India 2012

Today, India’s education sector remains a victim of poor policies, restrictive regulations and orthodoxy. Despite being enrolled in schools, children are not learning adequately. Increasingly, parents are seeking alternatives through private inputs in school and tuition. Students are dropping out from secondary school in spite of high financial returns of secondary education, and those who do complete it have inferior conceptual knowledge. Higher education is over-regulated and under-governed, keeping away serious private providers and reputed global institutes. Graduates from high schools, colleges and universities are not readily employable, and few are willing to pay for skill development. Ironically, the Right to Education Act, if strictly enforced, will result in closure of thousands of non-state schools, and millions of poor children will be left without access to education. Eleventh in the series, India Infrastructure Report 2012 discusses challenges in the education sector — elementary, secondary, higher, and vocational — and explores strategies for constructive change and opportunities for the private sector. It suggests that immediate steps are required to reform the sector to reap the benefits from India’s ‘demographic dividend’ due to a rise in the working age population. Result of a collective effort led by the IDFC Foundation, this Report brings together a range of perspectives from academics, researchers and practitioners committed to enhancing educational practices. It will be an invaluable resource for policymakers, researchers and corporates.

TERI Energy Data Directory Yearbook, or TEDDY, is an annual publication brought out by TERI since 1986. TEDDY is often used as a reference in other peer-reviewed books and journals for energy and environment-related data. It gives an annual overview of the developments in the energy supplying and consuming sectors as well as the environment sector. It also provides a review of the government policies that have implications for these sectors of the Indian economy. TERI Energy Data Directory Yearbook, or TEDDY, is an annual publication brought out by TERI since 1986. TEDDY is often used as a reference in other peer-reviewed books and journals for energy and environment-related data. It gives an annual overview of the developments in the energy supplying and consuming sectors as well as the environment sector. It also provides a review of the government policies that have implications for these sectors of the Indian economy. Each edition of TEDDY contains India’s commercial energy balances for the past four years that provide comprehensive information on energy flows within different sectors of the economy and how they have been changing over time. These energy balances and conversion factors are a valuable ready reckoner for anybody working on energy and related sectors.

Have neoliberal policies truly yielded beneficial effects for India? ‘Two Decades of Market Reform in India’ presents a collection of essays that challenge the conventional wisdom of Indian market reforms, examining the effects of neoliberal policies enacted by the Indian government and exploding the myths that surround them. In particular, the volume questions the perceived benefits of India’s reform policies in the areas of growth, agriculture, industry and poverty alleviation, and examines how the government’s focus on preventing a fiscal deficit caused a large-scale decline in development expenditures, which in turn has had a negative impact on the well-being of the poor. With its rich and insightful analysis, ‘Two Decades of Market Reform in India’ bravely shines a light on the true implications of India’s neoliberal governmental policies, and provides a revealing indication of how policy reform since 1991 has, at times, detrimentally affected the general populace of India.

Illuminates the thrilling possibilities of female grassroots activism in India through the story of Sampat Pal and her Pink Gang.

In the initial phase of the Obama administration, India’s ruling class and strategic community formed a perception that the spirit of strategic partnership between the two countries might be diluted on account of China looming large in the priorities of this administration. Despite occasional hiccups in their relationship, this perception was overshadowed by the administration’s recognition of India’s role as counterweight to China in the Asia-Pacific region. This book addresses and re-evaluates the perceptions, policies and perspectives of public policy makers and bureaucratic elites in both India and the US in setting and articulating the tone, tenor and substance of the multi-faceted ties between the two countries. The scope of the book is not exclusively limited to the bilateral relationship in the critical areas such as the Indo-US nuclear deal, defence, security and strategic partnership. Its concerns and ramifications are much wider in global and regional contexts, covering/involving security architecture in the Asia-Pacific region, the interface between terrorism and weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), China as a factor in India-US relations, and the fallout of the New Delhi-Washington partnership on South Asia.