The Dynamics Of Conflict And Peace In Contemporary South Asia

This book engages with the concept, true value, and function of democracy in South Asia against the background of real social conditions for the promotion of peaceful development in the region. In the book, the issue of peaceful social development is defined as the conditions under which the maintenance of social order and social development is achieved – not by violent compulsion but through the negotiation of intentions or interests among members of society. The book assesses the issue of peaceful social development and demonstrates that the maintenance of such conditions for long periods is a necessary requirement for the political, economic, and cultural development of a society and state. Chapters argue that, through the post-colonial historical trajectory of South Asia, it has become commonly understood that democracy is the better, if not the best, political system and value for that purpose. Additionally, the book claims that, while democratization and the deepening of democracy have been broadly discussed in the region, the peace that democracy is supposed to promote has been in serious danger, especially in the 21st century. A timely survey and re-evaluation of democracy and peaceful development in South Asia, this book will be of interest to academics in the field of South Asian Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies and Asian Politics and Security.

This volume explores how we theorize, politicize, and practice peace and conflict discourses in the social sciences. As concepts, peace and conflict are intricately interwoven into a web of complementary discourses where states and other actors are able to negotiate, deliberate and arbitrate their differences short of the overt and covert use of physical violence. The essays in this volume reflect this eclecticism: they reflect on concerns of contemporary conflicts in world politics; the dissection of the ideas of peace and power; the way peace studies join with global agencies; peace and conflict in connection to geopolitics and identity; the domestic basis of conflict in India and the South Asian theatre including class, social cleavages and gender. Further they also process elements like globalization, media, communication and films that help us engage with the popular tropes and discursive construction of the reality that play critical roles in how peace and violence are articulated and acted upon by the elites and the masses in societies. This volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of political science, international relations theory, peace and conflict studies, public policy and area studies. It will also be a key resource for bureaucrats, policy makers, think tanks and practitioners working in the field of international relations.

This book explores the experiential and affective dimensions of structural transformation in South Asia through contemporary and historical accounts of life, ageing, illness, and death. The contributions to this book include analyses from various regions in South Asia, and topics discussed uncover how people’s experiences of life, ageing, illness, and death are entangled with the technology of governance, biomedicine, neoliberal restructuring and other national/international policies. Structured in three parts – governance, technology, and citizenship; well-being and restructuring of the social; waiting, hesitation, and hope as attitudes in facing the precariousness and fundamental uncertainty of life – the book brings to light the ways in which people face and continue to engage with their own and others’ lives cautiously, waveringly, but with a sense of hope. A novel contribution to the study of how people struggle or navigate their lives through the conditions of inequity and precariousness in South Asia, this book will be of interest to researchers studying anthropology, sociology, history, medical and development studies of South Asia, as well as to those interested in cultural and social theory.

This book examines the multi-layered aspects and the complexities of inclusive development in South Asia based on recent data and using innovative methodology. The book offers an analysis of the existing ground realities in terms of economic and inclusive development, presenting relevant discussion and findings. It discusses lower castes, tribes, religious/ethnic minorities, and other socially vulnerable people, as well as gender, rural–urban, and educational disparities in South Asia, and highlights that all these issues are interrelated. Structured in two parts—Spatial Dimensions, Labour, and Migration, and Social Dimensions and Beyond Inclusion—the chapters present emerging new concepts related to socio-economic and inclusive development and use effective and valid methods and methodology covering the ground realities-based information and secondary data-based analysis. Evaluating the extent to which inclusive development has been realised in South Asia, the contributors explore a new approach towards the concept of ‘inclusiveness’ by drawing on the experiences of the diverse societies in South Asia. An immensely useful contribution to the analysis of different economic and social issues in different countries in South Asia, focusing on inclusivity, this book will be of interest to researchers working on South Asian Politics and Development Economics.

Explains and illuminates the increasing violence, scale, frequency and intractability of internal conflicts in South Asia. This examination of the nature and dynamics of these conflicts explores dimensions of regional politics and conflicts

This book is a historical study of modern Gujarat, India, addressing crucial questions of language, identity, and power. It examines the debates over language among the elite of this region during a period of significant social and political change in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Language debates closely reflect power relations among different sections of society, such as those delineated by nation, ethnicity, region, religion, caste, class, and gender. They are intimately linked with the process in which individuals and groups of people try to define and project themselves in response to changing political, economic, and social environments. Based on rich historical sources, including official records, periodicals, literary texts, memoirs, and private papers, this book vividly shows the impact that colonialism, nationalism, and the process of nation-building had on the ideas of language among different groups, as well as how various ideas of language competed and negotiated with each other. Language, Identity, and Power in Modern India: Gujarat, c.1850–1960 will be of particular interest to students and scholars working on South Asian history and to those interested in issues of language, society, and politics in different parts of the modern world.

This book investigates the roots of rapid economic growth of India in recent decades, by exploring historical processes from the late colonial period. Based upon decades-long archival and field research, this book deals with the period from the late nineteenth century to 2013 and offers an integral viewpoint of the economic history of India. While critiquing the conventional understanding that links recent economic growth only with the development of high-tech, export-oriented service sectors under the liberalised economy, the book suggests deeper and wider roots of development that had a cumulative effect in three stages. First, the agrarian development and rural socio-economic changes from the end of the nineteenth century. Second, the state-led import-substitution industrialisation since 1950 that established the industrial foundations for future economic growth. Third, the economic reforms since 1991 that helped technology-intensive industries find new markets with improved quality of production. For the first time available in English, this book by the late Professor Haruka Yanagisawa, who was a leading figure in the South Asia studies collective in Japan, is an important contribution to the academic tradition of economic history of India. It will be of interest to researchers in the field of social and economic history, sociology, anthropology and economies of South Asia.

This book describes and analyzes the transformation of Indian economy taking into account historical changes and present dynamics of the rural-urban nexus. India has recently experienced a period as a high-performing economy, with the great improvement of indices of human development, including literacy rates, life expectancy, child mortality rates and others. In contrast to this bright outlook, features such as the retarded growth of women’s average height, the noticeable gap between male and female population, the overwhelming proportion of informal employment in the manufacturing sector, or increasing pollution overshadow India’s future, in some cases pose a threat to lifestyle and environment. Examining the rural–urban nexus where the new transformative dynamics of Indian socio-economy is most conspicuous, the contributors to this book shed light on the actual changes taking place at the bottom of Indian society through regional comparisons and spatial differentiation. The book offers unique perspectives on the topic produced mostly by Japanese scholars, including analysis of original data, that have hitherto been unavailable and inaccessible to an international audience. As the first book published on the rural–urban nexus in India, this book will be of interest to researchers studying South Asian History, Economics, Politics, Geography, Sociology and Anthropology, Development Studies and Economic History.