India S Persistent Dilemma

This book shows that the failure of successive Indian governments to effect meaningful agrarian reforms has led to a political economy in rural India that is shaped, as it was prior to independence, largely by the interests of an elite minority of landholders. .

In the Global South, indigenous people have been continuously subjected to top-down, and often violent, processes of post-colonial state and nation building. This book examines the development dilemmas of the indigenous people (adivasis) of the Indian state of Kerala. It explores the different facets of change in their lives and livelihoods in the context of modernisation under different political regimes. As part of the Indian Union, Kerala followed a development approach in tune with the Government of India with regard to indigenous communities. However, within the framework of India’s quasi-federal polity, the state of Kerala has been tracing a development path of its own, which has come to be known as the ‘Kerala model of development’. Adopting a historical political economic approach, the book locates the adivasi communities in the larger contextual shifts from late colonialism through the post-independence years, and critically analyses the Kerala model of development with particular reference to the adivasis’ changing political status and rights to land. It pays special attention to policy dynamics in the neoliberal phase, and the actual practices of decentralisation as a way of including the socially excluded and marginalised. Offering a theoretical elaboration of the interaction between class and indigeneity based on intensive fieldwork in Kerala, the book addresses adivasi development in relation to the general development experience of Kerala, and goes on to relate this particular study to the global context of indigenous people’s struggles. It will be of interest to those working in the fields of South Asian Development, Political Economy and South Asian Politics.

The rise of China and India is the story of our times. The unprecedented expansion of their economic and power capabilities raises profound questions for scholars and policymakers. What forces propelled these two Asian giants into global pacesetters, and what does their emergence mean for the United States and the world? With intimate detail, Shalendra D. Sharma's China and India in the Age of Globalization explores how the interplay of socio-historical, political, and economic forces has transformed these once poor agrarian societies into economic powerhouses. This book examines the challenges both countries face and what each must do to strike the balance between reaping the opportunities and mitigating the risks. For the United States, assisting a rising China to become a responsible global stakeholder and fostering peace and stability in the volatile subcontinent will be paramount in the coming years.

Hindu women in India have independent right of ownership to property under the Law of Succession (The Hindu Succession Act, 1956). However, during the last five decades of its operation not many women have exercised their rights under the enactment. This volume addresses the issue of Hindu peasant women's ability to effectuate the statutory rights to succession and assert ownership of their share in family land. The work combines a critical evaluation of law with economic analyses into allocation of resources within the family as a means of addressing gender relations and explaining resulting gender inequalities.

This book brings together new perspectives on China’s engagement with South Asian countries. It examines emerging trends in the ties between China and South Asia in the geo-political, geo-strategic and geo-economics context and looks at opportunities for collaboration and connectivity between them. Drawing on extensive case studies, this volume discusses issues such as China’s overarching Belt Road Initiative (BRI), regional responses and alternatives to BRI, the new politico-economic drivers in the region, India’s China puzzle, the Wuhan informal summit, Nepal and its security dilemma in the region and China’s role in peace and stability in Afghanistan. It presents analysis, debates and the way forward for a comprehensive South Asian regional understanding in the wake of the advancing Chinese presence in South Asia. An important contribution in the study of the developing pan China–South Asia vision, this book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of international relations, Chinese studies, Asian studies, defence and strategic studies, regional cooperation, foreign policy, geopolitics, comparative politics and political studies.

The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia draws upon new theoretical insights and fresh bodies of data to historically reappraise partition in the light of its long aftermath.

Genetic engineering is changing the terrain of development studies. Technologies with unprecedented potential - the capacity to move genes across species - have created widely politicized phenomena: ‘Frankenfoods’, ‘GMOs’, and ‘The Terminator’. En masse, the public has reacted with equanimity or appreciation to genetically engineered pharmaceuticals, beginning with insulin, but transgenics in food and agriculture have raised a globally contentious politics. This book begins with the needs of the poor - for income, nutrition, environmental integrity - and evaluates the theory and evidence for contributions from transgenic crops. Social scientists with expertise in regional studies, economics, sociology, agriculture and political science join biologists to bring specialized knowledge on genuinely new questions created by the genomics revolution; questions of: ecological integrity biodiversity international trade the costs and effectiveness of biosafety protocols. The authors collectively conclude that predictions of disaster for the poor from transgenic technology are uninformed by empirical results, rest on misunderstandings of biotechnology or the poor or both, or get the science wrong. Yet the triumphalism of pro-transgenic forces, however, must be tempered by serious unanswered questions: much is unknown, but the transgenic genie is out of the bottle. In this much-needed book, an emergent empirical literature allows scholars in disciplines ranging from micro-biology to economics and political science to assess the potential effects of transgenic organisms on poverty through multiple dynamics of property, yields, prices, biodiversity, environmental integrity and nutrition.

Do democracies bring about greater equality among their citizens? India embraced universal suffrage in 1947 and yet its citizens are far from realizing equality. The U.S. struggles with intolerance and inequality well into the twenty-first century. Nico Slate offers a new look at the struggle for freedom that linked two former British colonies.