Nehru’s legacy in Kashmir: Why a plebiscite never happened

As the dispute over Kashmir broke out in 1947, a plebiscite of the people of the state offered a mutually acceptable and ostensibly fair path out of the imbroglio. Critics have often laid the blame on Nehru, and the territory’s salience to India, for why a plebiscite was never held. Based on primary documentation, this article makes the case that it was not a lack of commitment to the formula, but rather Nehru’s deeply held strategic and reputational fears that motivated, first, the setting of what Delhi saw as firm but fair pre-conditions, and after the conclusion of the US-Pakistan military pact in 1954, the complete rejection of the plebiscite option.     

A Primer to Traditional Knowledge Protection in India: The Road Ahead

Liverpool Law Review - As India moves ahead in the twenty-first century to be a global player, it must take a balanced and inclusive approach. Marginalized and vulnerable tribal communities make...     

Mechanisms of the ‘Aid Curse’: Lessons from South Korea and Pakistan

Recently scholars have argued that, far from contributing to development, foreign aid hinders development. But in the 1960s the East Asian countries developed rapidly despite receiving large amounts of aid. To examine why aid seems to undermine development in some cases but not in others, we conduct a detailed comparison of the mechanisms of the ‘aid curse’ in South Korea and Pakistan. We show that South Korea saw astonishing levels of corruption, but this did not hinder its development; and Pakistan had a strong bureaucracy, which did not help it to grow. The key difference between the two countries was in the strength of their tax systems: foreign aid in the context of underdeveloped tax administration leads to increasing cycles of debt that undermine development. When foreign aid arrives in the context of commitment to strong taxation, a country can avoid the ‘aid curse.’     

‘The sword of justice’: South Pacific trade unions and NGOs during a decade of lost development

Trade unions are typified as having ‘two faces’—one of social justice and the other of vested interest. This article examines the tensions and difficulties confronted by trade union movements in the South Pacific seeking to balance the ‘two faces’ of unionism during a period of political and economic instability in the region. It looks at the difficult choices that trade union movements in Papua New Guinea, the Fiji Islands, and the Solomon Islands have had to make to preserve their interests in response to sweeping micro‐economic reforms and how they have sought to work with civil society organisations to restore political and social stability. The paper draws out some tentative lessons that may enable South Pacific unions to better respond to these difficult challenges.     

Climate Conditions,Larvae Free Number,DHF Incidence in Surabaya Indonesia

Dengue is a serious public health problem in Indonesia, including the city of Surabaya. Dengue is endemic Surabaya city in Indonesia. Dengue incidence has been attributed to climatic conditions, this study aimed to determine the relationship of climate conditions （air temperature, relative humidity, rainfall, number of days rain, and duration of solar radiation）, the condition of dengue vectors （larvae-free number）, the incidence of DHF （Dengue Hemorrhagic Fever） in Surabaya in 2010-2012. The results of this study indicate that there is a significant correlation among air humidity, rainfall, number of rainy days, and duration of solar radiation with the incidence of DHF. Other climatic conditions such as temperature have no relationship with the incidence of DHF.     

Tradition,UMNO and political succession in Malaysia

ABSTRACT Leaders of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), Malaysia's ruling party, invented 'Malay tradition' for the purpose of maintaining control not only over the domestic political process, but also in their own ranks. Yet, this did not deter challenges to the leadership which were also legitimised on the basis of tradition. In this regard, the rhetoric of tradition also functioned as a barometer assessing the stakes and the levels of support for the contestants. When the stakes of political contestation became extraordinarily high, the major protagonists were quite willing to depart from tradition to determine outcomes. Realising its instrumental worth, the UMNO elites manufactured tradition to legitimise deviations from established norms. But in the process of reinventing the wheel, the leaders of UMNO inadvertently contributed to the construction of ethnic identity.     

India: A photographic essay

Abstract

A photograph depicts an individual entity: a face, a person, a situation, a scene. A tiny slice of a larger whole. Also, a split-second on the time dimension. And, yet, it is more than a slice, more than a split-second. Contained in it are elements of the universe of which it is a part. Suspended in it is the flow of history. Without this link with the universal, with history, it does not exist. And the universe, the whole, though bigger than any of its particular elements, and bigger even than the sumtotal of these elements, shows itself only through its particular elements.