Dear Readers - A few things about socialsciences.in and contributors of articles to it

At several points, as the administrator of this website I have thanked people for various things.  All that has been in the About section, and I have a feeling that it is one section that very few people visit.  I have therefore decided to put up a blog post with the hope that this will be better read than the About section. I will end this blog piece with a round of thanks, but before that I must begin at the beginning.

The beginning is actually quite simple to identify.  It was around the month of May, 2011 that this website actually went up on the web and over the last one year it has grown significantly.  The idea behind starting this site was to try and provide a good resource to students to enable them to find different knowledges from the various social science disciplines at one place.  The idea was also that the material on the site will be contemporary, both as in new material and also as in having subjects that satisfy contemporary interests.  Many different ideas were iterated and finally after a great deal of deliberation the present format was decided on.  The person who enabled this to happen by providing not just the design (which has deliberately been kept minimal) of the site but also the web space to host it is one young man who goes by the name of Venkatesh Goteti.  Venkatesh has had his education at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands and is today a partner of an internet publishing company called Azri Software solutions.  This company deals with a number of educational institutions of higher learning and is focussed on providing solutions that enable students and teachers to better utilize resources of the technological variety for wider and deeper penetration.  E learning modules, strategies of technology deployment for specific educational institutions and purposes are the amazing strengths of Venkatesh and his young team at Azri. Whatever Venkatesh and Azri have provided for socialsciences.in, be it know how or web space or design, has been purely voluntary and free of cost and I have a huge debt to him and Azri for this wonderful support.  No amount of thanking is adequate so I will refrain from doing so.

Another person whose contribution to the website in managing it is immense goes by the name of Pradeep Mohan.  He is even younger than Venkatesh and is an engineering graduate with a lot of passion for many things one of which is web design.  Over the last one year, whenever Venkatesh and his team have been busy, it has been Pradeep Mohan who has provided unstinting support in making changes to the website, adding sections and many other such things.  He is also a busy young man but he has never ever said no to any favours I have asked him and he mostly executed them in the middle of the night after finishing his full day of work.  I have often wondered if the young man has ever gone to sleep. His services too needless to say came without a cost and that has helped in keeping this website clean. When we were initially victims of spamming, it was Pradeep Mohan who provided a fool proof security to the website to keep it from being spammed again. Touch wood, it has worked so far and wonderfully at that.  I will refrain from thanking him too since as in the case of Venkatesh and Azri, in his case too no amount of thanking will suffice.

Administering this website has been an eye opening experience.  Initially I had some trepidations about contributions coming in.  But amazingly and to my utterly pleasant surprise, contributions have come in a big way.  In one of the earlier paragraphs I had mentioned that the content on the site has grown significantly.  The important word here is significantly, since the idea behind this resource is to provide good quality material and not something to just fill up space.  I have been most fortunate in finding true and dedicated academicians who have not only contributed regularly but also provided the site with top quality research articles.While I have every once in a while written to the contributors to tell them how many people were reading their articles, I have never once written about it for your consumption.  I shall break that tradition today to tell you that some of the articles have been read by thousands and what has really surprised me is the fact that more research articles are read then lessons and perspective pieces.  While I whole heartedly welcome this trend, I would ask you to also have a look at some of the articles in the perspective section seriously as well since they have been written by contributors who have long standing eminence and are therefore are brilliant.  They have been put in the Perspectives section if they do not have foot notes.  This is just a procedural formality and does not take away the academic merit of these articles.  Please do pay more attention to this section as well.

Those of you that visit the website regularly are already familiar with the contributors but some have been more generous than others and my thanks go out to all of them.  However, I will make special mention of Prof. M.P. Singh, Prof. Balveer Arora, Prof. Samir Kumar Das and Dr. Amman Madan.  Prof. M.P. Singh has sent material without my soliciting it too much and it would please you all to know that his articles are read in the hundreds within two or three days of their being uploaded.  The encouragement that I have received from this doyen of Indian academics is simply unbelieavable but nevertheless most true.  Prof. Balveer Arora has placed a big body of his work at my disposal to upload whenever I think appropriate and this has humbled me in more ways than one.  An academician of his stature still shows such tremendous commitment to the cause of education and this country should thank God that there are people like Prof. Singh and Prof. Arora.  Dr. Amman Madan too has done what Prof. Arora has done; placed his works at my disposal.  I think his pieces on the Sociology of Merit are path breaking and I would like more people to pay attention to what he says since he is one of the most committed, sincere yet humble academicians that I have met. Prof. Samir Kumar Das sends his work despite his being a Vice Chancellor and that itself speaks volumes about his committment to this cause. It is my privilege to know persons of his calibre and commitment. Prof. K. Srinivasulu is another person who has placed an entire resource at my disposal and I have thank him profusely for that. Prof. Parthasarathy and Prof. Ravinder Kaur have contributed an article that is most read and my thanks to them.

I would also like to thank Dr. Rekha Pappu for her support to the site with her unusual but very insightful articles that have kept off the beaten track.  Everytime I have asked her for some work, Dr. Rekha has immediately obliged. I would also like to thank Dr. Krishna Menon who has given me some excellent pieces which are very well received and it is my fond hope that more shall follow from her.  Another person who has placed an entire set of articles at my disposal is Dr. Sudarshan Reddy.  Dr. Madan, Dr. Pappu and Dr. Sudarshan Reddy have provided the much needed variety on the website which otherwise has an overwhelming Political Science bias.  I have been trying to rectify this but the process is taking more time than it should ideally take.  But it is going to be rectified.  I would ask for some help from you here.  Even if you are a research student you can make your contribution by sending in articles or suggesting to peers or your teacher to join this cause.  Mr. Seyed Hossein Zarhani who is a PhD scholar at the Heidelberg University has provided excellent articles and it is my wish that other students also take his lead and contribute.  I would also like to thank Prof. G. Ram Reddy for his contribution in the form of articles and as support to me in the cause. Prof. Sanjeev Kumar Sharma is another friend and well wisher who has contributed articles and more importantly moral support to keep this site going.

There is another set of contributors who are not really in the academic world but have a process of thinking which is worthy of great social scientists.  One such person is Mr. S. Balakrishnan and another is Mr. Kartikeya Kompella.  Both have dabbled in the advertising world while the former has given up that side to pursue social science, the latter is trying to bring academic concerns and real world concerns on one platform.  Another such person is Mr. Priyadarshi Sahgal who has contributed to this website and all three have assured me that there are more pieces to come from them.  Needless to say I look forward to their contributions and greater involvement of people from the non academic side. 

I would like to thank the readers who have made keeping this website alive really worth the while.  I hope the ranks of contributors and readers will swell and perhaps one day the line dividing the writers from the readers can be obliterated with readers also becoming writers.  The biggest benificiary of this website is me since I get to read all these wonderful pieces of writing and therefore widening my horizons constantly.

It is important that I hear from you so that I know what you think of this site.  This will help me in making it better.  You can write with your articles, suggestions and any othe feedback to me at feedback@socialsciences.in or at administrator@socialsciences.in.  I cannot emphasize how important it is to hear from you and I am sorry to say that this is one area where there is only silence.  I would like to have more than just analytics figures to know how this site is being received and for that you need to write.  Please do oblige.  Thanks.