, reform, and peasants and socialism are also highlighted in the book. The book features the elimination of the peasantry in Scotland, the persistence of magnetization amongst Polish peasants during the second serfdom, the changing character of Indian villages and the long-term impact of land reform on peasants and landlords.

The book also corroborates the finding from other research that rural proprietary classes along with the state are important mediators in the rampant land acquisition by the industrial capitalist class in India. Whereas there is evidence of successful accumulation by the class of capitalist farmers and the newly emergent "gentleman farmers" with the aid of the state's resources, the crisis of peasant agriculture appears to be universal. A key finding of the book across all three states is that agrarian policies in the post-liberalization era have undergone a shift as the state has renewed its role. [Extracted from the article]

The Koyna Dam in western India has the unfortunate distinction of being the site of the most famous example of reservoir-triggered seismicity. The lead microbiologists in the Koyna drilling project is Dr. Pinaki Sar of the Indian Institute of Technology. Sar's group first analysed core samples retrieved from boreholes that penetrated to 522-1490 m depth in the Deccan basalt and a short distance into the underlying Archean, 2.5 billion-year-old granite. Quantitative PCR of 16S rRNA genes indicated abundance of ~10 SP 5 sp cells/g of rock; qPCR of dsrB and mcrA genes indicated high numbers of sulfate reducers and methanogens, respectively, in the basalt. [Extracted from the article]

Central to the rich tradition of agrarian studies is the debate on the impact of capitalist transition on peasant farming. The authors have chosen the term "agrarian structural transformation" instead of "agrarian transition" and "family labour farming" instead of the broader concept of "peasant farming" or "family farming". Likewise, a vast section of India's small and marginal farms do not qualify as the ideal family farms (farms worked, managed or owned by families). The National Commission on Farmers (2004) also indicated a decline of farm income amongst small farmers and reported that a high proportion of 40% intended to quit farming. [Extracted from the article]

While Raj shows that there has been substantial - and remarkable - fightback, mostly from Adivasi and Dalit female plantation workers, these movements have not been endorsed by the compromised union bureaucracy. Despite bleak prospects for plantation workers' mobility, the author describes the ability to remain on the crisis-stricken plantations as a privilege for the workers - in part since, at least, the plantations provide the security of a home. Dalit workers, moreover, perceive that caste discrimination is less severe and overt (although not by any means absent) on the plantations than in the labour-receiving villages in Tamil Nadu. Footnotes 1 Scheduled Tribes is the term used by the Indian government to refer to indigenous people or Adivasis. [Extracted from the article]

It is unclear as to how trade unions can be apolitical organisations when the "neoliberal" economic policies of the state are inherently political in nature and unions often mount intensive political campaigns against these neoliberal policies. It is often argued that with economic liberalisation, India has been witnessing a major change in its labour regulatory framework since 1991 but particularly so since 2014 when the right wing Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) won the parliamentary election and subsequently got re-elected with an increased majority in 2019 general elections. Chinese government uses repression, while Indian government relies on neoliberal policy approaches. [Extracted from the article]

The article reviews the book "Schooling Passions: Nation, History, and Language in Contemporary Western India," by Véronique Benei.

The article reviews the book "Gods Beyond Temples," edited by Harsha V. Dehejia.

This book fills this knowledge gap by conducting both quantitative and qualitative research studies on support service workers in India's IT industry. What seems to be missing in Chakraborty's book, in contrast, is how India's support service workers have organised and resisted the structural exploitation of their jobs in the IT industry or the wider society. Dr. Chakraborty, the author of this book, has written the best and most comprehensive study on India's support service workers to date. [Extracted from the article]

Reviews the book 'Competing Equalities: Law and the Backward Classes in India,' by Marc Galanter.

Reviews the book "Caste in Modern India and Other Essays," by M. N. Srinivas.

The article reviews the book "Between the Empires: Society in India 300 BCE to 400 CE," edited by Patrick Olivelle.

The article reviews the book "Value Chain Struggles: Institutions and Governance in the Plantation Districts of South India," by Jeff Neilson and Bill Pritchard.

The article reviews the book "Labour in Global Production Networks in India," edited by Anne Posthuma and Dev Nathan.

The article reviews the book "Agriculture and Rural Development in India Since 1947," by Chandra S. Prasad.

This article reviews to book "Locked in Place: State Building and Late Industrialization in India," by Vivek Chibber.

The article reviews three books in a series on Bombay, India. "Bombay: Metaphor for Modern India" by Sujata Patel and Alice Thorner. "Bombay: Mosaic of Modern Culture" By Sujata Patel and Alice Thorner. "Bombay and Mumbai: The City in Transition" by Sujata Patel and Jim Masselos.

Reviews the book 'Social and Economic Security in India,' edited by S. Mahendra Dev, Piush Antony, V. Gayathri and R.P. Mamgain.

The article reviews the book "Dangerous Sex, Invisible Labor: Sex Work and the Law in India," by Prabha Kotiswaran.

The article reviews the book "From Stigma to Assertion: Untouchability, Identity and Politics in Early and Modern India," edited by Mikael Aktor and Robert Deliége.

The article reviews the book "Going Indian," by James Hamill.

The article reviews the book "Urban Studies," edited by Sujata Patel and Kushal Deb.

The article reviews the book "In the Shadows of the State: Indigenous Politics, Environmentalism, and Insurgency in Jharkhand, India," by Alpa Shah.

The article reviews the book "The Body in India: Ritual, Transgression, Performativity," by Christoph Wulf and Axel Michaels.

The article reviews the book "In Amma's Healing Room: Gender and Vernacular Islam in South India," Joyce Burkhalter Flueckiger.

The article reviews the book "Greening at the Grassroots: Alternative Forestry Strategies in India," by Eva Cheung Robinson.

Reviews the book `The civility of indifference: on domesticating ethnicity,' by F.G. Bailey.

Reviews the book `Divine enterprise: Gurus and the Hindu nationalist movement,' by Lise McKean.

Reviews the book "Nehru," by B. N. Pandey.

Reviews the book "Gokhale, Gandhi and the Nehrus: Studies in Indian Nationalism," by B. R. Nanda.

Reviews the book "Crisis of Indian Unity 1917-1940," by R. J. Moore.

Reviews the book "Foreign Enterprise in India," by Matthew J. Kust.

The article reviews the book "The Limits of Orientalism: Seventeenth-Century Representations of India," by Rahul Sapra.

The article reviews the book "Dalit Theology and Christian Anarchism," by Keith Hebden.

The article reviews the book "Rites of Spring: Gajan in Village Bengal," by Ralph W. Nicholas.

The article reviews the book "The Crisis of Secularism in India," edited by Anuradha Dingwaney Needham and Rajeswari Sunder Rajan.