Asim Mukhopadhyay

Asim Mukhopadhyay is a veteran researcher, teacher and consultant-cum-contributor on socio-economic and political situations in India and Bangladesh to various newspapers and journals such as The Indian Express, Economic and Political Weekly (Mumbai) and Frontier (Kolkata). He is continuing his research on the depressed communities, mainly the tribals, semi-tribals, minorities, with special emphasis on marginal farmers, artisans, the urban poor living on city pavements and scrounging garbage dumps as ragpickers. An MA in modern history from Jadavpur University (1966), Kolkata and a PhD from Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata (1991) on political economy in Bangladesh in the 1970s, he has authored several books in Bengali and English on child labourers in the beedi industry, terracotta temples of West Bengal, documents on the Bangladesh Liberation Movements, women?s participation in local self-governance (the Panchayati Raj), peasants? struggles in India (he has contributed a chapter to Peasant Struggles in India, edited by Prof A.R. Desai, published by Oxford University Press, 1979). This is his debut novel.