The British historian EP Thompson once remarked that 'India is not an important country, but perhaps the most important country for the future of the world. Here is a country that merits no one's condescension. All the convergent influences of the world run through this society: Hindu, Moslem, Christian, secular; Stalinist, liberal, Maoist, democratic socialist, Gandhian. There is not a thought that is being thought in the West or East which is not active in some Indian mind'.
Thompson must have been reading the Economic and Political Weekly, the Bombay journal where these thoughts and influences converge and meet. Rich in information and glowing with polemic, its pages are an index to the life of India. On subjects as diverse (and important) as the economy, caste politics, religious violence, and human rights, the EPW (as it is fondly known) has consistently provided the most authoritative, insightful and widely cited reports and analyses. Among the journal's contributors are scholars and journalists, but also activists and civil servants—and even some politicians.
Like other such journals around the world, the EPW commands an influence far out of proportion to its circulation. It has shaped intellectual discussion in India, and had a profound impact on policy debates. Can one see it then as an Indian New Statesman? Or as a left-wing version of the American Weekly Standard? To this less-than-impartial reader the comparison is all to the EPW's favour. For one thing, it has never allied itself (howsoever loosely) to a political party. For another, it does not have a sugar daddy. Run on less than a shoe-string budget, it is chiefly sustained by the goodwill of its subscribers. But perhaps the most vital difference lies in its intellectual weightiness. Within its pages have been published the first and sometimes the finest essays of India's most eminent intellectuals: Jagdish Bhagwati, André Béteille, Amartya Sen, MN Srinivas and the like.
The EPW is a unique, three-fold mix of political prejudice, dispassionate reportage and scholarly analysis. The weekly begins with a few pages of unsigned commentary, arch reflections on the events of the past few days. The second part of the journal is taken up with signed reports from around the country. Here we find the 'news behind the news', so to say, stories of conflict between landlords and labourers in Bihar or of ethnic and secessionist movements in north-east India. The journal's back pages are filled each week with book reviews and two or three academic papers, soberly presented and massively footnoted.