Archives: Books

This is a detailed and timely study of the development of groundwater use and the implications of its depletion in agrarian societies. The volume is based on fieldwork in Gujarat and highlights policy implications.

The history of international environmental dialogue is a history of conflict between developing and industrial countries encompassing the framework, nature, and agenda of international environmental law. The conflict is focused on who should take responsibility, in what measure, and under what conditions to contain global environmental degradation. In the face of inequality in resources and contributions to global environmental degradation, sovereign states have crafted a burden sharing arrangement rooted in differential treatment. Differential treatment refers to the use of norms that provide for different, more advantageous, treatment to some states. Real differences exist between states, and the norms of differential treatment recognize and respond to these differences by instituting different standards for different states or groups of states.

This book explores the value of differential treatment in integrating developing countries into international environmental regimes. It systematically categorizes and analyses the terms of integration, respecting differential treatment across new generation environmental treaties. It ferrets out the philosophical and practical bases for differential treatment in environmental treaties, and creates a framework within which differential treatment can be assessed. It suggests certain boundaries to differential treatment in international environmental law, and explores in detail the reach of differential treatment in the climate regime.

The conflict between industrial and developing countries has thus far significantly impaired the ambition of the international environmental agenda. The relevance of this book lies in its ability to provide a principled framework within which the conflict between industrial and developing countries in the international environmental realm can be examined and resolved.

Water resources are an issue of ever increasing importance worldwide given rising populations and increasing environmental degradation. Water has also become a divisive issue, both within and between countries.

This book discusses and analyses several interlinked themes related to crucial aspects and many dimensions of water resources in India. The author draws upon his vast administrative experience to present a lucid view of the issues affecting water resources while critically renewing policy and constitutional provisions.

After nearly six decades of its existence, there is a pervasive feeling that India’s democracy is in crisis. But what is the nature of this threat? In this essay Pratap Bhanu Mehta, reminding us what a bold experiment bringing democracy to a largely illiterate and unpropertied India was, argues that the sphere of politics has truly created opportunities for people to participate in society. But, looking at various facts, he also finds that persistent social inequality in the one hand, and a mistaken view of the state’s proper function and organization on the other, have modified and hindered the workings of democracy and its effects in innumerable ways. Posting the quest for self-respect as democracy’s deepest aspiration, this essay explores how inequality and the crisis of accountability have together impeded collective action to achieve such an end. To recover this sense of moral well being and responsibility, Mehta suggests, is the core of the democratic challenge before us.

Optimistic, lively and closely argued, the Burden of Democracy offers a new ideological imagination that throws light on our discontents. By returning to the basics of democracy it serves to illuminate our predicament, even while perceiving the broad contours for change.

How does culture matter for development? Do certain societies have cultures which condemn them to poverty? Led by Arjun Appadurai, Mary Douglas, and Amartya Sen, the anthropologists and economists in this volume contend that culture is central to development, and that cultural processes are neither inherently good nor bad and never static. Rather, they are contested and evolving, and can be a source of profound social and economic transformation through their influence on aspirations and collective action; yet they can also be exploitative, exclusionary, and can lead to inequality.

Culture and Public Action includes case studies from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, which examine the role of culture in community-based development, ethnic conflict, famine relief, gender discrimination, and HIV-AIDS policy. The editors conclude by proposing how a “cultural lens” can better inform future research and public policy on development. Accessible, balanced, and engaging, this book will be of interest to anyone concerned with the relationship between culture and economics, and the design and implementation of development policy.

India and former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY) of which the present State Union of Serbia and Montenegro (SM) had been a part, enjoyed close and friendly relations. Personal friendship between late Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India and the late President Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia was legendary. The warm political relations between India and the former Yugoslavia resulted in growing bilateral economic relations in the hey days of Non Aligned Movement in the 1960’s. However,, these bilateral economic relations have been going through a declining phase for several years due to the impact of several dramatic developments at the global; regional; and national levels. SM and other successor states of SFRY as a region have experienced continuing political turmoils and ethnic conflicts and internal wars in the post cold war period since the disintegration of the former Soviet Union. SM has faced international economic sanctions and bombarding by teh forces of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation which have delayed its recovery and economic progress.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, both India and Serbia-Montenegro are rediscovering themselves in the vastly changed context of the global, regional and national developments. Both countries are now desirous of re-engaging especially in economic terms to reap mutual benefits. The Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi and the Institute of International Politics and Economics at Belgrade took the initiative of organising annual bilateral policy dialogues to assess the gains from and effective ways for re-engagement between India and Serbia. This book presents selected papers from the first two such policy dialogues at track-II level held in 2003 and 2004.

This book should be found useful by policy makers and researchers worldwide interested in regional and bilateral co-operation in India, Asia, Serbia-Montenegro and Europe.

Canada and India are in many ways natural partners – two middle powers sharing a common political and legal tradition derived from the British Commonwealth, as well as a commitment to multiculturalism, democracy and international institutions. India’s founding Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had a personal friendship with Canadian Prime Ministers Trudeau and Pearson. Despite this promising start, bilateral relations never took flight – a function of Cold War politics, India’s relative isolation through much of the post-independence period, the enormous distance between the two countries, and deep disagreements over India’s testing of nuclear weapons in 1974 and 1998. By the start of the new millennium India and Canada were ready to embard on a new phase in bilateral relations – one defined not only by trade and investment interests, but also by a contemporary understanding of their standing in the world, and the potential contribution that both countries can make to issues of regional and global significance.In leading the shift to a new way of thinking about Canada-India relations, the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi launched the “Track 2” Canada-India Policy Dialogue series in 2003. These annual meetings provide a venue for scholars, policy analysts, business people, and civil society representatives to discuss issues that are of mutual interest to Canada and India going well beyond the limitations of official dialogue.This volume contains papers and policy recommendations from the first two dialogues and is organsied into three sections: Perspectives on Regional Integration in Asia, Perspectives on the WTO and Doha Development Agenda, and Strengthening Canada-India Bilateral Relations. These essays break new ground in identifying areas of mutual interest and provide a glimpse into the potential for stronger and deeper Canada-India ties.