Civil society and democratization: a counter-case from India

This article assesses whether civil society promotes democratization, as has been argued implicitly or explicitly in the political discourse, following the publication of Putnam's Making Democracy Work. The theorists of “third-wave” transitology have advocated civil society as the indispensable instrument for the survival and sustenance of democracy. This article, however, argues that civil society is not necessarily a democratic force. It may or may not have positive implications in regard to democratization and the functioning of democracy. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in the tribal-dominated south Rajasthan, this article analyses the case of Rajasthan Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad (RVKP), a Hindu(tva)-oriented non-governmental organization (NGO), to demonstrate how civil society could also be anti-democratic. It shows that by utilizing development as a medium of entry, the RVKP has not only successfully presented itself as a counter-force against the “threatening others”, such as Muslims and Christians but also mobilized electoral support for the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In return, the BJP-led state government has provided economic, political and legal support to the RVKP and facilitated the Hindutva politics at the grassroots level. The article concludes that in the context of Rajasthan, a conservative state has collaborated with an exclusivist civil society organization – the consequence of which has not just been the spread of violence and demonization of religious minorities but also a serious undermining of cultural pluralism and democratic values of Indian society.     

Linkage between internal migration and crime: Evidence from India

Migration has been a major source of human survival, adaptation, and economic change over centuries across regions. Today, more than ever, migration forms a central part of the global flow of humans, practices, and ideas. However, from a social point of view, migration is often considered as a potential source of social disorder and crime. Several explanations have been provided on this aspect in Indian context but none of these provide a sound analysis of the linkage between migration and crime. This paper attempts to investigate empirically the association between interstate migration and crime in India. Our analysis does not show any significant association between interstate migration and crime. Therefore, this study discards the controversial thought that migration is responsible for increasing crime in the nation, and suggests adopting constructive means to control crime rather than staring at migration.     

Outward Orientation,Investment and Finance Constraints: A Study of Indian Firms

We investigate the presence of finance constraints on firms' investment behaviour using Indian manufacturing as a case study. This question becomes particularly interesting in the post-1991 period when substantial market oriented reforms were undertaken. We argue that in the Indian institutional context (especially, the underdeveloped state of bankruptcy laws and restrictive exit procedures) outward orientation rather than size is the relevant criteria for distinguishing firms that may be 'finance-constrained' from those that are not. Using panel data for 718 Indian manufacturing firms for the period 1993-98, we find that exporting firms are less constrained in financial markets than firms which sell primarily to domestic markets.     

Capability Failure and Group Disparities : Some Evidence from India for the 1980s

This paper advances a particular measure of deprivation - called the Capability Failure Ratio (CFR) - on the dimensions of longevity, knowledge and income, and suggests how an (inequality-) 'adjusted' version of the CFR may be derived. These measurement concerns are explored in the context of relevant State-wise data for the Indian Union. The paper thus makes an attempt to enrich the analysis of human predicament by sensitising 'measures of central tendency' to distributional concerns.     

The Gender Gap in Educational Attainment in India: How Much Can Be Explained?

Differential treatment of sons and daughters by parents is a potential explanation of the gender gap in education in developing countries. This study empirically tests this explanation for India using household survey data collected in urban Uttar Pradesh in 1995. We estimate educational enrolment functions and selectivity-corrected educational attainment functions, conditional on enrolment. The gender difference in educational attainment is decomposed into the part that is explained by men and women's differential characteristics and the part that is not so explained (the conventional 'discrimination' component). The analysis suggests that girls face significantly different treatment in the intra-household allocation of education - there is a large unexplained component in the gender gap in schooling attainment. A detailed decomposition exercise attempts to discover the individual factors most responsible for the differential treatment.     

The disciplinary,interdisciplinary and global dimensions of African studies

Abstract

In discussing African studies or any other field, it is important to note that the economies and cultures of knowledge production are an integral part of complex and sometimes contradictory, but always changing, institutional, intellectual and ideological processes and practices that occur, simultaneously, at national and transnational, or local and global levels. From their inception, universities have always been, or aspired to be, universalistic and universalising institutions. This is not the place to examine the changes and challenges facing universities in Africa and elsewhere, a subject dealt with at length in African universities in the twenty‐first century (Zeleza and Olokoshi 2004). It is simply to point out that African studies ‐ the production of African(ist) knowledges ‐ has concrete and conceptual, and material and moral contexts, which create the variations that are so evident across the world and across disciplines.This article is divided into four parts. First, it explores the changing disciplinary and interdisciplinary architecture of knowledge in general. Second, it examines the disciplinary encounters of African studies in the major social science and humanities disciplines, from anthropology, sociology, literature, linguistics and philosophy, to history, political science, economics geography and psychology. It focuses on the interdisciplinary challenges of the field in which the engagements of African studies with interdisciplinary programmes such as women's and gender studies, public health studies, art studies, and communication studies, and with interdisciplinary paradigms including cultural studies and postcolonial studies are probed. Finally, this article looks at the focus on the study of Africa in international studies, that is, the state of African studies as seen through the paradigms of globalisation and in different global regions, principally Europe (Britain, France, Germany, Scandinavia and Russia), the Americas (the United States of America (US), the Caribbean and Brazil), and Asia‐Pacific (India, Australia, China and Japan). Space does not allow for a more systematic analysis of African studies within Africa itself, a subject implied in the observations in the article, but which deserves an extended treatment in its own right.     

The Correlates of Corruption in India: Analysis and Evidence from the States

Robert Bartley, Chan Heng Chee, Samuel P. Huntington and Shijuro Ogata, Democracy and Capitalism: Asian and American Perspectives (Singapore: Institute of South East Asian Studies, 1993), 81 pp.

Charles Hirschman, Charles F. Keyes and Karl Hutterer (eds.), with the assistance of G. Carter Bently, Southeast Asian Studies in the Balance: Reflections from America (Ann Arbor: The Association for Asian Studies, 1992), 146 pp.

S. Gordon Redding, The Spirit of Chinese Capitalism, (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1993), 267 pp.

Zhongguo Quanli Jigou yu Lingdaoren (Power Structure and Leadership in the People's Republic of China) (Hong Kong: Ming Pao China Study Research Unit, 1993), 277 pp.

Robert Cottrell, The End of Hong Kong: The Secret Diplomacy of Imperial Retreat (London: John Murray, 1993), xi, 244 pp.

John Andrews, The Asian Challenge ‐ Looking Beyond 2000 (Hong Kong: Longman, 1992), 218 pp.     

Where the Low Road and the High Road Meet: Flexible Employment in Global Value Chains

This article examines production organisation and employment patterns in the export-orientated centres of Denizli (Turkey) and Tiruppur (India). It argues that Denizli and Tiruppur's involvement in global value chains has resulted in segmented production patterns and insecure employment arrangements. Larger producers use sub-contractors as a strategy to mediate the instability of international contracts and pass the uncertainty in their global linkages on to smaller firms and their workforces. Such flux, then, has become a regularised feature of manufacturing work within the ranks of sub-contractors. Employers have solidified these production arrangements by recruiting rural and female workers. The article sheds light on the relationship between new production forms and rising employment insecurity.     

The United States in a world of rising regional powers: farewell Lilliput,hello Shanghai

Regional powers such as China, India, Russia, and to a lesser degree Brazil and South Africa, now occupy a significant role on the world stage. The United States, while still enjoying superpower status, has taken note. At the same time, the transnational nature of the challenges facing the world will require multilateral and bilateral co-operation perhaps unprecedented in modern history. How will the United States respond to these new requisites within the context of this changed world? While it is too early to assess the Obama administration's foreign policy substantively, it looks to be adopting an approach emphasising the building of consensus and multilateralism in its international engagement. Moreover, there is reason to expect that it will actively seek a more constructive set of relationships with regional powers. United States domestic political constraints may yet hamper Obama in this new approach, as might the type of response the new administration receives from old and new powers to its overtures. Whether the changes are more in tone than substance remains to be seen.     

From the Subject of Evil to the Evil Subject: “Cultural Difference” in Postapartheid South African Crime Fiction

This article takes up the question of “crime writing” and rejoins the debate around whether such literature stands in for the “political novel” in postapartheid South Africa. What social function might crime writing be serving? Research by political economists and cultural anthropologists suggests that acts of writing in “social detection” mode (rather than “crime writing”) serve as an allegory for occulted sociopolitical conditions. Cultural difference is seen, once again, to play a pivotal role in the legitimation of power, and writers in the detection mode are correspondingly seen to be probing the possibility of a resurgence of “bad” difference. This notion, it is argued, is a key differentiator in an otherwise murky scene in which the borderline between licit and illicit, and right and wrong, has become obscure. While many South African writers are brought into the discussion, including but not restricted to crime authors, a key novel by leading crime writer Deon Meyer is read as a case study to illustrate the more general points made in the article.