BHARAT DOGRA
An Author and Journalist Writing on Development, Environment, Human Rights and Society
Publications
When I started working as a freelance journalist over 50 years back, I soon had a feeling that in order to write in a comprehensive and satisfying way, apart from writing for newspapers and magazines I needed a small space of my own. Thus was born Social Change Papers, a cottage scale publication effort which in the last four decades has brought out about 400 books and booklets. While I am the author of over 90 per cent of these books, other authors and co-authors include Jeremy Seabrook, Jagmohan Singh, Reshma Bharti, Madhu Dogra, Reena Mehta and Roopam Singh.
It has always been a struggle to ensure the economic viability and sustainability of this effort, and a large part of the credit should go to the support and encouragement of my wife Madhu, and her firm faith in this effort. As our daughter Reshma Bharti was growing she first became a volunteer at exhibitions of books and later joined as an author and co-author of about 15 books and booklets.
Some of our most important publications are about finding an alternative path of development based on integration of basic concerns of justice, peace and environment protection. The latest books in this category are One Decade to Protect Life and Earth History and Next Century. Another book on this theme written much earlier titled Another Path Exists was well received. Hindi versions of all these books (independent books, not translations) are also available.
Another category of books includes biographies of inspiring persons. Here the emphasis has been more on biographies of inspiring leaders of freedom fighters of India in Hindi. Reshma Bharti, Jagmohan Singh and Madhu Dogra have contributed much to this effort. Apart from freedom fighters; scientists, writers and labour leaders have also been covered in this section.
In the third category we have a lot of reports on various voluntary organizations and constructive activities on environment protection, organic farming, mobilizing weaker sections and workers, people's movements including women centered movements .
In another section we have several books on food security, eco-friendly farming and broad-based rural development with special focus on rights of the poor (in English as well as in Hindi).
The overall perspective is of justice, peace and environment protection with special focus on the search for alternative paths. A very wide range of issues have been covered. All the titles, including out of print ones are listed. The idea of listing out of print titles is that at least one copy is safe with us so that photocopy of even out of print titles can be obtained. This is how such cottage scale efforts are different.
These publications have been widely used by people's movements and others yearning for a society based on justice, peace and environment protection. Some of our highly relevant work remains unpublished because of lack of resources and for the same reason some out of print books and booklets could not be repinted. Anyone who wants to help this cottage scale effort can contact me at bharatdogra@gmail.com or at 011-25255303.