Exploring the importance of megacities and megacity-regions as one of the defining features of the 21st century, this Handbook provides a clear and comprehensive overview of current thinking and debates from leading scholars in the field. Highlighting major current challenges and dimensions of megaurbanization, chapters form a thematic focus on governance, planning, history, and environmental and social issues, supported by case studies from every continent.
Analysing vital questions for contemporary urban research, this Handbook looks at: what place megacities and megacity-regions occupy in a world of cities; how they interrogate current thinking about urban society, theory, and policy; and what role these largest of urban areas will play in shaping humanity’s future. Key contributions reveal that research needs to further focus a critical and analytical lens on the particularities and distinctive issues associated with megaurbanization.
A timely and essential read for urban studies, urban geography, and public policy students, the interdisciplinary nature of this Handbook provides a thorough view into the features and importance of megacities and megacity-regions. Public policy-makers and planners will also benefit from the wide-ranging case studies included.
Following the success Pakistan Insights 2019 that was based on discussions held in the Pakistan Study Group (PSG) of the Vivekananda International Foundation, it was decided to continue with the Insight series, making it an annual feature. Despite the constraints imposed by COVID-19, the PSG has met virtually and continued to discuss issues relating to Pakistan in a holistic manner, going beyond the headlines. Pakistan Insights 2020 is a comprehensive book that deals with most aspects of Pakistan. Articles include an overview of developments in 2019-20, internal developments and civil-military relations, the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic challenges, the terrorism landscape, developments in J&K after the 05 August 2019 changes, Pakistan Occupied Jammu & Kashmir, nuclear programme, defence production capabilities, and the digital landscape. The external section looks at Indo-Pak relations, Pakistan`s relations with China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Malaysia and Russia as well as Pakistan’s role in Afghanistan and the Afghan peace process. The book concludes with some thoughts on the future trajectory of Pakistan.
India is one of the countries most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. It is also one of the highest greenhouse gas (GHG) emitters in the world, although its per capita GHG emissions are very low. An active participant in international climate negotiations, India’s Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) is considered 2 °C compatible, and its current policy framework is likely to support two of the three targets set out in its NDC.
While the success of the policy framework will be determined by various social, environmental, economic and political factors, it will also depend on the ability of individuals to hold public and private actors accountable for their actions (and inactions), which aggravate the causes and impacts of climate change.
A review of the legal and regulatory landscape in India reveals that the main environment and energy related laws, policies and regulatory processes offer several hooks to bring climate claims to courts. While there have been cases where courts have referred to climate concerns, there is yet to be a judicial decision on the justiciability of climate claims, or one that directs measures specifically for mitigation or adaptation. The jurisdiction of the Supreme Court of India and the High Courts as well as that of the National Green Tribunal is quite broad, and they could potentially decide various types of climate claims. However, one should not be overly optimistic as Indian courts often refrain from interfering in government decisions and policies on infrastructure development and Indian courts are notorious for their overflowing dockets and massive judicial delays.
India’s federal governance for long-term water security has not received its due attention. The discourse about federal governance is generally dominated by that of fiscal federalism. The limited work about federal water governance is restricted to interstate river water disputes and their resolution. Poor indicators of national water resources governance do not inspire confidence about its long-term security. The chapter posits that this is an outcome of the federal constituents—the states and the union territories—assuming exclusive powers over water governance. They pursue inward and territorialized strategies for water resources management, leading to conditions akin to a collective action problem to pursue national development and long-term security goals. It is long recognized that the Centre has to play an anchoring role and work with states towards pursuing these goals. Does it have the required leverage to influence states? This chapter, perhaps a first, is a modest effort to address this question. It takes a closer look at the historical changes in budgetary allocations of the Centre and selects states for water resources governance towards an empirical assessment of this leverage. The chapter concludes that the federal water governance in India is weakly structured and poorly nurtured to pursue its national development and long-term sustainability goals.
One of the most visible facets of urbanization in India is that it cannot be associated always with a rising standard of living or equal opportunity in terms of the generation of economic and social capital. While there are substantial ambitions of upward mobility among the rural people when they move to cities, their urban destinations remain more unequal than their village homes, and this inequality has been continuously rising since the early 1990s. There is also an increasingly large aspirational push in rural spaces to acquire urban characteristics, which is evident in the gradual convergence in consumption behavior, or increasing investment in education, especially in places such as census towns which are rapidly morphing from rural to urban. However, this drive toward being urban leads to a more complex set of social, political, and institutional processes of city building, which is often coupled with the fuzzy coalitions between the “business class” and the “political class” and is responsible for a divisive landscape marked by not only a visible inequality of income but also inequality in housing, security of land and tenure, basic infrastructure, and access to social safety nets.
While it is widely understood that urban inequality is multidimensional, the vectors of it are also diverse, ranging from social, economic, political, and more importantly, spatial. While dealing with public goods such as basic infrastructure, the question of spatial inequality, or “spaces where people live” becomes more important, primarily due to two reasons. The first is related to the continuously dynamic and haphazard nature of urban growth, which is an offshoot of a much “informalized planning regime,” where planning not only regulates but also “determines and limits” the spaces for urban inhabitance9 across social and economic lines. This often results in informalities in terms of inhabitation and production of city space, and the supply of basic services gets constrained due to the violation of planning regulations. It is worth noting that such spatial informalities are diverse and access to services varies by the different ways these spaces are settled, ranging from squatting on public land to building structures on land not earmarked for residential housing. The second factor that makes spatial inequality interesting relates to the wider question of citizenship and variation of micro-political orders in differentiated city spaces.
This chapter focuses on international environmental law (IEL) in the courts of India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Review of the case law reveals that Indian courts have led the adoption of the IEL principles in this region, with occasional references to IEL by Bangladeshi and Pakistani courts. This appears to follow the trend of non environmental cases, where also the Bangladeshi and Pakistani judiciary is more reluctant than the Indian courts to turn to international law. Although courts in the three countries have engaged with IEL, it has mostly been at a superficial level. Their reliance on IEL is not always accompanied by strong judicial reasoning, making it difficult to determine their content and scope, and even their relevance in particular scenarios. Given development imperatives in these countries, courts are often faced with the ‘economy/development versus environment’ question. In such situations, the courts rely on IEL in an instrumental fashion in support of the final outcome of the case, rather than engaging with the substantive content of the IEL principles.
India has over the years tailored its foreign policy to adapt to the changing global geo-political environment with reasonable success. It has established stable relationships with Southeast Asian countries individually and with ASEAN as a grouping as part of is ‘Look’ East and ‘Act’ East policies although there is a mutual feeling that overall, the relationship has not fully lived up to their expectations. Meanwhile, the shifting geopolitical environment in the Indo-Pacific marked by the rise of an aggressive China and uncertainties about the US and US–China relations is forcing a re-calibration of India’s strategic, security and foreign-policy options. This includes a crystallisation of the Quad over the years of which India is a part that could have implications for ASEAN centrality. In engaging ASEAN and the emerging geo-political realities in Asia and the world, are there new strategic and policy options available for India in East and Southeast Asia? This paper looks specifically at some economic strategies that can be contemplated.
