The future of copyright in India

Legal context: The copyright laws in India are set to be amended with the introductionof the provisions for anti-circumvention and Rights ManagementInformation in the Indian copyright regime although India isunder no obligation to introduce these changes as it is nota signatory to WCT or WPPT. Key points: The main purpose of these provisions and measures is to preventillegal commercial copying, a menace which hits the Indian movieand music industry significantly enough to ensure that the industryforms a strong lobby in such proposals. India has amended itscopyright legislation over the years to accommodate technologicalchanges and prevent piracy; however, the problem has only escalatedover the years. Technological measures impose restrictions onthe access to content and impose other restrictions on the useof the same. Practical significance: Who are the actual stakeholders behind advocating these changes?Is it Bollywood or the same Hollywood studios which lobbiedfor the same changes in international legislation? What maybe the cultural implications of adopting such changes in Indiancopyright laws? The paper would attempt to assess the culturaleffect of the combined legal and technical measures being proposedunder the copyright laws in India.     

Farm tractorisation,productivity and labour employment: A case study of Indian Punjab

The objective of this paper is to determine the effects of farm tractorisation on output and human labour employment on Punjab farms in India. The residts seem to suggest that, this far, the use of tractors has resulted in higher output and more employment. The authors believe that the threat from farm tractorisation is not all that great; the use of tractors is likely to be confined to certain areas only, and there too, any displacement of labour should be possible to control through appropriate public policies.     

Measuring the severity of physical injury among assault and homicide victims

Criminologists seldom have attempted to measure the severity of physical injury to victims of aggravated assault and homicide, even though it is significant to many of their research efforts. Previous attempts have been neither medically accurate nor medically acceptable. In this paper the author discusses the shortcomings of these efforts and introduces an alternative method which is valid, reliable, and medically acceptable. In addition, the author discusses its applicability to research the impact of medical intervention on violent criminal assault, on factors which contribute to the severity of assaultive injury and the lethal outcome of violent assault, on specific questions regarding the patterns of offending and victimization, and on the administration of criminal justice.     

Utopia in Crisis? Subaltern Imaginations in Contemporary Bihar

Abstract

The Subaltern Studies Collective inaugurated an important point of departure in Indian historiography and social sciences by demanding that attention be directed to subalterns (a term adapted from Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks) as makers of their own destinies. Their scholarship raises three issues, which are discussed in this article. The first of these relates to the empirical observation about subaltern resistance to elites. The second pertains to the analytical dichotomy between elite and subaltern modes of conducting politics. The third centres on the valorisation of a putatively coherent fragment that seeks autonomy from the totality of the state. The fundamental problem with the perspective advanced by the subaltern studies scholars stems from their implicit assumption that utopian ideals centred on reclaiming dignity and asserting social equality are necessarily derivative of European Enlightenment ideals.