"I certainly never write a review about a book I don't think worth reviewing, a flat-out bad book, unless it's an enormously fashionable bad book." --
says, John Gardner in Conversations with John Gardner
Quoted from 'Dictionary of Library and Information Science Quotations'     Edited by Mohamed Taher & L S Ramaiah. ISBN: 8185689423 (New Delhi , Aditya, 1994) p.150. Available @ Amazon.com

Saturday, March 22, 2014

India's Sociological Trends of the Week - Media Monitoring


  • Indian Arranged Marriages: A Social Psychological Perspective Tulika Jaiswal  Routledge (Publication date: April 28, 2014)
  • The Right Spouse: Preferential Marriages in Tamil Nadu Isabelle Clark-Decès (Publication date: April 30, 2014)
  • Globalization and Transnational Surrogacy in India: Outsourcing Life Sayantani DasGupta 
  • Mapping Social Exclusion in India: Caste, Religion and Borderlands Paramjit S. Judge -- This book assesses the problem of defining exclusion, highlights the need for its contextualisation and establishes a relationship between social exclusion, deprivation and discrimination. It studies the complex mosaic of Indian systems and society, marked with exclusionary practices and structures on the basis of caste. (Cambridge U Press, March 2014)
  • Indian Sociological Thought: Second Edition B.K. Nagla
  • Sex ratio, low registration reflect in voting figures Times of India --"The skewed sex ratio in Gujarat not only has an impact on the state's social fabric but also affects the overall voting percentage in elections.""A recent survey of the voting pattern in Gujarat conducted by the Election Commission (EC) has noted that there is considerable gap between men and women not only in voter registration but also in turnout. The State Gender Ratio according to the Census of 2011 is 918 while the State Gender Ratio in Draft Rolls, 2014, is 909."
  • Political Accountability for Outbreaks of Communicable Diseases by Debabar Banerji  
  • Impact of social media making politicians go online   ABP News-Mar 20, 2014
  • India election: four more intriguing uses of social media Financial Times by Robert Minto-Mar 18, 2014 -- 1. Mobile crowdsourcing, to harvest voter information; 2. WhatsApp, for campaign organisation; 3. Missed calls, for political organising; 4. Plain old SMS, for voter mobilisation.
  • Seminar: Poverty Reduction and Social Inclusion in India: Lessons from Social Policy  Seminar by Dr. Stefan Kuehner, senior lecturer in University of York, UK --Seminar due on 26 March 2014
  • Human Rights and Dalits in India: A Sociological Analysis,  Senapati Tushar Kanti; Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences, KIIT University, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India ( International Research Journal of Social Sciences 3(3), 36-40, March, 2014)
  • India lagging in social development: report Deccan Chronicle 
  • Stop Comparing Yourself to Social Media and Be Happier
    LifeHacker India-Mar 16, 2014
  • High income inequality, low social spending in India: OECD report  Livemint-Mar 19, 2014  -- Society at a Glance 2014: OECD Social Indicators. Excerpts from the biennial OECD overview of social indicators.
  • 'Sex selfie' enters bedroom, explodes on social media 
    Times of India-Mar 19, 2014
  • At a time when "selfie" has become a new buzzword on various social media platforms, a surprising number of men and women are increasingly posting "sex selfies" while engaging in the real act.
    "Sex selfies" — filming or photographing yourself having sex — are now a widespread practice with Britain leading the chart, said a survey done by AshleyMadison.com, the world's largest extra-marital dating site.
  • A Grim Statistical Picture of Married Indian Women. By Preetika Rana Wall St Journal
    Mar 20, 2014 --  "The National Council for Applied Economic Research, a New Delhi-based think tank, based their findings on interviews with more than 30,000 married Indian women in 2011 and 2012. Women surveyed were between ages 16 and 49, living in over 1,500 Indian villages and 971 urban neighborhoods."
  • “Many women have no say in marriage” by Rukmini S The Hindu  March 19, 2014  -- "
    Four out of ten women in India still have no say in their marriage, eight out of ten need permission to visit a doctor, six out of ten practise some form of head covering, and the average Indian household gives over Rs. 30,000 in dowry. These are among the findings of a major new large-scale sample survey shared exclusively with The Hindu.
    The National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) conducts the India Human Development Survey (IHDS), the largest household survey in India after the government's Nation Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) surveys, and the NCAER is the only independent body that conducts such large-sample panel surveys. The survey covers economic data on income and expenditure, development data on education and health, and sociological data on caste, gender and religion. For the next two weeks, The Hindu will report exclusively on the key findings of NCAER's latest round that covers 2011-12 data. This survey covered 42,000 households across the country, weighted nationally, and 83% of them were also interviewed for the 2004-5 round of the IHDS.
    "
    image courtesy: The Hindu