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In the study of electoral politics and political behavior in the developing world, India is often considered to be an exemplar of the centrality of contingency in distributive politics, the role of ethnicity in shaping political behavior, and the organizational weakness of political parties. Whereas these axioms have some empirical basis, the massive changes in political practices, the vast variation in political patterns, and the burgeoning literature on subnational dynamics in India mean that such generalizations are not tenable. In this article, we consider research on India that compels us to rethink the contention that India neatly fits the prevailing wisdom in the comparative politics literature. Our objective is to elucidate how the many nuanced insights about Indian politics can improve our understanding of electoral behavior both across and within other countries, allowing us to question core assumptions in theories of comparative politics.

An energy supply approach is inadequate to India’s energy requirements at a time when multiple objectives need to be addressed. The state of play in energy supply and demand is examined, and the recovery of an older tradition of attention to energy demand patterns in addition to energy supply is argued for. The gains from an explicit attention to the fact that India has to address multiple and simultaneous objectives in shaping energy policymaking are laid out, and emerging methodologies to serve this goal are discussed. Shifts in governance patterns are a necessary part of transitioning to a broader, and more development-focused approach to energy policy.

The second Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation in April 2019 witnessed a transformed discourse on China’s grand connectivity initiative. Evoking an agreeable geo-economic vision, the joint communique spoke of “extensive consultation,” “green,” “people-centred and sustainable development” as well as “high quality, sustainable infrastructure” that is “inclusive and broadly beneficial” (Belt and Road Forum 2019a). There is little doubt that China viewed the forum as a platform to exude more responsive and multilateral norms, with Xi Jinping himself acknowledging some of the problems with the initiative. There are three broader trends that might have convinced Beijing that the time was ripe for an adjustment.

IN December 2019 Parliament delivered a deathly blow to India’s secular, plural constitutional foundation. The Citizenship Amendment Bill (CAB) passed in the Lok Sabha on 9 December and in the Rajya Sabha on 11 December, has fundamentally transformed what it means to be an Indian.

The Indian Constitution and the subsequent Citizenship Act of 1955, adopted a universal, religion-neutral idea of citizenship. India belonged equally to all. It was home to all who called themselves Indian, irrespective of religion. This was the foundation of India’s secular promise. This is what defined the idea of India. The citizenship amendment, 2019, upends this fundamental promise. It introduces religion as a marker of citizenship and in this process legitimizes through law, the ideological construction that India is a Hindu nation, the natural home of all Hindus in which Muslims will be consigned to second class citizenship – an idea that India had firmly rejected in 1947.

Along with the Citizenship Amendment, the BJP has reiterated in Parliament its commitment to implement a nationwide National Register of Citizens (NRC). In the run-up to the 2019 general elections, Amit Shah promised the nation that his party would ‘remove every single infiltrator from this country except Buddhists, Hindus and Sikhs’. He likened illegal immigrants to ‘termites’ and ‘ghuspethiya’ (intruders). As Home Minister, six months later, armed with the twin instruments of the Citizenship Amendment and the NRC, he is now close to fulfilling this promise. But in the process he has unleashed a state sponsored project of ‘othering’ which strikes at the heart of India’s plural, secular ethos that is the foundation of the Indian republic.

The Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 (CAA) seeks to fast track citizenship for persons belonging to specified minority communities, namely Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis and Christians from a specified list of neighbours – Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The bill stipulates that persons belonging to these specific communities and countries will not be treated as ‘illegal’ and be eligible for naturalization as Indian citizens within six years, rather than the stipulated ‘no less than 11 years’ of residence in India. Responding to concerns (and protests) over the implications of the amendments in the North East, the 2019 amendment exempts certain areas in the North East from this provision. In addition, the amendment introduces an important provision empowering the Indian state to cancel registration of Overseas Citizens of India (OCI) cardholders on grounds of violation of laws in the country.

The full import of the amendment can only be understood when scrutinizing the careful, selective identification of certain ‘minority communities’ and ‘countries’ at the cost of others. The explanation for this selection is provided in the ‘Statement of Objects and Reasons’ appended to the CAA, which states that these three countries have an official state religion. It is for this reason, the argument goes, that persons belonging to Hindu, Sikh, Parsi, Jain and Christian communities have faced persecution on grounds of religion. Speaking in the Lok Sabha during the debate on the bill, Home Minister Amit Shah reiterated this view. The Nehru-Liaqat Pact of 1950, he argued, was signed to protect minorities in India and Pakistan, but has not been implemented in spirit by our neighbours. The amendment is aimed at redressing this historical wrong.

Although independent regulatory agencies are emerging worldwide, there remains little understanding about how they operate in practice, particularly in developing countries. This paper seeks to examine the practice of electricity regulation in India, using case studies of three state-level electricity regulators. Based on documentary analysis and interviews with regulators, government, utilities and stakeholders, the paper examines how regulation is shaped by institutional and political context, how regulators make decisions in practice, and how they engage with stakeholders and with what effects. Based on the Indian experience, we suggest that in a rapidly changing electricity sector, the separation between the political and economic content of regulatory decisions, as is often advocated, may not be feasible or indeed desirable. Instead, we suggest a more proactive regulatory approach where governments give regulators the latitude to proactively steer the sector. For this approach to be viable, regulators need to build adequate technical capacity, institutional legitimacy, and democratic legitimacy in their dealings with stakeholders. This approach entails a bolder, and more challenging vision of regulation, but one that promises greater transformational potential than does the model of technocratic and apolitical regulation.

As the election season kicks into high gear, a ragtag collection of regional parties1 have a chance to play spoiler for the two big national parties, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Congress. These parties have won enough vote share to be pivotal in forming almost every government since the 1990s onwards. But since its sweeping victory in the 2014 national election, a reinvigorated BJP has begun to assert itself in new parts of India and challenged the standard narrative of regional parties being kingmakers in Indian politics. In 2014, the BJP won 282 out of 543 seats, a majority by itself. What does the expansion of the BJP beyond its traditional regional bases portend for regional parties in India? How are centre-state relations being renegotiated as the party system in India is caught in shifting sands?

The recent uproar about the toxic levels of pollution in the country’s national capital region has once again brought to fore the failure of the regulatory and legal mechanisms in India to control air pollution. Despite an early legislative acknowledgment of the issues relating to air pollution, and regulatory mechanisms set up consequently, India has not been able to restrict the sharp upward trajectory of air pollution. While several issues with regard to the legal and regulatory regime governing air quality in the country deserve serious and urgent consideration, this paper focuses on one issue in particular – the liability regime for violation of air quality standards. The paper is divided into three parts. The first part discusses the relevant provisions of the law pertaining to liability – civil and criminal – for causing air pollution. The second part identifies three critical issues that have emerged in the current liability regime: (1) the Pollution Control Boards do not have the power to levy penalties; (2) criminal prosecution is not an effective solution; and (3) the National Green Tribunal Act does not provide complete relief. The third and final part of the essay proposes a way forward. It is suggested that the Pollution Control Boards need to be granted additional enforcement powers, and administrative fines for violations should be introduced, albeit with certain conditions.

The World Commission on Dams (WCD) has aroused debate as an innovation in global governance. I suggest that the WCD did, indeed, have many innovative features, but argue that processes such as the WCD are better suited to propagating norms than making rules at the global level. The norm setting and propagating role is critical because there are no other plausible mechanisms of debating the larger ideas that inform decision-making, in a way that credibly brings in voices of the poor and powerless. I develop this argument by looking at three aspects of the WCD: its characteristics as a global governance mechanism; how it sought to achieve legitimacy; and its role as an agent of regulative versus normative change.

A reply to ‘Paris Agreement: Differentiation without Historical Responsibility?’ by Kirit S Parikh and Jyoti K Parikh (EPW, 9 April 2016), which deepens the discussion on the key concepts of co-benefits and historical responsibility.

Suggested citation: Dubash, N.K and Khosla, R (2016) : ‘​​Recovering Key Strategic Concepts in India’s Climate Policy’, Economic and Political Weekly,Vol L, No 24, pp 127-129​.