Archives: Journal Articles

It is now clear that the global economic crisis was not just the pricking of another bubble. It is the extreme manifestation of the post-Cold War globalisation model that had been promoted vigorously by the Atlantic powers. It has brought to the fore not only the structural weaknesses of America’s real economy but also the extraordinary disadvantage of having a single reserve currency system. Most analyses of the international political economy in the post-crisis phase, however, remains perfunctory even as several observers pay lip service to a new world order. The structural causes and possible consequences of the contemporary situation are addressed in this article.

The Indian Supreme Court’s chief duty is to interpret and enforce the Constitution of 1950. Running to more than a hundred-thousand words in its English-language version, this document is the longest basic law of any of the world’s independent countries. It contains, at latest count, 444 articles and a dozen schedules. Since its original adoption, it has been amended more than a hundred times, and now fills about 250 printed pages. It is fair to say that the Supreme Court, operating under the aegis of this book-sized liberal constitution, has by and large played a significant and even pivotal role in sustaining India’s liberal-demo- cratic institutions and upholding the rule of law.1 The Court’s justices, who by law now number twenty-six, have over the years carved out an independent role for the Court in the matter of judicial appointments and transfers, upheld extensive judicial review of executive action, and even declared several constitutional amendments unconstitutional. The Court upon which they sit is one of the world’s most powerful judicial bodies, and yet precisely because of this its career has been and remains shadowed by irony and controversy, with implications for democracy that are both positive and problematic.

The concept of subaltern urbanization is about vibrant smaller settlements—outside the metropolitan shadow—sustainably supporting a dispersed pattern of urbanization. We propose a theoretical framework which draws on an empirical research collective using both large statistical and land‐use data sets and detailed case studies in non‐metropolitan Indian geographies. Anchored in postcolonial urban studies, it looks beyond the logic of agglomeration and questions our understanding of settlement hierarchies and the location of social and economic innovation processes, opening up an alternative reading of urbanization that could be valuable for other regions. Local agency is core to this concept, transporting the arguments of the ordinary and the subaltern beyond large cities. Our findings, apart from emphasizing the agency of smaller settlements, highlight their multiple local and translocal flows, shaping an autonomous external engagement that could exist independently of relationships with large cities. Further, even though the rural and the urban seep into each other, they do so organically, unlike the process in planetary urbanization. Additionally, the rural‐urban dichotomy remains performative, in that governance regimes influence the urbanization process. Appreciation of these dynamics can provide insights towards a better understanding of the system of human settlements, which is our goal in advancing this framework.

Thus far, debates relating to the adoption of the proposed amendments to the Patents Act 1970 have focused overwhelmingly on its consequences for the pharmaceutical sector. However, the Act is only one among several other legal instruments expected to have a significant impact on the future development of agriculture. This article argues for the widening of the patents debate to include agriculture, which under the current WTO regime, is now bound to its regulations relating to trade and intellectual property. It also looks at several legal instruments, already in place or in the offing, examining them together in the light of the linkages and overlaps between them. At the same time, these instruments need to be examined in context of the international framework, for increasingly, international treaties and conventions have come to exercise some influence at the national level.

“It is harder to travel within the SAARC region than to Bangkok or Singapore”, remarked Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the 18th SAARC summit held in Kathmandu, Nepal. The need for a SAARC visa has been deliberated over the years among its member countries.
The SAARC Visa Exemption Scheme was launched in 1992, which currently allows 24 categories of entitled persons that include Dignitaries, Judges of higher courts, Parliamentarians, Senior Officials, Businessmen, Journalists, Athletes etc to travel without taking visas of the countries they visit. This scheme was a product of the discussions that took place during the 1988 Summit held in Islamabad. Realizing the importance of having people-to-people contacts among the citizens of SAARC countries, the leaders from the member countries of SAARC decided that certain categories of dignitaries will be entitled to a Special Travel document, which would exempt them from visa within the region.

Indian policymakers have been slow in responding to changing metropolitan forms and have largely visualised urbanisation as city expansion. As a result, metropolitan regions, which are complex entities with multiple municipal and non-municipal institutional arrangements, have become mere creatures of state governments with neither the necessary strategic flexibility nor political legitimacy. In part, this is because the 74th constitutional amendment of 1993 has failed to visualise the dynamics of large complex urban formations. This paper suggests both a need to confront this blind spot in the 74th constitutional amendment for long-term durable solutions and to creatively work through available legislative and institutional arrangements in the short to medium term.

This response to Arjun Kumar’s “Discrepancies in Sanitation Statistics of Rural India” (EPW, 10 January 2015) points out that the article does not mention another gap in official data: omission of households that reside in settlements that are categorised as census towns. This response shows that taking this category into account can alter Kumar’s observations.

The Right to Education Act, 2009, has received mostly negative reactions from various quarters. These reactions have raised fundamental questions about the provision of elementary education as a public good and the role of the State in it. In this article an attempt is made to do a historical review of elementary education policies, placing them in the context of the constitutional objective of “equality of opportunity” and the fundamental right to education now guaranteed through the 86th amendment perationalised in the Act. The policies are reviewed with the lens of inclusion, as that has been, and continues to be, perhaps the most challenging issue in the education sector, even today. To what extent have the government’s policies, and their modes of implementation, addressed the concerns and constraints faced by children from marginalised and excluded families in accessing their right to education as equal citizens? What are the implications for the future role of the State in the provision of basic education?

The fundamental right to water in rural areas is well-established in India, but the actual content of this right has not been elaborated upon in judicial decisions. There is no general drinking water legislation that would provide this missing content. This analysis of various initiatives taken by the government for rural drinking water supply finds that these initiatives do not amount to a comprehensive binding legal framework covering all the main aspects of the fundamental right to water.