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The genesis of this volume was in a collective initiative called South Asia Dialogues that, over a period of seven years from 1991 to 1997, brought together several leading members of the’ civil society from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, with an aim to develop a South Asian community. This collection of essays is invaluable in giving voice to those who believe in the idea of South Asia, who think as South Asians and who share the vision of developing a regional civil society of South Asia. It is useful for both the lay reader and policy makers In as much as it addresses a varied range of themes such as democratization, women and culture, conflict resolution and human rights; and offers concrete propositions for overcoming the obstacles to realizing the goal of a peaceful and prosperous South Asia.

This six volumes history of parliament is important contribution to parliamentary political science.

Political thinking and policy making in India have long been influenced by the belief that India is a rural country. The Census of 1981 and 1991 have helped in assailing these perceptions. In percentage terms the 1991 Census indicated about 25% of the population to be urban. The figure has gone upto 28%, according to the Census of 2001. But these arithmetical averages ignore the reality of absolute numbers. India\’s present urban population of about 285 million people is about 12 times as much as at the beginning of the century. In the next 20 years, the urban population will double itself. The statewide variations are already significant and will be more so in the future. While some states may still take refuge under percentages, for many others urbanisation is a strong economic, political and spatial reality. Maharashtra, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu will be nearly half urban whereas Karnataka and Andhra will be about 40% urban. Among the northern states Punjab, Haryana and Western U.P. will have significant levels and concentrations or urban population. So will it be in the Eastern states. The simple message is that urbanisation is not an aberration in space but a direct reflection and result of the economic changes. In the country as a whole as in most of the states, industry and services are contributing an increasing proportion to the GDP as compared to agriculture. Good agricultural performance and surpluses from the farm of economy are also a major stimulant to urbanisation. This study supported by HDFC, IDFC and IF&FS and is limited to the 5 states of Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. These states are the ones who are rapidly becoming urban. They are also characterised by their initiatives to promote industrial and economic growth. The study presents the likely spatial picture of urbanisation in these states and flags the important issues regarding physical planning, infrastructure, environment and governance.

The present study attempts to identify the problems, analyse political, economic and systemic causes, examine policy options and suggest a concrete blueprint for political reforms to ensure sovereignty of the citizens. It covers matters such as structural reforms of the electoral system, citizen-state relationship, multilevel governance, criminalisation, communalisation, casteism, corruption, population control, poor administration, illiteracy, unrepresentative character of legislators, flaws in the organisation and functioning of political institutions, parties and electoral law and process, questionable conduct of legislators, instability of government, inefficiencies of the civil services, funding of political parties and elections etc.

The volume is a part of a study being carried out in two phases. It represents and products of the first stage as a study of the political institutions as well as policy options in different areas undertaken by a group of eminent scholars. The second phase will concentrate on using the reservoir of all the inputs and preparing a blueprint for a necessary and feasible political reform agenda and desirable shifts in policies and priorities pursued by the state.

The end of the cold war and roll back of international communism together with the interrupted, but by no means aborted, Asian miracle and other modernising growth impulses have seen the emergence of a new geo-political and geo-economic architecture in Asia that is shaping what could become an Asian century. The Asian heartland and the Indian Ocean rimlands, that oscillated over history as the prime focus of political and economic power, are now reconnecting to create a new geo-strategic landscape of pulsating economic corridors and regional groupings.

Verghese would reorient India’s gaze towards these developments. What is unfolding recalls the past. The peoples of Asia long enjoyed a close interaction among themselves and the wider world, with the Silk Road and Spice Route serving as bustling highways of commerce and culture in an earlier globalised era. India and China were leading actors on the world stage until around 1700. Followed an interregnum of Western dominance until Nehru spoke of an Asia reborn at the Asian Relations Conference in Delhi in March 1947. That vision is in the process of being realised.

There are problems to overcome, not least those related to poverty, population, the environment, peace and stability in structuring a new multi-polar world order. Verghese suggests how some of these challenges might be addressed and what could be India’s role in this Asian Century in partnership with others.

Will governments be running the world in the next century? In this era of globalization, who will make the rules on investment, human rights and environment? How can citizens participate?”

These are some of the questions a team of researchers from World Resources Institute (WRI, Washington, D.C.), Lawyers’ Environmental Action Team (LEAT, Dar Es Salaam) and South Asia address in an independent assessment of the World Commission on Dams (WCD).

The WCD was a self-styled “experiment” in global public policy-making. It was set up to produce a set of international guidelines for the design, construction, operation and decommissioning of large dams and options on their alternatives.

The WCD undertook this task over two years, with a pledge to be independent, transparent, inclusive and representative of a diverse body of stakeholders. Participants in the process have included dam-building companies, multilateral development banks, affected people’s groups and other non-governmental organizations, private consultants, and the public at large.

During the 1990s, the conventional wisdom about the electricity sector —public ownership and integrated utilities —was challenged by a new model of private ownership and unbundled utilities. Debates about the viability, applicability, and feasibility of market-led electricity reforms continue today. Nonetheless, at the turn of the new century, countries around the world are taking tentative steps toward this new approach.

These shifts in the electricity sector have not occurred in isolation. The new model is part of a broader thrust toward the promotion of markets, a growing role for private capital, and global economic integration. These themes place electricity sector reforms squarely within larger processes of economic globalization and the debates about its merits and costs.

In Power Politics, Navroz K. Dubash and contributors from around the world show how electricity reform is, at root, an issue of sustainable development. Electricity reform represents an opportunity to focus attention on the 1.7 billion of the world’s poor without access to electricity. It could also be an opportunity to align investor incentives along a trajectory toward a clean energy future, one that reduces emissions of greenhouse gases while promoting development and supporting livelihoods. The concern is not solely one of a missed opportunity. In appropriately done, electricity reform could hinder progress toward a more socially and environmentally sustainable energy future.

Drawing on six country studies-Argentina, Bulgaria, Ghana, India, Indonesia, and South Africa-the contributors to this volume examine whether and how the process of electricity reform can support rather than hinder sustainable development. Instead of sustainable development, they find that financial concerns and donor conditions have driven electricity reform. Managed by closed political processes and dominated by technocrats and donor consultants, social factors play a limited role, and environmental considerations play almost no role in a re-envisioned electricity sector. Drawing on a detailed analysis of the political economy of electricity reform in the six country studies, the study concludes with recommendations toward a more equitable and sustainable electricity future.

This books deals comprehensively with the evolution of Indian nuclear weapons strategy, policy and posture. The first half of the book constitutes a substantial revisionist history in the main tracing the country’s strategic ethos and culture to the Hindu machatpolitik of Vedic India dispassionately deconstructing Mahatma Gandhi’s doctrine of non-violence, which was more a political tool to discomfit the British Raj than a blueprint for independent India’s defence and disclosing Jawaharlal Nehru’s basic realpolitik orientation. Archival evidence is marshaled to show that Nehru championed disarmament while pursuing nuclear weapons capability expressed abhorrence for military alliances but ensured India’s protection by the Western security alliance – the Pentagon’s plans and the British government’s measures for the ‘defence of India’ are here revealed for the first time and projected India as Third World leader in the Non-Aligned Movement with the help of the United States and the United Kingdom.

In the second half of the study the politics of India’s programme of nuclear weaponisation by autopilot is analysed in telling detail, as is the gradually changing strategic calculus and thinking about nuclear weapons and deterrence within the Indian government, the nuclear and defence establishment, the military, the bureaucracy, and the strategic community at large. The domestic and international pulls and pressures over the last five decades to weaponise or to desist from doing so are dissected, and actions contemplated to neutralise nuclear threats, like preemptive air strikes on Pakistani nuclear facilities exposed. In a perspective vein, various nuclear postures and force planning options are examined at length in the context of the emerging international and regional scenarios and the nonproliferation order, the option of maximising political and strategic military benefits with a megaton thermonuclear deterrent with an intercontinental ballistic missile reach is recommended.

Based on research into primary source material recently declassified documents in the US and British government archives and extensive interviews with decision-makers in the Indian nuclear policy loop – this is an authoritative study about India’s hesitant rise as nuclear power by a recognised expert in the field who was also member of the committee that drafted the nuclear doctrine.

This book is based on the papers presented at the Conference on the Citizen and Judicial Reforms under Indian Polity organised by CPR on 13-14 April 2002 and few special papers on judiciary discussed at earlier conferences on Political Reforms. It is a product of work on the Research Project on \’Political Reforms\’ funded at CPR by the Ford Foundation. Among other sensitive issues relating to required judicial reforms, it raises questions like who will judge the judges; and how can we bring justice to the ordinary citizen in a credible and people friendly manner.

Besides a very comprehensive and incisive introduction by the editor Dr. Subhash C. Kashyap, the present study contains valuable contributions from some of the most distinguished leaders moulding India Public opinion- parliamentarians including Lok Sabha Speaker, Governors and Cabinet Ministers; eminent judges including former Chief Justices of India; Jurists; leading advocates; senior administrators and academicians.

The book also outlines proposals for judicial reforms, their relevance and their effectiveness. It would certainly prove valuable to the lawyers, judges, jurists and all others concerned with law and justice.