Community-managed rice banks: lessons from Laos

Rice banks are increasingly used in South-East Asia as a means of addressing seasonal food crises facing poor communities. Despite general agreement about the effectiveness of community-managed rice banks in improving food security, there has been almost no research into their effectiveness in reaching the poorest, or the prospects of sustainability linked to regular repayments of rice. Concern Laos sought to answer these questions through community mobilisation, forming rules and regulations to encourage the participation of the poorest, developing simple tools and procedures in line with existing community capacity, and building greater community capacity. Other challenges remain, such as changing the prevailing ‘relief’ mentality, ensuring women's participation, and establishing regular savings schemes, in order to enhance the effectiveness and sustainability of the rice banks.     

Sex-selective Abortions and Infant Mortality in India: The Role of Parents’ Stated Son Preference

In India, millions of female foetuses have been aborted since the 1980s alongside an abnormally high infant girl mortality rate; this has generated a vast literature exploring the root causes of son preference. The literature is sparse, however, on how the decisions to abort or neglect girls are made. This paper examines mothers’ and fathers’ respective roles behind those decisions. Using the third National Family and Health Survey (NFHS-3) data, we show that sex-selective abortions are most commonly used if both spouses or if only the fathers prefer sons, while sex-selective neglect is used if only the mothers prefer sons.     

CHINA AND THE UN AT 50

China was one of the architects of the UN. The country was the first signa-tory of the UN Charter in San Francisco in 1945. Yet it was only in October 1971, with the Chinese delegation led by then Vice Foreign Minister Qiao Guanhua, that the People's Republic of China's representa-tion in the UN was resumed. Since that time, the UN has had the great privilege of witnessing and support-ing China in achieving one of the greatest periods of socioeconomic progress in world history.     

Review

Abstract

Although several books and articles have already appeared on the Naxalbari Movement, the book under review by Sumanta Banerjee carries a distinctive appeal which sets it apart from other works on the subject. Not only does this book merit attention because it is written by a person who was intimately involved in the CPI(ML) movement, but also because it recaptures the spirit of the rebellious sixties when the ideological crisis was deepened by the impasse at which established political structures had arrived.     

Text and terrain: mapping sexuality and law

This article is concerned with the intersections of law, texts and sexuality. Drawing on recent work in theoretical cartography, this article seeks to argue that a cartographical reading of law can be usefully brought to bear on the legal analysis of sexuality. This article considers how looking to contemporary theoretical and critical cartography can help to reveal law as a process of mapping; how sexuality is mapped both within and without the law through cultural texts, and how law’s encounters with the terrains mapped out by those texts might be enriched and diversified. This article seeks to consider how legal mappings of the terrains of sexuality might be sufficiently contextualised and located within a wider socio-political context, and how a specifically cartographical interpretation might reveal the potential for the law to accommodate the complexity of gendered and sexualised identities that do not easily conform to singular positionings. In order to navigate the texts and terrains of law and sexuality, we must first learn to become cartographers, and through this process, perhaps open up radical and alternative mappings.

Legality of Anti-Satellites Under the Space Law Regime

The term anti-satellite, or in short ASAT, is used to refer to a system designed to destroy or damage satellites. The heightened tendency among the spacefaring nations to develop ASAT technology in the recent past has led to widespread debates as to the legality of ASAT deployment under the space law regime. In this context, I have endeavored to make a detailed analysis of the international legal provisions to find if there is any legal basis at all for the deployment of such ASATs. I have concluded that none of the existing legal provisions in space law, as well as public international law, have sufficient force and clarity to bring about a blanket ban on ASAT weapons. Therefore, the research suggests a slew of reforms to overcome this anomaly. Examples of such proposed reforms include, inter alia, an amendment of the Outer Space Treaty and an enhanced role and influence of the United Nations in treaty making coupled with active diplomatic initiatives.