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The Bureaucracy of Beauty is a wide-ranging work of cultural theory
that connects literary studies, postcoloniality, the history of
architecture and design, and the history and present of empire.
Professor Ananya Roy of UC Berkeley calls it a "fantastic book,"
and in many ways this is the best description of it. The
Bureaucracy of Beauty begins with nineteenth-century Britain's
Department of Science and Arts, a venture organized by the Board of
Trade, and how the DSA exerted a powerful influence on the growth
of museums, design schools, and architecture throughout the British
Empire. But this is only the book's literal subject: in a
remarkable set of chapters, Dutta explores the development of
international laws of intellectual property, ideas of design
pedagogy, the technological distinction between craft and industry,
the relation of colonial tutelage to economic policy, the politics
and technology of exhibition, and competing philosophies of
aesthetics. His thinking across these areas is ignited by
engagements with Benjamin, Marx, Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham,
Kant, Mill, Ruskin, and Gandhi. A rich study in the history of
ideas, of design and architecture, and of cultural politics, The
Bureaucracy of Beauty converges on the issues of present-day
globalization. From nineteenth-century Britain to twenty-first
century America, The Bureaucracy of Beauty offers a theory of how
things - big things -change.
The Bureaucracy of Beauty is a wide-ranging work of cultural theory
that connects literary studies, postcoloniality, the history of
architecture and design, and the history and present of empire.
Professor Ananya Roy of UC Berkeley calls it a "fantastic book,"
and in many ways this is the best description of it. The
Bureaucracy of Beauty begins with nineteenth-century Britain's
Department of Science and Arts, a venture organized by the Board of
Trade, and how the DSA exerted a powerful influence on the growth
of museums, design schools, and architecture throughout the British
Empire. But this is only the book's literal subject: in a
remarkable set of chapters, Dutta explores the development of
international laws of intellectual property, ideas of design
pedagogy, the technological distinction between craft and industry,
the relation of colonial tutelage to economic policy, the politics
and technology of exhibition, and competing philosophies of
aesthetics. His thinking across these areas is ignited by
engagements with Benjamin, Marx, Adam Smith and Jeremy Bentham,
Kant, Mill, Ruskin, and Gandhi. A rich study in the history of
ideas, of design and architecture, and of cultural politics, The
Bureaucracy of Beauty converges on the issues of present-day
globalization. From nineteenth-century Britain to twenty-first
century America, The Bureaucracy of Beauty offers a theory of how
things - big things -change.
This book is an intensive reconsideration of the very first
site-specific installation staged in India. Vivan Sundaram, one of
India's most innovative artists, located his History Project,
marking fifty years of Indian independence, in a hugely visited and
popular public institution, the Victoria Memorial and Museum in
Kolkata. The artist's choice of setting was by way of a challenge:
to 'occupy' an imperial edifice and change its orientation; to
reflect India's struggle for independence and the emerging nation's
stake in modernity through an anachronistic mirror; and to engage
with postcolonial contradictions through recursive narration. It
needed an artwork scaled to the proportion of these issues and the
book examines how Sundaram met this challenge. His ideology and
aesthetic, his formal choices and method, are critically
investigated in a series of essays contributed by distinguished
authors: cultural theorists, art and architectural historians. The
book carries abundant, well-annotated illustrations of the complex
installation.
I started my journey as an entrepreneur sometime mid 1972. Just a
few months previous I had enrolled for my M.Sc. degree in Physics
at the Banaras Hindu University - BHU as is commonly known. After
my graduation in Physics - B.Sc., end 1969, I and my friends
discussed at length our possible goals. We were a bunch of guys
still at 19, with no clue what life was out there. What little we
knew was from our seniors who were whiling away their time after
their degree doing precious nothing as no jobs were forth coming.
Calcutta particularly was in turmoil owing to a radical communist
group indulging in violence of all kinds. Our goal looked pretty
obvious, a post graduate degree and hopefully a tenure ship at some
community college. Looking back after 43 years I find four in the
bunch of five went into teaching and/or research. I refused to tow
that line. It not only sounded cliche, I was never cut out to be a
teacher. But before I venture into what I did, let me share a
secret. One in the group Subir was an excellent student and a
skilled person in electronics. I spent hours with him planning and
dreaming about projects and devices we were competent to fabricate
and sell. Now he too is a teacher at a University near Frankfurt,
Germany. I am extremely disappointed. Not because he became a
teacher and is fairly happy. But what an opportunity both of us let
go by. Would his life been better and happier as an entrepreneur? I
will never know the answer. After some 40 odd years as an
entrepreneur, I needed to tell my side of the story. Every
non-fiction author does that. Therefore mine was no different. But
there is a difference. That was when I put pen to paper trying to
get across to this segment of the people who are somewhat muddled
in their thought process. My narration takes one back to 1972.
However, India has economically opened up to the global markets
from 1996, though the government policies were liberalized from
1992. Therefore the first 24 years were sort of the 'dark ages'
that I speak of in my book. Post 1996 we happen to see a number of
knowledge industries blooming - Information Technology,
Bio-Technology, Hospitality, Retail Trade etc. The newer industries
have created enormous employment opportunity for the educated
youth. That is surely the silver lining. The dark clouds have
suddenly become darker sometime in 2006/7 when associations of
business and industries made public that majority of the technology
graduates were un-employable. This statement also brought forth the
stark reality that large sections of the population - focusing on
the youth - who are not technical graduates have no skill of their
own to make them employable. The 70% of the 1.20b people that
inhabit India are those below the age of 35. For the political
parties it raised a number of red flags. The government scrambled
to correct the situation through measures like National Skill
Development Programs. Skills are not taught in classrooms. It takes
years to inculcate skills in any trade and needs exposure to BEST
PRACTICE. I remember a V.P. of a global BPO referring to attitudes
of their employees. Yes, the employees were reasonably good in
English as a language. But when one customer defaulted in payments,
the conversation went something like this - 'Ma'am, your payments
are overdue'. Customer, 'Sorry I had a miscarriage and was
hospitalized'. Call center, 'That's not our problem.' I too was
shocked as it was narrated verbatim. Can we set things right in the
next few years for the youth that number 840m? Do you think it is
doable? My book tries to walk you through the various hurdles in
our country. It will be simplistic to conclude that with new
policies of the government, issues on the ground are far better
now. That is for you to DECIDE. All I say 'Look before you Leap'
This book examines various approaches, methodologies, and issues
related to evaluation of the impact of health programs in
developing countries and ways to make program evaluation more
rigorous. Health interventions that are effective in developed
countries may not be as effective in developing countries given the
differing social, economic, cultural, and infrastructure factors
that may affect a program's implementation and outcomes. This
monograph is intended to promote an understanding of why program
evaluation is a critical component of any health intervention and
to stimulate discussion on ways to make evaluation of health
interventions in developing countries more rigorous.
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