Archives: Journal Articles

This article explores the complicated relationship between Hinduism and Democracy. It argues that modern Hinduism proved receptive to democratic ideals because democracy provided one plausible solution to the riddle of authority that beset Hinduism in the course of attempts to reform it. The article describes the ways in which Hindu nationalism poses a threat to democracy, and the resources Hindus can draw upon to resist this threat.

John Stuart Mill characterized the poverty alleviation problem as how to give the greatest amount of needful help, with the smallest encouragement to undue reliance on it. India has a long history of direct and targeted interventions to fight poverty through workfare schemes, subsidized food, farm-input and credit subsidies. More recently, and following the logic of Mills’ dictum, the Indian government wanted to ensure that rural households achieved a minimum income level cost-effectively, but without encouraging them to become dependent on public support. About 37% of Indians are poor; most are rural dwellers and earn their livelihood from agriculture (Tendulkar Report, 2009).

In November 2005, the Indian government embarked on an ambitious workfare scheme, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS), which guarantees hundred days of employment in unskilled manual labour at a minimum wage to every rural household each year. Some of its features include a time-bound employment guarantee and wage payment within 15 days (otherwise the government is penalized), prohibition of the use of contractors and machinery (to enhance direct benefits of the programme to the participants), facilities to be provided on the worksite, a 60:40 wage and materials cost ratio, and a mandatory 33 per cent participation for women. The scheme devolves considerable powers in planning and allocating resources to the local village councils (panchayats) and through social audits allows the community to monitor the progress. It also lists permissible works in the scheme such a s drought proofing, desalination of tanks and flood control. To minimize corruption, the scheme separates the agencies – banks and post offices – that pay from the ones that implement. During its initial years of operation, the NREGS involved an outlay of Rs 13,000 crore (for 330 districts); today that figure is Rs 40,000 crore.

India’s need to prevent a two-front threat & to be on the right side of the US underlies the sudden decision on a LoC ceasefire. This opens up many possibilities but Modi’s long-running anti-Pakistan domestic politics can come in the way of a durable peace.

Groundwater law in India gives individual landowners overwhelming control over groundwater. This is inappropriate in a context where groundwater is now the main source of water for the realisation of the human right to water. This also fails to provides the basis for effective protection of groundwater at aquifer level. Increasing dependence on groundwater for all the main water uses has made the need for reforms of the legal framework increasingly acute. This article argues that groundwater law must be reconceived around a new set of principles that recognise the common nature of groundwater, its importance in realising the human right to water, the need for a governance framework starting at the local level and the need for a strong aquifer protection regime. The proposed new framework is then examined in the context of the Groundwater Model Bill, 2011 that reflects in large part this new framework.

CoPs have played a key role in governing the environment. Yet, CoPs have only provided the institutional framework for governing issues falling under existing treaty regimes. They have not been able to go beyond the regimes they govern. In the case of water, the absence of a well-developed treaty regime has open the door to new non-governmental institutions taking the lead. This happens to coincide in part with the framework proposed by global administrative law that sees governance as a set of largely non-hierarchical relationships where states are not necessarily dominant. This article critically analyse the contribution that global administrative law makes to our understanding of environmental stewardship and looks at ongoing institutional reforms in the water sector that are not based on CoPs being the main actor.

In recent years, global “deliberative processes” bringing together government, civil society, and private sector actors have become increasingly common on the global stage. Past work on these processes has either read them as relatively unproblematic consensus-building exercises, or exercises in global corporatism. Using a case study of the World Commission on Dams, this article explores how formal global deliberative processes can be a strategy for global norm formation and legitimation. It suggests that global deliberation can indeed be a vehicle for emergence and propagation of norms, but that these processes face multiple challenges that are structural in nature. Three factors are identified as key elements in understanding norm emergence through global deliberation: the legitimacy of global deliberation linked to questions of representation and democratic procedure; the micropolitics of norm emergence; and the process through which incipient norms are institutionalized by states.

If the Aam Aadmi Party government wants to keep its promise to the slum-dwellers to resettle and rehabilitate them with dignity and humaneness, then it must act quickly to plug in the various loopholes and iron out the ambiguities present in the resettlement guidelines which were issued by the previous Delhi government in 2013.

A decade and a half after India enunciated its “Look-East” policy, shortly after the end of the Cold War, Its actual economic linkages with East Asia remain far too low for an aspiring Asian power. This article lays out the overarching geoeconomic and geopolitical variables at play in the region that must inform India’s posture and policy. The author argues that East Asia has evolved into a complex system where security and economic interdependence, rather than working at cross purposes may buttress each other. Furthermore, the structure of economic relations in the region has hitherto had an extraregional driver, which suggests China’s economic rise is based on an extensive multilateral division of labour. India’s immersion into the regional political economy will depend principally on the scale and quality of its manufacturing and industrial sectors.

This article examines how India’s domestic energy challenges have been shaped by global forces and how, in turn, India has engaged and is likely to engage in discussions of global energy governance. A central theme is that exploring India’s engagement in global energy governance requires a clear understanding of its domestic energy context and how this has changed over time. The article develops three narratives that have guided Indian energy governance domestically: state control; the grafting on of market institutions; and the embryonic linkage between energy security and climate change. In all these phases, Indian energy has been strongly influenced by global trends, but these have been filtered through India’s political economy, creating outcomes that constrain future policy implementation. This path-dependent story also carries implications for India’s engagement with global energy governance. With the rise of a new narrative around energy security, increasingly leavened with invocations of clean energy, India is positioned to reformulate its engagement in global debates. However, the perceived need, strategic clarity and resultant eagerness to engage in the task are all limited.

Policy Implications:

Energy-related decision making in India is dominated by national considerations. International organizations have limited influence with the exception of the multilateral development banks. However, global factors have an indirect and normative influence, from oil prices to larger trends toward market-based governance and climate change. Future global influences on Indian energy are, therefore, most likely to come from shifts in broad tendencies than from direct influence on specific decisions.
A concern for energy security, always present in Indian energy policy, has become dominant, replacing the primacy of a market-led energy narrative. However, energy security is being increasingly knit together with clean energy to open new narrative and institutional opportunities.
If India is to emerge as a norm maker rather than norm taker on energy, it will have to re-envision its foreign policy on energy. In particular, it will have to consider whether to balance its bilateral and regional initiatives with a robust multilateral approach, consider whether and how domestic energy considerations inform foreign policy, and how to project its domestic narrative of energy security and clean energy in the global arena.