Indian Geography in the 21st Century

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VIEWS ON THE BOOK
“Past intellectual trajectories and knowledge productions require both, a
sense of historical embeddedness of the discipline and a constant
questioning and reassessing the constructs therein. Agendas and visions
have to be continuously questioned and changed, reconfigured and
renegotiated and the onus rests primarily on the younger generation of the
scholars. The present book is an important contribution towards this
responsibility. The critical questioning of some of the established concepts
and practices in terms of theory and methods is the highlight of the book.
In doing so, there is a desire to be creative and bring in what can be termed
as 'insiders’ view'. The book is a refreshing break from some of the the
past writings in the discipline”.



PREFACE
The 21st century is the beginning of a new world in which ‘reality’ is passé
and ‘realities’ of multiple possibilities are accepted norm. In academe too
it needs open-hearted welcome, acceptance and adoption without any sort
of prejudiced reservation. Disciplinary water-tight compartmentalization
similarly is passé. Under the sway of emerging approach to knowledge
creation, disciplinary boundaries tend to collapse; at best disciplines provide
simply the context and orientation. The overarching and all embracing
stretch of the virtual world rejects the age related superiority/inferiority. It
seems again that edge of age over ability is passé as the present era is of
ageless concepts. Schwartzberg (1983/2009) and Mukerji (1992/2009)
openly acknowledged how the (undue) dominance of old geographers by
virtue of their sheer seniority is taking its toll in India. No wonder, then,
that younger professionals do not get their due place (both in informal
interactions and formal academic space) and encouragement to express
their minds.