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Economic and Political Weekly

Economic and Political Weekly
Economic and Political Weekly logo
DisciplineSocial sciences
LanguageEnglish
Edited byGopal Guru
Publication details
Former name(s)
Economic Weekly
History1949–present
Publisher
Sameeksha Trust (India)
FrequencyWeekly
Standard abbreviations
ISO 4Econ. Political Wkly.
Indexing
ISSN0012-9976
LCCNsa67002009
JSTOReconpoliweek
OCLC no.46735231
Links

The Economic and Political Weekly (EPW) is a weekly peer-reviewed academic journal covering all social sciences, and is published by the Sameeksha Trust.[1] In January 2018, academic Gopal Guru was named the new Editor of the journal.[2] Guru will be Editor for a period of five years. The previous full-time editor was Paranjoy Guha Thakurta.[3] The Trust had earlier appointed Guha Thakurta as the new editor of the journal with effect from 1 April 2016.[4] His appointment came at a time when many social scientists were opposing the supposed removal of the previous editor C. Rammanohar Reddy, who resigned in January 2016[5] only to controversially end in 2017 with Guha Thakurta also resigning.[6]

Gopal Guru is currently at the Centre for Political Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi,[7] and is Editor-designate of the journal.[8][9] The Sameeksha Trust board comprises eminent persons from academia and business, namely, Deepak Nayyar (chairman), D N Ghosh (Managing Trustee), Andre Beteille, Deepak Parekh, Romila Thapar, Rajeev Bhargava, Dipankar Gupta, and Shyam Menon.[10]

History

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The journal was established in 1949 as the Economic Weekly and edited by Sachin Chaudhuri.[11] It obtained its current name in 1966.[12] It was edited by Krishna Raj for more than three decades[13] and is among the most prestigious scholarly journals in India,[14] having had contributions from many of the country's best known scholars.[13]

Past authors include Amartya Sen, Manmohan Singh, Jagdish Bhagwati, Ramachandra Guha, Angus Deaton, Kaushik Basu, Romila Thapar, Jeffrey Sachs, Prannoy Roy, T.N. Srinivasan, Subramanian Swamy, Christophe Jaffrelot, Jean Drèze, Mani Shankar Aiyar, Andre Beteille, Ashok Gulati, and Nirupam Bajpai.

Political position

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The journal is known for its strong editorial stance with a "social conscience"[15] and for taking left-leaning positions in its editorials, which were occasionally critical of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) government in West Bengal for not being radical enough.[16] The journal was harshly critical of some of the policies of the Indira Gandhi government during the Emergency, as well as of state complicity in the 2002 Gujarat riots.[17]

Abstracting and indexing

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The journal is abstracted and indexed in CAB Abstracts[18] and Scopus.[19]

Licensing

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EPW has licensed its material for non-exclusive use to 3 content aggregators - Contify, Factiva and JSTOR.

Contify disseminates EPW content to LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters, Securities.com, Gale Cengage, AcquireMedia and NewsBank.

Factiva and JSTOR have EPW content on their databases for their registered users.

Controversy

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In 2016, C. Rammanohar Reddy quit as editor in a controversial move which led to several academics expressing concern in an open letter,[20] and at least one board member, Jean Dreze, resigning from the board.[21][22] Shortly after, his successor Paranjoy Guha Thakurta also quit in 2017 after a controversial article about the Adani Group was removed from the website amidst reasons that many felt were unclear or unjustified.[23][24] In its defence, the Trust posted a statement on the EPW website stating that Guha Thakurta had violated his position by responding to a legal notice sent by the Adani Group without informing the Trust.[25] This once again led to various scholars and commentators questioning the Sameeksha Trust that runs the journal.[26][27][28]

Eventually professor and scholar Gopal Guru was appointed as the new editor in January 2018.[29]

References

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  1. ^ Guha, Ramachandra (December 2012). "Krishna Raj and the Economic and Political Weekly". The Caravan. Retrieved 2019-12-30.
  2. ^ "Political Scientist Gopal Guru Appointed New Editor of EPW". The Wire. 5 January 2018. Retrieved 8 January 2018.
  3. ^ Paranjoy Guha Thakurta indianexpress.com. 24 January 2016. Retrieved 14 June 2016
  4. ^ "Paranjoy Guha Thakurta is new editor of EPW". Indian Express. 24 January 2016.
  5. ^ "EPW editor's exit: 101 academics write, Dreze quits board". Indian Express. 16 January 2016.
  6. ^ Dhasmana, Indivjal (19 July 2017). "EPW editor Guha Thakurta quits over differences with board". Business Standard India.
  7. ^ Guru, Gopal. "Gopal Guru Webpage". jnu.ac.in. Retrieved 15 February 2018.
  8. ^ "EPW Letter's Page" (PDF). epw.in. 10 February 2018. Retrieved 15 February 2018.
  9. ^ Kishore, Roshan (6 February 2018). "Image of EPW Masthead". twitter.com. Retrieved 15 February 2018.
  10. ^ "About Us". Economic and Political Weekly. 50 (23). 2015-06-05.
  11. ^ On Sachin Choudhuri - the founder of a unique magazine/journal (Sixty years ago) pragoti.in. Retrieved 16 September 2012 Archived January 16, 2014, at the Wayback Machine
  12. ^ Calcutta Diary Ashok Mitra. Psychology Press, 1977 - Social Science - 206 pages
  13. ^ a b EPW readies for second innings business-standard.com. 4 July 2008. Retrieved 15 January 2014
  14. ^ Goddard, Stephen (1983). A Guide to Information Sources in the Geographical Sciences. Lanham, Maryland, USA: Rowman & Littlefield. p. 122. ISBN 978-0-389-20403-9.
  15. ^ EPW plans editions in Indian languages hindu.com. 31 January 2010. Retrieved 15 January 2014
  16. ^ Kohli, Atul (1990). Democracy and Discontent: India's Growing Crisis of Governability. Cambridge University Press. p. 150. ISBN 9780521396929.
  17. ^ "Krishna Raj". The Guardian. London. 17 February 2004. Retrieved 1 May 2010.
  18. ^ "Serials cited". CAB Abstracts. CABI. Retrieved 2015-07-31.
  19. ^ "Content overview". Scopus. Elsevier. Retrieved 2015-07-31.
  20. ^ "A Letter to the Sameeksha Trust, from the 'EPW Community'". TheWire.in. 15 January 2016.
  21. ^ "EPW editor Ram Reddy to step down from the prestigious journal after a decade in the chair". Scroll.in. 13 January 2016.
  22. ^ "Former EPW Editor Ram Reddy's 2016, Letter to the Sameeksha Trust". Newsclick. 21 July 2017.
  23. ^ "Adani Group 'SLAPP' Pushes EPW Editor Out of His Job". TheWire.in. 18 July 2017.
  24. ^ "Paranjoy Guha Thakurta quits as EPW editor". The Hindu. 18 July 2017.
  25. ^ "Statement issued by the Sameeksha Trust: 2 August 2017". Economic and Political Weekly: 7–8. 2 August 2017.
  26. ^ "Reinventing EPW". The Indian Express. 3 August 2017.
  27. ^ "Murdering a Great Journal, One Editor at a Time". TheWire.in. 8 August 2017.
  28. ^ "An Open Letter to EPW's Trustees from Partha Chatterjee". TheWire.in. 31 July 2017.
  29. ^ "Political Scientist Gopal Guru Appointed New Editor of EPW". TheWire.in. 5 January 2018.
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