The LeftWord Books, a publishing house is a division of the Naya Rasta Publishers Pvt Ltd which has been set up by the Communist Party of India (Marxist). The LEFTWORD BOOKS is striving to fulfil the need of a national Left-wing publishing house.
LeftWord is a publishing venture that seeks to reflect the views of the Left in India and South Asia.
LeftWord publishes critical and analytical works on a range of subjects, including history, economics, politics, culture, society, and issues of contemporary interest and pays special attention to works on Marxist theory.
LeftWord projects the interests of the working class and the movements for social transformation.
A World To Win, on the Communist Manifesto, was the first book published by the Leftword. The book on Communist Manifesto was brought out at the culmination of the 150th anniversary observance of the Manifesto. It has essays by Irfan Habib, Prabhat Patnaik and Aijaz Ahmad, and an introduction by Prakash Karat.
Become a member of the LeftWord Book Club and get a 40% discount on all LeftWord titles.
Membership fees: Rs 500
Become an Associate Member and get a 30% discount on all LeftWord titles. Membership fees: Rs 200
Postage FREE for both schemes.
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Add Rs 45 to cheques drawn on banks outside Delhi as clearing charges.
attention members
The LeftWord Book Club has now been in existence for over an year. We have been overwhelmed by your enthuisiastic response to the Book Club. To reciprocate this response, we have decided that:
1. Memebership to the Book Club has been made permanent. No renewals required.
2. You can buy mulitple copies of any book in stock at the discount you are entitled to.
3. Associate Members can also buy hardcover copies.
You can also:
1. Gift a Membership. Send us the name and address of a friend you want to gift the LeftWord Book Club membership to, along with the payment.
2. Gift a book. We will post any LeftWord book you wish to your friend as a gift from you. You get the same discount that you are entitled to as a member, and the postage is free.
3. Send us an advance of Rs 250 or Rs 500 (whichever you prefer) or $ 50 (for overseas members) to save you the bother of sending a payment every time you buy books. This will also minimize the clearing charges that members outside Delhi have to pay on cheques. We will keep deducting the amount due from this advance payment, and send you a statement of the remaining amount.
We look forward to your continued support. We will be happy to receive your responses. Tell us what you think of our books, what you would like us to publish, and send us your suggestions for the Book Club.
Depoliticizing Development: The World Bank and Social Capital
John Harriss
The idea of social capital – meaning, most simply put, ‘social connections’ – was unheard of outside a small circle of sociologists until very recently. Now, it is proclaimed by the World Bank to be ‘the missing link’ in international development, and it has become the subject of a flurry of books and research papers, including some, recently, on India.
This book explores the origins of the idea of social capital, and its diverse meanings, in the work of James Coleman, Pierre Bourdieu, and of Robert Putnam – who is responsible, more than any other, through his work on italy and the United States, for its extraordinary rise. John Harriss then asks why this notion should have taken off in the dramatic way that it has done, and finds in its uses by the World Bank the attempt, systematically, to obscure class relations and power. Social capital has thus come to play a significant part in ‘the anti-politics machine’ that is constituted by the discourses of international development.
This powerful and lucid critique will be of immense use to all those interested in development studies, including sociologists, economists, planners, and NGO and other activists.
John Harriss is Professor of Development Studies at the London School of Economics.
pp. vi + 145, HC, Rs 250 / $ 15 (Rs 150 / $ 9 for Members; Rs 175 for Associate Members)
LeftWord Classics Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
Edited, with an Introduction, by Aijaz Ahmad
A fresh selection of writings by Marx and Engels on the national and colonial question. Usually, their analyses of European nationalisms on the one hand, and of the colonial experience in Asia on the other, are seen as totally separate bodies of writing. This selection, put together by the eminent Marxist scholar Aijaz Ahmad, is unique in that it tries to see all of that work as part of a single political and theoretical project.
pp. x + 252, hardcover Rs 325 / $ 15; paperback Rs 125
Special offer on hardcover only to LeftWord Book Club members:
50% discount for Members: Rs 162.50 / $ 7.50
40% discount for Associate Members: Rs 195
Price of paperback: Rs 75 for Members; Rs 87.50 for Associate Members
REPRINTED, WITH EPILOGUE UPDATED TO February 2001 Signpost: Issues That MatterA Division of Labour
A.G. Noorani
A scathing indictment of the Sangh parivar. Marshalling a wealth of factual and archival detail, eminent lawyer and political commentator A.G. Noorani puts the Sangh parivar in the dock in his characteristically forthright and hard-hitting style.
pp. xiv + 112, Rs 75 (Rs 45 for Members; Rs 52.50 for Associate Members) / $ 7 ($ 4.20 for Members)
local democracy and development
by T.M. Thomas Isaac with Richard W. Franke
The People’s Planning Campaign in Kerala is a mass movement to empower local bodies, to prepare plans for comprehensive local development, and to create an environment for radical institutional reforms. This book gives the inside story of this unique experiment in democratic decentralization that has attracted attention all over the world.
T.M. Thomas IsaAc is Associate Fellow at the Centre for
Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram, and member of the State Planning Boards of Kerala
and Tripura.
Richard W. Franke is Professor of Anthropology at Montclair State University.
Demy 8vo, pp. xiv + 359, hardcover only. Rs 400 (Rs 240 for Members; Rs 280 for Associated Members) overseas $ 25 ($ 15 for Members)
LeftWord classics
V.I. LeninIntroduction by Prabhat Patnaik
Lenin’s Imperialism is one of the most significant books of the twentieth century.
In his Introduction to this fresh edition, eminent Marxist economist Prabhat Patnaik places Lenin’s text in its historical context, explains its relevance, its impact on revolutionary praxis in the twentieth century, and situates Lenin’s theory of imperialism within the larger debate around this term that characterizes our own times.
PRABHAT PATNAIK is Professor of Economics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He is the author of Time, Inflation and Growth (1988), Economics and Egalitarianism (1991), Whatever Happened to Imperialism and Other Essays (1995) and Accumulation and Stability under Capitalism (1997).
Demy 8vo, pp. vi + 164, HC Rs 250 (Rs 150 for Members, Rs 175 for Associate Members), PB Rs 85 (Rs 50 for Members; Rs 60 for Associate Members) overseas HC $15 ($9 for Members) PB $10 ($ 6 for Members)
weakening Welfare
Madhura Swaminathan
Weakening Welfare is a powerful argument for expanding and strengthening the public distribution system (PDS) in a country where hunger, poverty and malnutrition are as endemic as in India.
Written in a lucid, non-technical style, the book presents a wealth of recent data that will be as handy for the expert as for the interested layperson.
madhura Swaminathan is Associate Professor at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai. She has worked extensively on issues of poverty, inequality and the standard of living. She has held visiting positions at the London School of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas (Mexico City), and taught at the University of Oxford, the University of Helsinki and the Helsinki School of Economics.
Demy 8vo, pp. viii + 140, HC Rs 275 (Rs 165 for Members, Rs 192.50 for Associate Members), PB Rs 95 (Rs 57 for Members; Rs 66 for Associate Members) overseas HC $17 ($ 10.20 for Members) PB $12 ($ 7.20 for Members)
on imperialist globalization
Two Speeches by Fidel Castro
Two memorable speeches from a master orator who has delivered a number of great speeches.
Castro has been applying his formidable intellectual powers and revolutionary experience in the recent period to analyse the phenomenon of neo-liberal globalization. Piercing the veil of the global propaganda of imperialism, he has bared the inner workings of the financial and economic system dominated by the United States.
Demy 8vo, pp. viii + 156, PB Rs 85 (Rs 50 for Members; Rs 60 for Associate Members) overseas $10 (for members $6)
Essays on The Communist Manifesto
Aijaz Ahmad, Irfan Habib, Prabhat Patnaik
edited by Prakash Karat
The Communist Manifesto is among the most widely read and disseminated texts in the world.
Along with the editor’s introduction, the present volume contains essays by three of India’s foremost Marxist scholars, who explain the relevance of the Manifesto in terms of Marxist theory and praxis. The volume also contains the annotated text of the Manifesto, ‘Preface to the English Edition of 1888’ by Engels, and a note on the publishing history of the Manifesto in India, compiled here for the first time.
Demy 8vo, pp. viii + 152, HC Rs 195 (Rs 117 for Members; Rs 136.50 for Associate Members), PB Rs 60 (Rs 36 for Members; Rs 42 for Associate Members) overseas HC $10 ($6for Members) PB $6 ($3.60 for Members)
Signpost 1: Issues that Matter
N. Ram
By exploding five nuclear devices on May 11 and 13, 1998 at Pokhran, the BJP-led government hijacked India’s independent, peace-oriented nuclear policy and twisted it out of shape.
N. Ram (Editor, Frontline), drawing on scientific inputs and assessments from physicist T. Jayaraman, assesses the reasons and implications of this move in a manner accessible to both the interested layperson and the specialist.
Demy 8vo, pp. viii + 120, hardcover Rs 175 (Rs 105 for Members; Rs 122.50 for Associate Members) overseas
HC $10 ($10 for Members) PB $6 ($3.60 for Members)
Signpost 2: Issues that Matter
Praveen Swami
In the summer of 1999, India fought off the Pakistani intrusion in Kargil. However, the end of the war does not mean the beginning of peace for people on either side of the border.
Drawing on his experience of several years of covering Jammu and Kashmir as a journalist, Praveen Swami of Frontline magazine unearths vital data and analyses the long-term reasons behind the war, its course, and its consequences. In this revised and updated edition, the author analyses, among other things, the post-Kargil escalation of militancy in Kashmir, the Report of the Kargil Review Committee, and the recent proposals concerning the ‘autonomy’ of Jammu and Kashmir.
Praveen Swami is the recipient of the Sanskriti Award for his reporting of the Kargil war.
Demy 8vo, pp. vi + 111, paperback Rs 60 (Rs 36 for Members; Rs 42 for Associate Members) overseas $6 ($3.60 for Members)
Henceforth, books from Tulika will also be available for LeftWord Book Club members at special prices.
(Figures in brackets indicate the price to be paid by Members and Associate Members of the Book Club, respectively)
India’s leading historian describes the earliest ages of human life in India, long before the existence of written records. First in a series meant for the layperson.
pp. x + 78, HC, Rs 160 (Rs 110 / Rs 125)
This survey, comprising of three essays on the Delhi Sultanate, the Vijayanagar economy, and the economy of Mughal India, is meant for the layperson as well as the student.
pp. vi + 50, PB, Rs 60 (Rs 40 / Rs 45)
Irfan Habib’s classic essays, put together for the first time.
pp. x + 381, PB, Rs 195 (Rs 135 / Rs 155)
Essays on the history of Mysore under Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan.
pp. xlviii + 206, PB, Rs 220 (Rs 155 / Rs 175)
Twenty-four leading scholars salute one of India’s most versatile and engaging Marxist intellectuals.
pp. x + 678, PB, Rs 450 (Rs 315 / Rs 360)
Essays on underdevelopment, contradictions of state-promoted development, and the political economy of ‘liberalization’.
pp. x + 244, PB, Rs 180 (Rs 125 / Rs 145)
Essays in this collection seek to map the sources and availability of information on different sectors and socio-economic variables; assess the quality and reliability of data; and report on the form in which the data are available.
pp. vi + 472, HC, Rs 750 (Rs 525 / Rs 600)
Essays on economic theory and economic history, on the dynamics of Indian agriculture, and problems of socialist economies.
pp. xvi + 460, HC, Rs 595 (Rs 415 / Rs 475)
Presents the latest archaeological evidence, in a non-technical way for the non-specialist.
pp. x + 168, PB, Rs 220 (Rs 155 / Rs 175)
An attempt to understand how Indians, under colonial subjection, came to terms with their past and their present, in order to envision a future for the society they lived in.
pp. xii + 212, PB, Rs 170 (Rs 120 / Rs 135)
The volume presents translations of all major Persian sources of Sikh history up to 1765, when Sikh power was established over Punjab.
pp. xii + 228, PB, Rs 200 (Rs 140 / Rs 160)
The volume commemorates the tercentenary of the Khalsa by focusing on the history of the Sikh Panth, setting it in the context of the general history of India.
pp. xxvi + 227, PB, Rs 200 (Rs 140 / Rs 160)
A collection of essays, lectures, and an interview, covering a vast spectrum of subjects, including fascism and the politics of Hindutva.
pp. xviii + 440, HC, Rs 550 (Rs 385 / Rs 440)
This volume chronicles the various armed revolts against the British empire in India.
pp. viii + 283, HC, Rs 495 (Rs 345 / Rs 395)
These essays cover various themes: the politics of social location, the production of ideologies, ways of theorizing women’s literacy, labour, and agency, and consent to patriarchal arrangements.
pp. xlix + 504, HC, Rs 650 (Rs 455 / Rs 520)
This volume of wide-ranging essays tries to situate the modern in contemporary cultural practice in India and the third world.
pp. xx + 436, HC, Rs 1400 (Rs 980 / Rs 1120)
The volume traces the evolution of Baroda as an important centre of contemporary art and art education from the nineteenth century to the present.
pp. 296, HC, Rs 2250 (Rs 1575 / Rs 1800)
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