First Published in 1966. Any person who resides in any one of the principal oriental countries is bound to stimulate a western mind to consider the differences between his own and eastern civilizations, and the reasons for these differences. During a dozen years as an economist in Japan, India and China, a number of conclusions which the author first formed tentatively have gradually become convictions. One of these is that if economic forces play the important part in western countries which most thoughtful people attribute to them, they must be even more important in the Orient, because of the greater pressure of population upon the natural resources in those countries. A second is that many of the striking differences between occidental and oriental cultures are adaptations of the same human clay to differing economic conditions. Since the opening and settlement of the New World, the West has been pressed in a new mould, leaving the East of to-day in a medieval cast. A third is that detailed studies of the evolutionary movements now in process in several eastern countries would throw very useful light upon the origins and nature of the competitive system which has characterized the modern economic history of the West. This volume fills the need for fuller understanding of India’s economic changes, especially those having to do with the growth of capitalistic enterprise, led the government of India to institute a remarkable series of investigations into several aspects of Indian life.

Gender persists as a key site of social inequality globally, and within contemporary south Asian contexts, the cultural practices which make upmasculinities remain vital for understanding everyday life and social relations. Yet masculinities, and their discontents, are an understudied and often misrepresented facet of gender relations and cultural dynamics. Gender and Masculinities offers a collection of chapters that seek to unravel the complex ideas, practices and concepts revolving around gender structures and masculinities in India and Sri Lanka.The contributions to this volume draw on a range of disciplines, including history, comparative literatures, religion, anthropology, and development studies to illuminate the key issues that have shaped our understanding of gender relations and masculinities over time and across a range of geographical areas. By carefully attending to historical and contemporary gender ideologies and practices in South Asia, this book provides a critical exploration of masculinities in their plurality, as shifting, culturally located and embedded in religious ideologies, power relations, the politics of nationalism, globalisation and economic struggles. The volume will attract scholars interested in history, anthropology, sociology, nationalism, colonialism, religion and kinship, and popular culture.This book was published as a special issue of South Asian History and Culture.

Coal Industry in West Bengal: A Historical Analysis of Production, Price, Wage, Employment and Investment, is a pioneering attempt which has determined the quantitative relationship between the parameters (i) production and price, (ii) employment and output, (iii) employment and wage, (iv) average productivity and real wage, (v) size of firms and average productivity, and (vi) size of firms and rate of profit, covering a wide range of data from 1901-1976 on production, employment, productivity, wages and prices of the Coal Industry in West Bengal. This book has examined the changes in wage-share from 1901 through 1976. The values of the parameters obtained through the fitting of Cobb-Doughlas production function and SMAC (ARROW-CHENERY-MINHAS-SULOW) function have also been reported here. This work determined the factors governing the investment and relationship between the production and investment in the Coal Industry of West Bengal.