All Paths Lead to Rain: Explaining why Watershed Development in India Does Not Alleviate the Experience of Water Scarcity

Abstract

Watershed development (WSD) projects in India are key to meeting a range of human development goals in rain-fed agrarian landscapes. However, outcomes are often observed to be partial and short-lived. We offer a novel perspective on the reasons. Our analysis shows that the dominant ‘water narratives’ of WSD policy and practice and the lived experience of local people contribute to a naturalisation of water scarcity, resulting in widespread views that WSD is primarily a means for increasing irrigation water supply. We show how this over-simplifies the complex problem of agricultural water use and perversely contributes to a continuing experience of water scarcity rather than its resolution.     

Marine bacterial succession as a potential indicator of postmortem submersion interval

The process of decomposition of bodies in the marine environment is poorly understood and almost nothing is currently known about the microorganisms involved. This study aimed to investigate the microbes involved in decomposition in the sea and to evaluate the potential use of marine bacterial succession for postmortem submersion interval (PMSI) estimation, for which there is currently no reliable method. Partial pig remains were completely submerged during autumn and winter and were regularly sampled to document marine bacterial colonisation and the changes in community composition over time. Five stages of decomposition were recognised, some of which exhibited characters specific for partial carrion. Marine bacteria rapidly colonised the submerged remains in a successional manner. Seasonal differences were observed for the rate of decomposition and also for several groups of colonising bacteria. Marine bacteria specific for particular PMSIs were identified. This study provides an insight into the involvement of saprophytic marine bacteria in the decomposition of mammalian remains in the sea and is the first to explore the use of marine bacterial colonisation and succession as a novel tool for PMSI estimation. We propose that with further study, marine bacterial succession will prove useful for determination of the length of time a body may have been immersed in a marine environment.     

Introduction

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has emerged as an outspoken challenger to US geopolitical preeminence in the Americas. This study explores the framing practices employed by mainstream newspaper outlets in the United States in their coverage of President Chávez over a ten-year time period—between 1998, the year he was first elected president, and December 2007. This content analysis examines media output from a number of influential newspapers: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Using an inductive approach, I identify and critically assess the dominant media frames that emerged over this time period: the Dictator Frame, the Castro Disciple Frame, the Declining Economy Frame, and the Meddler-in-the-Region Frame. I also explore how journalistic norms—like personalization, dramatization, novelty, and authority-order—inform media coverage of this key Latin American leader.     

The regional politics of scale: revisiting the functional aspects of the labour market dualism

This article seeks to revisit Arthur Lewis’s theory of labour market dualism, while focusing on human resource development in the form of labour productivity, to explain its usefulness in the Caribbean Community’s (CARICOM) contemporary policy discourses around non-economic integration in an era that is now classified as the Caribbean Educational Policy Space. The focus is on how key assumptions around labour productivity, and the lessons that can be deduced from analysing historical and contemporary policy initiatives, present plausible applicability to an expanding Caribbean single market and the proposed creation of the Caribbean single economy. In focusing on the discursive elements of labour productivity, it is contextualized that the free movement of skilled labour within CARICOM illustrates labour market dualism.     

Adult Education Policy in Micro-states: The Case of the Caribbean

This paper contends that adult education reveals the peculiar constraints and limitations faced by small states. Some of which are the products of smallness itself, and others being a function of dependence, marginality, and the lack of resources. Many of the difficulties of policy formation point, not to size, but to lack of political will, the absence of inventive genius, and the preoccupation with traditional approaches by public policymakers. The paper also argues that adult education must be seen as a developmental imperative rather than a remedial necessity by small states. The failure to develop a strategic adult education policy which focuses on the "human capital" dimension of the modernizing mission is resulting not only in the failure of that modernization effort in critical core areas of the economy, but in a crisis of legitimacy of the small island state itself. Micro-states have special opportunities to develop tightly integrated adult education programs, design innovative participatory pedagogues and maximize the creative use of educational infrastructure and resources as part of broader social development initiatives. Adult education should be closely related to the developmental needs of the micro-state and civic society and should promote the expansion of democratic space, social justice, and local entrepreneurial creativity.