The Radical in Ambedkar: Critical Reflections

Movement for social justice is not a new phenomenon; this kind of movement initiated in South India at least approximately 100 years before that happened in North India. This was comparatively a late movement but became historical in its nature because South India's movement was against dominance of Brahmins, while they were less in population and the only dominant caste. However, in North India, it was against a group of dominants as Brahmins, Chhatriya, Kayasth and Vaisya, etc., comparatively more number of castes and dominants than South India. While this established a historical achievement, as a Dalit woman, Mayawati become the first chief minister of Uttar Pradesh in India and four times through Dalit movements. The core agenda of these movements was uplifting the poor condition of Dalit and implementing social justice. However, after around decay Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leadership created a new formula to occupy the political power, and she named him ‘Social engineering’. Actually, this social engineering was a tactical and conspicuous move adopted by the BSP. This is a very natural question, which raised by intellectuals of both sides whether Dalit or Brahmins, because the emergence of Dalit movement was established in beginning against Manuvadi and Brahmins supremacy. I tried to understand why BSP, which was anti Brahmins from beginning, diverted their approach and agenda. It is pertinent to share that in Uttar Pradesh, BSP missed an excellent opportunity to polarise to OBC a big chunk of population in own political fold.

This chapter introduces the Handbook on Education Systems in South Asia, a Major Reference Work in the Springer series on Global Education Systems. The chapter begins with a review of discussions about the South Asian region and provides a rationale for including, in the Handbook, ten countries as part of South Asia. The chapter proceeds to highlight the socio-cultural characteristics as well as the demographic and development features of these ten South Asian countries through internal comparisons and also through the identification of common development challenges that South Asia on the whole faces. The second section presents an overview of education in South Asia and locates the significance of the Handbook in the need for contextualized comparative understanding of educational systems in the region. Thereafter, the chapter introduces the eight sections of the Handbook spanning indigenous education traditions, history of education, school and higher education, political economy of education, knowledge and curriculum, teachers and teacher education, as well as learner diversities and educational marginality in South Asia. The chapter concludes by drawing attention to the challenges involved in efforts that seek to comprehensively map education systems in South Asia and suggests possibilities for shaping future research in this direction.

Scholarly discussions of formal education in the global South are increasingly moving away from a narrow focus on human capital to consider the meanings that people attach to ‘being educated’. This article advances current debates on the social construction of educational value in South Asia by examining how educated Chamar (Dalit) young men reflect on their education in the face of poor occupational outcomes. Since the 1960s, Dalits’ investment in formal education in rural Uttar Pradesh (UP) has seen a marked rise, in part through emulation of higher castes. The pro–Dalit Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) has also been instrumental in promoting a vision of empowerment through formal education and entry into white–collar employment. Our research in rural Bijnor district suggests that the most recent generation of high school and college graduates amongst the Chamars has failed to find salaried employment. Some young men respond to this exclusion by reaffirming their faith in the BSP's model of progress and establishing them–selves as local political figures (netas). Other young men voice a growing alienation from the BSP's vision of empowerment and speak of themselves as people ‘trapped’ by education. Nevertheless, both these sets of young men continue to value education as a source of ‘cultural distinction’, sign of their ‘modern’ status, and means of challenging caste–based notions of difference.

Journal Article The Rise of the British Coal Industry. In two volumes. By J. U. Nef, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Economics, University of Chicago. [Studies in Economic and Social History, London School of Economics.] (London: George Routledge and Sons; Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1932. Pp. xiv, 448; vii, 490; 14 maps and plates. $15.00.) Get access The Rise of the British Coal Industry. In two volumes. By Nef J. U., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Economics, University of Chicago. [Studies in Economic and Social History, London School of Economics.] (London: George Routledge and Sons; Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1932. Pp. xiv, 448; vii, 490; 14 maps and plates. $15.00.) Abbott Payson Usher Abbott Payson Usher Harvard University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 39, Issue 2, January 1934, Pages 316–317, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/39.2.316 Published: 01 January 1934

BackgroundClimate change is widely recognised to threaten human health, wellbeing and livelihoods, including through its effects on the emergence, spread and burdens of climate–and water-sensitive infectious diseases. However, the scale and mechanisms of the impacts are uncertain and it is unclear whether existing forecasting capacities will foster successful local-level adaptation planning, particularly in climate vulnerable regions in developing countries. The purpose of this scoping review was to characterise and map priority climate- and water-sensitive diseases, map existing forecasting and surveillance systems in climate and health sectors and scope out the needs and potential to develop integrated climate-driven early warning forecasting systems for long-term adaptation planning and interventions in the south Asia region.MethodsWe searched Web of Science Core Collection, Scopus and PubMed using title, abstract and keywords only for papers focussing on climate-and water-sensitive diseases and explicit mention of either forecasting or surveillance systems in south Asia. We conducted further internet search of relevant national climate adaptation plans and health policies affecting disease management. We identified 187 studies reporting on climate-sensitive diseases and information systems in the south Asia context published between 1992 and 2024.ResultsWe found very few robust, evidenced-based forecasting systems for climate- and water- sensitive infectious diseases, which suggests limited operationalisation of decision-support tools that could inform actions to reduce disease burdens in the region. Many of the information systems platforms identified focussed on climate-sensitive vector-borne disease systems, with limited tools for water-sensitive diseases. This reveals an opportunity to develop tools for these neglected disease groups. Of the 34 operational platforms identified across the focal countries, only 13 (representing 38.2%) are freely available online and all were developed and implemented by the human health sector. Tools are needed for other south Asian countries (Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Bhutan) where the risks of infectious diseases are predicted to increase substantially due to climate change, drought and shifts in human demography and use of ecosystems.ConclusionAltogether, the findings highlight clear opportunities to invest in the co-development and implementation of contextually relevant climate-driven early warning tools and research priorities for disease control and adaptation planning.

Rice-wheat based cropping systems in South Asia are among the most highly evolved production systems in the world. The productivity growth of these systems in South Asia is declining due to several factors including the biotic stresses of plant parasitic nematodes. This article reviews the research on rice and wheat nematodes in a cropping systems perspective and identifies nematodes that have wide host ranges and are greatly influenced by the crop rotations and sequences. These polyphagous nematodes can cause significant damage to rice and (or) wheat crops, either alone or in combination with other microorganisms. The research projects on pest management in the region lack inter-disciplinarity and it is important for nematologists to become integral members of interdisciplinary teams on improving the productivity and sustainability of the rice-wheat cropping systems. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-342-9678. E-mail address: <getinfo@haworthpressinc.com> Website: <http://www.HaworthPress.com> © 2001 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]

Summary Rice-wheat based cropping systems in South Asia are among the most highly evolved production systems in the world. The productivity growth of these systems in South Asia is declining due to several factors including the biotic stresses of plant parasitic nema-todes. This article reviews the research on rice and wheat nematodes in a cropping systems perspective and identifies nematodes that have wide host ranges and are greatly influenced by the crop rotations and sequences. These polyphagous nematodes can cause significant damage to rice and (or) wheat crops, either alone or in combination with other microorganisms. The research projects on pest management in the region lack inter-disciplinarity and it is important for nematologists to become integral members of interdisciplinary teams on improving the productivity and sustainability of the rice-wheat cropping systems.

The rice–wheat cropping system is the main food bowl in Asia, feeding billions across the globe. However, the productivity and long-term sustainability of this system are threatened by stagnant crop yields and greenhouse gas emissions from flooded rice production. The negative environmental consequences of excessive nitrogen fertilizer use are further exacerbating the situation, along with the high labor and water requirements of transplanted rice. Residue burning in rice has also severe environmental concerns. Under these circumstances, many farmers in South Asia have shifted from transplanted rice to direct-seeded rice and reported water and labor savings and reduced methane emissions. There is a need for opting the precision agriculture techniques for the sustainable management of nutrients. Allelopathic crops could be useful in the rotation for weed management, the major yield-reducing factor in direct-seeded rice. Legume incorporation might be a viable option for improving soil health. As governments in South Asia have imposed a strict ban on the burning of rice residues, the use of rice-specific harvesters might be a pragmatic option to manage rice residues with yield and premium advantage. However, the soil/climatic conditions and farmer socio-economic conditions must be considered while promoting these technologies in rice-wheat system in South Asia.

Reliability and resilience are the core principles of power system planning and operations around the world. Power systems in South Asia are transforming with increasing penetration of clean energy generation resources, emerging technologies, increasing electricity demand and electrification. At the same time, these power systems are facing challenges posed by extreme weather events and climate change. All these factors would add furthermore importance to the reliability and resilience of future power systems in South Asia. This has motivated us to better understand the country specific challenges and chalk out the pathways for research, modelling and implementation in South Asia. Our research, experience in the region and feedback from key stakeholders indicate following as the key areas where more work is needed to improve reliability and resilience of power systems in the region: Renewable energy Data for power system studies, New Tools and Studies, Resilience Planning, Resource Adequacy, Advanced RE Forecasting, Cybersecurity, Load Forecasting, and Coordinated Planning and Operations.

I SEEK TO EXAMINE THE FORMATION OF THE CATEGORY OF TELUGU Dalit literature in the 1990s. I suggest that it is through the establishment of a new set of Dalit social and cultural organizations, forums, and small journals that Dalit writers have shaped the new category of Dalit literature. Mapping the consolidation of the Dalit community as a distinct social group in the context of the Dalit movement in Andhra Pradesh in the 1980s and 1990s, I further argue that the category of Dalit literature was conceptualized as an oppositional category to the dominant modem form, revolutionary literature. I will present some of the debates between Dalit critics and liberal /leftist critics in order to show how the former highlighted the failure of the revolutionary writers to represent Dalit life. I conclude by suggesting that Dalit critics posit a new politics of caste in the Telugu literary domain. I will draw on debates on Dalit literature and poetry and a few Telugu Dalit poems to illustrate my arguments.New Spaces and New VoicesIn the 1990s, Dalits formed a set of new organizations in the social, political, and cultural domains. Dalit Mahasabha is one such important social organization that emerged with an agenda of mass mobilization against caste discrimination, atrocities against Dalits, and other issues. Established in the wake of the Karamchedu massacre of Dalits,1 it brought together a group of Dalit intellectuals, activists, and students from various political formations.2 Originating in the coastal Andhra area, it soon expanded into a state-level organization with branches in the Rayalaseema, North Andhra, and Telangana regions. Several Ambedkar youth organizations were established throughout the state. In 1993, Dalit writers and intellectuals, along with some Backward-Caste intellectuals, formed Dalit Rachayitala Kalakarula Ikya Vedika (Darakame).3 Several other small Dalit student and youth forums were established during this phase - examples of these short-lived forums include the Samata Volunteer Force and the Satya Sodhak Intellectual Forum.4 The Dalit movement took a political turn with the formation of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP). Almost all of the leaders of Dalit Mahasabha and other Dalit organizations joined the BSP on the eve of the 1994 Assembly elections. However, the BSP failed to consolidate in Andhra Pradesh. The significant development in the second half of the 1990s was the rise of Madiga Reservation Porata Samiti (MRPS), a forum of Madigas, one of the untouchable castes of Andhra Pradesh. This phase witnessed the formation of a number of sub-caste organizations such as Malamahanadu, Relli Hakkula Porata Samiti, the GollaKurma Association, and Rajaka Sangham. The central issue on the agenda of these organizations was how to achieve equitable apportionment of the reservations and other welfare benefits offered by the government on the basis of specific caste identities among the Scheduled Castes and Backward Castes.5 Dalit and other caste-based forums raised a number of issues and spearheaded a series of debates in the public sphere. These forums established small journals such as Dalitarajyam, the Bahujan Samaj, Ekalavya, Godavari Keratalu, and Edureeta. Journals like Dalit Voice from Bangalore, and Nalupu, established by the Hyderabad Book Trust in the 1980s, provided space for theoretical discussions on caste issues and Dalit politics.Both the Dalit forums and the small journals shaped Dalit literature in the 1990s. One can find many new names of writers and critics in these journals expressing their views on Dalit politics. In the literary domain, Dalit poets and writers formed a number of new publishing forums such as Dalitasana, Kala, Neelagiri Saniti, Gosangi Prachuranalu, Spruha Sahiti, Ekalavya, the Vishala Sahitya Akademi of Darakame, Sreeja, and Alice. Dalit students formed literary forums (Vispotna, Madiga Sahitya Vedika, etc.). Many of these publishing forums were of short duration, but Lokayuta Prachuranalu, established by Katti Padmarao, the founder-secretary of Dalit Mahasabha, and the Hyderabad Book Trust have been consistently publishing Dalit writing and Dalit theoretical works. …

On May 17, 2009, India concluded its fifteenth general election. This proved to be the largest democratic electoral exercise in the country's and the world's history. The country had an eligible electorate of 714 million voters and 58 percent chose to exercise their right of adult franchise. The results of the election confounded the most astute political analysts and observers, all of whom failed to predict its outcomes. The Indian National Congress, which many had expected to fare poorly, performed extraordinarily well, winning as many as 206 seats in a 543-seat parliament. The grand hopes that many political pundits, especially those with left-wing political proclivities, had reposed in the so-called Third Front, a conglomeration of political parties coalesced around the lower-caste oriented Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), proved to be completely ill-considered. The BSP under the tutelage of Kumari Mayawati, a dalit (“untouchable”) politician (and the chief minister) from the populous and socially retrograde state of Uttar Pradesh, failed to dramatically increase its standing in the Lok Sabha, or the House of the People, winning a mere twenty seats out of a possible eighty. The Indian National Congress, which had once dominated the politics of the state, managed to obtain twenty-one seats, relegating the hypernationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to ten seats. What explained the abject failure of Indian and foreign political analysts to accurately predict the outcome of this election?

Dalit assertion has been a central feature of the states in the Hindi heartland since the mid-1980s, leading to the rise of political consciousness and identity-based lower-caste parties. The present study focuses on the different political response of the Congress party to identity assertion in Madhya Pradesh under the leadership of Digvijay Singh. In Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, in response to the strong wave of Dalit assertion that swept the region, parties such as the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) used strategies of political mobilisation to consolidate Dalit/backward votes and capture state power. In Madhya Pradesh, in contrast, the Congress party and Digvijay Singh at the historic Bhopal Conference held in January 2002 adopted a new model of development that attempted to mobilise Dalits and tribals and raise their standard of living by providing them economic empowerment. This new Dalit Agenda constitutes an alternative strategy at gaining Dalit/tribal support through of state-sponsored economic upliftment as opposed to the political mobilisation strategy employed by the BSP in Uttar Pradesh. The present study puts to test the limits of the model of state-led development, of the use of political power by an enlightened political elite to introduce change from above to address the weaker sections of society. The working of the state is thus analysed in the context of the society in which it is embedded and the former’s ability to insulate itself from powerful vested interests. In interrogating this state-led redistributive paradigm, the study has generated empirical data based on extensive fieldwork and brought to the fore both the potentials and the limitations of using the model of ‘development from above’ in a democracy. It suggests that the absence of an upsurge from below limits the ability of an enlightened political elite that mans the developmental state to introduce social change and help the weaker sections of society.

Energy systems in South Asia, as in most low and middle rest at a crucial intersection of policy objectives: ensuring economic growth, reducing dependence on foreign countries for imports, protecting the climate, protecting from health hazards of using biomass for cooking inflicted on the most vulnerable population segment: poor women and their children. These policy objectives are sometimes strongly conflicting; it is essential that they be transformed from the current state of energy systems in South Asia, characterised by low access to energy and electricity by the poor, inefficiency in producing, distributing and using energy, harmful health consequences of energy use (biomass cooking), high import-dependency (often on unstable countries, which raises a security issue) and enormous use of foreign currency to purchase oil and gas, in spite of rising domestic production (the case of India).

In-country migration is widespread in South Asia, and the region hosts the world’s largest number of out-of-school children. Yet the relationship between internal migration and inclusion in formal education has received only limited academic and policy attention. The Agenda 2030 pledge to leave no-one behind prompts us to argue that when it comes to migrating children, formal education systems in South Asia are in ontological crisis. Cases of mobile pastoralists and seasonal labour migrants illustrate that being ‘left behind’ is produced by intersecting norms of modernity, which formal education systems reproduce, via logics of rights, human capital and ‘terms of inclusion’. Formal education systems are antithetical to mobility-dependent livelihoods, discount situated learning, and perpetuate unequal social relations. ‘Alternative’ education has done little to contest these norms and their productions. Terming this an ‘ontological crisis’ signals both the disjuncture between realities and Agenda 2030’s moral exigencies, and the opportunity to act.

Reviewed by: Gendering the Vertical Mosaic: Feminist Perspectives on Canadian Society Amber Gazso Roberta Hamilton , Gendering the Vertical Mosaic: Feminist Perspectives on Canadian Society. 2nd edition. Toronto: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005, 248 pp. Many scholars often experience some confusion upon being first introduced to feminist theorizing on the hierarchies that characterize women's and men's structural positions and agency in historical and contemporary Canadian society. This confusion tends to centre on the absence of one specific feminist lens to view the social world. Instead, the uninitiated is immediately exposed to a multitude of perspectives, centred on understanding gender inequality through different key assumptions. In this second edition, Roberta Hamilton revisits the intent of her first edition of Gendering the Vertical Mosaic published in 1996, [End Page 376] to introduce readers to these different feminist viewpoints and understandings of Canadian society. Continuing in the same vein in this edition, Hamilton effortlessly unravels and differentiates among several feminist theoretical understandings, thereby smoothing out confusion and revealing for readers how Canadian society is a "vertical mosaic" that is not just class-stratified but racialized and gendered too. Many readers will find her revisions culminate in an updated text containing recent events and scholarly work and appreciate the new chapter on feminist understandings of globalization and the restructuring of the Canadian state as a welcome and necessary addition. What makes the text immediately refreshing and appealing as an introductory text or a text for the more sophisticated reader is Hamilton's willingness to state her feminist assumptions and definitional standpoints that guided her writing of the text in the introductory chapter. Hamilton briefly reviews John Porter's ungendered Vertical Mosaic as a main impetus to her own exploration of class-based, racialized and gendered hierarchies in Canadian society. Her gendering of the vertical mosaic is influenced by a process-based understanding of gender; the fluidity and ongoing construction of gender means its manifestation in multiple forms subjected to multiple understandings. Readers are encouraged to be an 'active' audience, to make their own connections amongst each of the feminist approaches and substantive areas covered within the chapters despite her dividing up "the indivisible so that we may proceed in some sort of systematic fashion" (7). Hamilton begins Chapter 1 by first stressing the importance of theory to any understanding of the social world before delineating how its use as tool to is taken up differently by feminist theorists. Using the classic argument posed by Karl Marx to frame the discussion, that individuals are born into particular experiences that shape their lives, she shows how particular feminist thinkers have differently theorized women's agency and their making of history as shaped by the conditions they have been situated within, thus giving rise to the multitude of feminist theoretical perspectives. It is through this more in-depth discussion of these perspectives (socialist feminism, radical feminism, anti-racism feminism and feminist psychoanalysis and poststructural theory) that readers meet important first wave feminist thinkers (i.e. Mary Wollstonecraft as a key figure of liberal feminism) and the assumptions of each perspective. Feminist theoretical perspectives are shown to be potential mechanisms of social change — they challenge the gendered order — but, in turn, are challenged by taken-for-granted assumptions about physical differences between women and men that are upheld by structural and ideological forces. The 'women's movement' and its containment of the specific challenges second wave feminists made to these structural and ideological forces in Canadian society is the subject matter of Chapter 2. Hamilton traces the gradual rise of the women's movement, noting the increasing participation of women [End Page 377] in the labour force and its affinity with other social movements in the 1960s as its main catalysts. She reviews how particular feminist perspectives gave rise to feminist agendas that have been and are forwarded by specific action (the 1970 Royal Commission, lobbying, conscious raising, the development of women's centres and caucuses, business and cultural initiatives and efforts within the academy) to bring about change and also points to the diversified and multifaceted character of the women's movements in Canada. Special attention is given to feminist identification of the family as a sight...