Op Eds, Blogs and Media (selected) by Robin Jeffrey
Harvard South Asia Inst., Dec 2014
Articles (selected) by Robin Jeffrey
Papers by Robin Jeffrey
Economic and Political Weekly, Jan 4, 1997
Economic and Political Weekly, Mar 1, 1997
Economic and Political Weekly, Feb 15, 1997
Pacific Affairs, 1987
... Grappling with History: Sikh Politicians and the Past Robin Jeffrey ... On 12 October 1971, T... more ... Grappling with History: Sikh Politicians and the Past Robin Jeffrey ... On 12 October 1971, The New York Times carried an advertisement, signed by Dr. Jagjit Singh Chauhan and headed "Sat Siri [sic] Akal. The Sikhs demand an independent state in India. . . ...
Global Media and Communication, 2006
This article examines the ideological and structural foundations of Indian broadcasting policy as... more This article examines the ideological and structural foundations of Indian broadcasting policy as it developed from the 1920s to the 1990s. The article argues that the failure of Indian governments to make the most of radio and television for economic and social development stemmed from three sources: (i) the restrictive policies inherited from a colonial state; (ii) the puritanism of the Gandhian national movement; and (iii) the fear, made vivid by the 1947 partition, of inflaming social conflict. The policies and institutions established in the 1940s and 1950s shaped Indian broadcasting for the next 40 years and have been significantly subverted only since 1992 as a result of the transformation effected by satellite television.
Asian Survey, Aug 1, 1994
It has become a commonplace in the 1990s to say that India is dismantling its tangled attempts to... more It has become a commonplace in the 1990s to say that India is dismantling its tangled attempts to establish "socialism"; that too many responsibilities after 1947 were piled on the bullock cart of what was essentially a collect-the-taxes, keep-the-peace colonial state; and that Indian capitalism and market forces are at last being freed of state controls. Broadly, I believe such observations are valid. But what do they mean in visible, concrete terms? Are there ways in which people can perceive-as if looking at a few photographs-how the Indian state has functioned since 1947, how Indian "socialism" manifested itself, and how Indian capitalism survived? How did the government presence created under Nehru-that host of small institutions encountered by everyone who works in New Delhi and state capitals-actually work? Did attempts to create "socialism" mean that capitalism in India in 1947 and thereafter was largely extinguished? If capitalist and consumerist forces existed in India in 1947, how did they manifest themselves then and in the next 25 years? Using the newspaper industry as a lens, this essay attempts to "photograph" and demonstrate one way in which capitalism and consumerism have interacted with the Indian state since 1947. Newspapers, or more precisely the institutions set up to monitor them, refract both the efforts of government and the forces of capitalism. By scrutinizing these institutions, we are able to identify the presence of Indian capitalism in the 1940s and its survival, the nature of state intervention as it arose in the 1950s, and the mushrooming of capitalism and consumerism in the 1980s. Each of three monitoring bodies that are the focus of this essay-the Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC), the
Pacific Affairs, 2000
... Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 0-8014-3590-0 (cloth). ISBN 0-8014-862... more ... Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 0-8014-3590-0 (cloth). ISBN 0-8014-8624-6 (pbk.) 1. Labor movementIndiaKeralaHistory. 2. Labor unionsIndiaKeralaHistory. 3. Working classIndiaKeralaHistory. 4. PeasantryIndiaKerala ...
Social Scientist, Jul 1, 1977
South Asia-journal of South Asian Studies, Dec 1, 1989
... 23 novelist CV Raman Pillai (1858-1922), a Nayar public servant. Transferred to Trivandrum as... more ... 23 novelist CV Raman Pillai (1858-1922), a Nayar public servant. Transferred to Trivandrum as head of Travancore's medical department in 1892, Dr Poonen built a house on the north side of the Secretariat, in which Mary Poonen was to live for the rest of her life. ...
Economic and Political Weekly, Mar 29, 1997
Economic and Political Weekly, Jan 25, 1997
Economic and Political Weekly, 1984
... was said to have astonished the employers.44 The movement from welfare association to militan... more ... was said to have astonished the employers.44 The movement from welfare association to militant union purveying 'the principles of communism', according to the police,45 was symbolised in the annual meeting held in September 1933 under EV Ramaswami Naicker, the Tamil ...
Pacific Affairs, 1997
... 10 Kirti Trivedi, "Indian Language Newspapers: Design Inputs," seminar,Janmabhoomi,... more ... 10 Kirti Trivedi, "Indian Language Newspapers: Design Inputs," seminar,Janmabhoomi, Bombay, 23 April 1993. ... results. 12 Kirti Trivedi, "Indian Language Newspapers," Bombay, 23 April 1993. 13 R. Basu, a director-general of Indian television, estimated 2 percent in 1995. ...
The Indian Economic & Social History Review, 1981
So the police described the final encounter in what was probably the only time an organized worki... more So the police described the final encounter in what was probably the only time an organized working class in India has led an armed revolt against a government. Indian working classes, to be sure, have conducted long, bitter strikes, and peasants have staged sustained revolts in the countryside.2 But only once, it appears, have workers in an industry fashioned weapons, set up armed enclaves and fought the military in pitched, if one-sided, battles. That event, the so-called Punnapra-Vayalar revolt, named for two of the
The Indian Economic & Social History Review, 1995
too often miss the fact that what was really happening was ’the reshaping of communism into a doc... more too often miss the fact that what was really happening was ’the reshaping of communism into a doctrine of caste equality’ (p. 2). By the late 1940s, Communists had managed to attach themselves to vibrant social processes which had everything to do with local struggles over land-access and religious rites and little to do with Marx and Lenin. He argues that ’rural society was not torn apart but reconstituted’ and that in this process ’the socialists, and then, the communists played a mediating role’ (p. 124). There is much to admire in the tasks Menon has set himself and the way he has gone about them. One always runs the danger of admiring that with which one agrees: I especially appreciated, for example, Menon’s highlighting of the significance of the jatha and the tea-room (p. 151). He has also begun to tap the records in the Kozhikode record office and sought to exploit Malayalam sources. More substantially, he has focused the search for understanding of modern Malabar on the countryside and on contests
The Journal of Commonwealth & Comparative Politics, 1995
... Robin Jeffrey, La Trobe University ... Scindia has also had to cope with the fact that his mo... more ... Robin Jeffrey, La Trobe University ... Scindia has also had to cope with the fact that his mother, Vijayaraje Scindia (b. 1919), is a leader of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which he has declared the great foe of a secular India and the Congress (I).23 The Prime Minister, PV ...
Social Scientist, 1976
... the first Ezhava woman apothecary, the first London Missionary Society woman graduate, the fi... more ... the first Ezhava woman apothecary, the first London Missionary Society woman graduate, the first Muslim graduate, the first Nambudiri Brahmin MA, the ... One such man was TK Madhavan (1885-1930), who was to engineer a much more vigorous assault on the civil disabilities of ...
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Op Eds, Blogs and Media (selected) by Robin Jeffrey
Articles (selected) by Robin Jeffrey
Papers by Robin Jeffrey
India had 35 million telephones in 2001, and only 4 million of them were mobiles. Ten years later, it had more than 800 million phone subscribers and more than 95 per cent were mobiles. In a decade, communications were transformed by a device that can be shared by fisherfolk in Kerala, boatmen in Banaras, great capitalists in Mumbai and power-wielding politicians and bureaucrats in New Delhi.
Village councils ban unmarried girls from having mobile phones. Families debate whether new brides should surrender them. Cheap mobile phones have become photo albums, music machines, data bases, radios and flashlights. Religious images and uplifting messages flood tens of millions of phones each day. Pornographers and criminals have found a tantalising new tool. In politics, organisations with cadres of true-believers exploit a resource infinitely more effective than telegrams, postcards and the printing press for carrying messages to workers, followers and voters.
The book probes the whole universe of the mobile phone — from the contests of great capitalists and governments to control radio frequency spectrum to the ways ordinary people build the troublesome, addictive device into their daily lives.