Reforms In India Research Articles

Indian power sector reform for sustainable development: the public benefits imperative

The crises of utilities in developing countries led to a World Bank diagnosis of their problems and to a prescription of remedies for the situation. The resulting approach has been assessed with a case-study of the power sector in Karnataka carried out by the International Energy Initiative. This bottom-up approach has yielded remedies that do overlap with the top-down World Bank approach as far as liberation from government management control, corporatisation and the establishment of an electricity regulatory body are concerned. However, the bottom-up approach does not lead to other World Bank solutions such as unbundling of generation, transmission and distribution, removal of all subsidies and cross-subsidies, and privatisation, which appear to follow, not from ground realities, but from global trends of reform/restructuring. It appears that the reform process in the industrialised countries has been driven primarily by technical developments, rather than by the financial crises that are the justification for reform in the developing countries. Despite this, there is an epidemic of reform in India. It appears that a bootstrap operation (= improving by one's own efforts) coupled with some elements of reform can rejuvenate the utilities. What may not result from this financial rejuvenation are several crucial public benefits – access, self-reliance/empowerment, environmental soundness, research and development and sustainability over the long term. To achieve these benefits, one has to go beyond economic growth and advance sustainable development. This larger goal requires that the invisible hand of the market has to be assisted by the visible hand of regulations and the intervention of the state. Privatisation against this background may not be the magic wand that it is claimed to be.

Mary Carpenter and India: Enlightened liberalism or condescending imperialism?1

The English social and educational reformer, Mary Carpenter, became involved in the imperialist venture in India in the 1860s and 1870s. Imbued with liberal, anti‐racist attitudes, she was drawn to India particularly because of gender interests. Inspired by and working with Indian reformers, she was apparently welcomed on her four visits to India where her own ideas on women's rights were further developed. In England she eagerly publicised her experiences and strove, with some success, to achieve her interpretation of what Indian reformers desired. How far Mary Carpenter actually could understand the Indian situation, how far her liberalism in fact was touched by cultural imperialism and class attitudes — her own ethnicity as an Englishwoman — indeed, are examined here. It will be seen that to understand fully racial and imperial attitudes of late nineteenth century England it is crucial to interrelate gendered notions with them. 1 A separate paper, originally based on this and given at the History of Education conference in Dec. 1999 in Winchester, but written up with a different emphasis, published entitled “Breaking the boundaries of Victorian imperialism or extending a reformed “paternalism“? Mary Carpenter and India” in History of Education 29 : 5, pp. 443–456.

Where Did India Miss a Turn in Banking Reform? Is There a Comeback?

Caprio (1996) raised the issue of widespread disappointment with banking reform in most African and transition economies, suggesting something was amiss in the reform model. He argued that it is not just having any regulatory framework, but rather one both attuned to the institutions and structure of the economy and that encourages prudent behavior, which is important to the overall success of reforms. This paper argues regulatory reform alone cannot deliver results unless the banks are restructured simultaneously. Regulatory reform introduces a new set of incentives. Unless banks are equipped with the necessary coping mechanisms, they will fail to work the new incentives into a viable and efficient business model. Lack of adequate bank restructuring is the second part of Caprio's missing model. Failure to attend to restructuring issues inherently amounts to a perverse sequencing of reforms. The Indian banking reform experience (1992-2000) is discussed in detail to illustrate (i) why focus on regulatory reform often misses the restructuring issues and (ii) the consequences thereof.

India, the Washington Consensus and the East Asian Crisis

The stability and continued growth of the Indian economy in the midst of the East Asian crisis does not suggest an alternative economic model. India, in a cautious approach to market reforms, especially on capital controls, did protect its economy from the East Asian contagion. But the presence of capital controls was more a result of chance than of choice, and in spite of the regional crisis, the average standard of living in India remains far below that in East Asia. The larger caution in the Indian reform process has been the result of compulsion rather than choice. Political and public opposition within a few years of the introduction of market reforms in the early 1990s, has forced successive governments to go slow on liberalisation. This resistance has developed alongside the emergence of a more fractious and assertive democraticprocess. Unless there is a broad political consensus on economic issues, there is little likelihood of policy decisions that will facilitate an economic transformation that will make an impact on India's huge poverty. Moreover,while the overall pace of economic growth since the introduction of reforms in the early 1990s has been substantial, it has taken place in fits and starts.

Economic Liberalization and the Vintages of Machinery Imports in Developing Countries: An Empirical Test for India's Imports from the United Kingdom

This paper examines whether India's liberalization of machinery and machine tools since the mid-1980s has led to the use of more recent vintages and/or better quality equipment. Empirical tests compare the weight-adjusted unit values of India's imports with those of China, and also of the USA and Germany. Regression analyses use the five-digit and eight-digit SITC data of imports of those countries from the UK. For each of three years (1987, 1994 and 1996), India's weight-adjusted unit values were lower than those of the other countries. Further, over that 9-year period, the gap between India's unit values and those of the others did not decrease. A possible explanation is that India's reforms have not yet had sufficient time to have an effect and that this may require that enterprises undertake a greater effort to search for more recent vintages and also develop the technological capabilities and skills required for their use.

Decomposing Revenue Effects of Tax Evasion and Tax Structure Changes

This paper proposes a method for evaluating the impact of tax structure changes on tax revenue. The technique consists of decomposing the gap between actual revenue and potential revenue into components attributable to changes in (i) the tax rate structure (ii) deductions and (iii) tax evasion. Our results indicate that, for the Indian reform episode we examine, there were initial gains which could not be sustained over time. The magnitude of the gains from the reform were limited and failed to significantly curtail losses from tax evasion.

Termination revisited: American Indians on the trail to self-determination, 1933-1953

Termination Revisited: 'In this essential contribution to twentieth-century Native history, Kenneth R. Philp reassesses the controversial and ultimately failed federal policy of termination. In the years after World War II, federal policy toward the Indian reservation system changed markedly. Reservations were seen as bastions of an old colonial order, as economically deprived areas in need of revitalization, and as obstacles to large-scale federal projects. Motivated by these views, President Truman, Commissioner of Indian Affairs Dillon Myer, and certain members of Congress worked to end the reservation system. Federal policies set during this period strongly encouraged Native peoples to terminate their status as wards of the American government, relocate to prosperous cities, and develop long-range plans to secure greater political and economic power for themselves'.'Until recently scholars have largely portrayed the termination years as a regressive era in which Indians encountered renewed assaults on tribalism, lost important rights, and were placed on the road to dispossession. Termination Revisited offers a more complex portrait of Native responses to termination. By focusing on the diverse reactions of Native peoples to the concept of self-determination, Philp demonstrates how widely the interpretations of this important concept and the proposed strategy of termination varied. Kenneth R. Philp is chair of the history department at the University of Texas, Arlington. He is the author of John Collier's Crusade for Indian Reform, 1920-1954'.

At the Heart of the Empire: Indians and the Colonial Encounter in Late-Victorian Britain

Antoinette Burton focuses on the experiences of three Victorian travelers in Britain to illustrate how 'Englishness' was made and remade in relation to imperialism. The accounts left by these three sojourners - all prominent, educated Indians - represent complex, critical ethnographies of 'native' metropolitan society and offer revealing glimpses of what it was like to be a colonial subject in fin-de-siecle Britain. Burton's innovative interpretation of the travelers' testimonies shatters the myth of Britain's insularity from its own construction of empire and shows that it was instead a terrain open to continual contest and refiguration. Burton's three subjects felt the influence of imperial power keenly during even the most everyday encounters in Britain. Pandita Ramabai arrived in London in 1883 seeking a medical education and left in 1886, having resisted the Anglican Church's attempts to make her an evangelical missionary. Cornelia Sorabji went to Oxford to study law and became the first Indian woman to be called to the Bar. Behramji Malabari sought help for his Indian reform projects in England, and subjected London to colonial scrutiny in the process. Their experiences form the basis of this wide-ranging, clearly written, and imaginative investigation of diasporic movement in the colonial metropolis.

Review: THE INDIAN REFORM LETTERS OF HELEN HUNT JACKSON, 1879-1885, by Valerie Sherer Mathes

Book Review| July 01 1999 Review THE INDIAN REFORM LETTERS OF HELEN HUNT JACKSON, 1879-1885Valerie Sherer Mathes Andrew Rolle Andrew Rolle Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Southern California Quarterly (1999) 81 (2): 283–284. https://doi.org/10.2307/41171951 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Andrew Rolle; Review. Southern California Quarterly 1 July 1999; 81 (2): 283–284. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41171951 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentSouthern California Quarterly Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1999 Historical Society of Southern California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Socioeconomic Implications of Telecommunications Liberalization: India in the International Context

Telecommunications restructuring have evolved differently in Asia and Latin America. While Asian governments have moved cautiously in bringing changes to the sector, Latin American nations have implemented radical ownership and market transformations. The Indian telecommunications reform falls in between these two general regional trends. The choice of a high component of competition, increased private participation, and no privatization of the national carrier set conditions that will trigger unique socioeconomic effects. This article identifies and highlights the likely implications of the Indian reform on key economic and social issues, such as the cost of services, cross-subsidies, network interconnection, private investments, universal services, employment, and the possible rise of an information-intensive economy. It does so by comparing and contrasting the Indian experience with dominant reform strategies elsewhere in the developing world.

Medical careers and health care for Indian women: patterns of control

Abstract In the 1880s reform-minded men and women in Great Britain had joined the missionaries and a number of Indian reformers in demanding that Western medical care be extended to Indian women. The subjects of their concern were high-status Indian women who observed the norms of seclusion. British women, at this time entering the medical profession, supported this initiative because it legitimized their professional goals and promised employment. This paper explores the introduction of medical care for Indian women with reference to the life of Dr Haimavati Sen (c. 1867-1932), ‘lady doctor’ in charge of an exclusively women's hospital in Hughli district of Bengal. The paper explores two issues: the ways in which imperialism, feminism, and racism worked to marginalize Indian women in professional medical roles and the impact of this process upon women as patients and clients.

Medical careers and health care for indian women: patterns of control

Abstract In the 1880s reform-minded men and women in Great Britain had joined the missionaries and a number of Indian reformers in demanding that Western medical care be extended to Indian women. The subjects of their concern were high-status Indian women who observed the norms of seclusion. British women, at this time entering the medical profession, supported this initiative because it legitimized their professional goals and promised employment. This paper explores the introduction of medical care for Indian women with reference to the life of Dr Haimavati Sen (c. 1867-1932), ‘lady doctor’ in charge of an exclusively women's hospital in Hughli district of Bengal. The paper explores two issues: the ways in which imperialism, feminism, and racism worked to marginalize Indian women in professional medical roles and the impact of this process upon women as patients and clients.

L'Inde et la Chine : développement économique et bien-être social

The paper compares India's and China's economic and social performances. The analysis relies on recent results and puts them in an historical perspective. The author underlines Chinese progress in the area of health, education, social security... ; the lessons of Chinese experience could be useful to Indian reforms.

Curzon and Indian Reform

Lord Curzon was the imperial gatekeeper who opened the way to parliamentary government in India by composing Edwin Montagu's declaration of 20 August 1917. He defined British policy as ‘the increasing association of Indians in every branch of the administration and the gradual development of self-governing institutions, with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire’. Curzon himself acknowledged his authorship in an endorsement on his own printed copy of the declaration. On the eve of the War Cabinet's agreement to the declaration he included his proposed key words in a letter to Montagu, a document strangely overlooked in all of the many accounts of the matter. The only Cabinet departure from Curzon's key words was the substitution of ‘progressive’ for ‘fuller’. Montagu questioned the latter term and Curzon proposed the former. There was nothing impromptu about the drafting. For months variations on it had been floated in correspondence between the authorities in India and London. The use and meaning of ‘self-government’ had been widely canvassed. It is generally understood that ‘responsible government’ went beyond ‘self-government’, for in constitutional parlance it must mean a parliamentary system (with a responsible executive), whereas ‘self-government’ might be achievable in non-Westminster forms. The justification for dyarchy, the essence of the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms, lay in its apparent satisfaction of the declaration's espousal of the principle of responsiblity.

Sincerity, Secrecy, and Lies: Helen Hunt Jackson's No Name Novels

Sincerity, Secrecy, and Lies:Helen Hunt Jackson's No Name Novels Carol E. Schmudde Carol E. Schmudde Eastern Illinois University Notes 1. Cheryl Walker, The Nightingale's Burden: Women Poets and American Culture before 1900 (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1982), p. 93. 2. The letter to Thomas Bailey Aldrich in which Jackson expressed this intention is cited by many of her biographers and critics, but it is perhaps best examined in the context of Valerie Sherer Mathes' Helen Hunt Jackson and Her Indian Reform Legacy (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1990), p. 77, which gives a thorough and balanced analysis of the positive and negative effects of Jackson's efforts on behalf of Native Americans. 3. See Ruth Odell, Helen Hunt Jackson (New York: D. Appleton Century, 1939), pp. 151-3; Antoinette May, Helen Hunt Jackson: A Lonely Voice of Conscience (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1987), pp. 57-60; and Rosemary Whitaker, Helen Hunt Jackson (Boise, Idaho: Boise State Univ. Press, 1987), p. 24. 4. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Contemporaries (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1899), pp. 156-7, and Joanne Dobson, Dickinson and the Strategies of Reticence: The Woman Writer in Nineteenth-Century America (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1989), p. 95. 5. Mary Kelley, Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth Century America (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1984), p. 287. 6. Quoted in Higginson, p. 155. 7. Karen Halttunen, Confidence Men and Painted Women: A Study of Middle-class Culture in America, 1830-1870 (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1982), pp. 56-57. 8. Halttunen, p. 57. 9. Mercy Philbrick's Choice (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1876), p. 64. Subsequent references to this work (as MCP) will be in the text. 10. Hetty's Strange History (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1877), p. 47. Subsequent references to this work (as HSH) will be in the text. 11. Halttunen, p. 193. 12. Halttunen, p. 6. 13. Halttunen, pp. 34, xv. 14. Sisela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life (New York: Vintage, 1979), p. 32. See especially Chapter 2, "Truthfulness, Deceit, and Trust." 15. Lying, p. 80. 16. Sisela Bok, Secrets: On the Ethics of Concealment and Revelation (New York: Pantheon, 1982), p. 13. 17. Helen Hunt Jackson Papers, Part I, Ms. 0020, Bx 6, Fd 14, Tutt Library, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, Colorado. This folder contains clippings of reviews of Mercy Philbrick's Choice and Hetty's Strange History. Subsequent references to nineteenth-century reviews of these novels are from this source. Permission to quote from the Helen Hunt Jackson papers has been granted by Tutt library. 18. Bok, Lying, p. 88. 19. Jackson's friend Thomas Wentworth Higginson wrote that her authorship of the No Name novels "was no secret" at the time of her death (Contemporaries, p. 161). According to Ruth Odell, Jackson told her friend Moncure Daniel Conway that she wanted the truth about Saxe Holm known only after her death (Odell, p. 136). Her publishers brought out her posthumous publications, including Zeph and Between Whiles, both of which had been intended as Saxe Holm works, under the name Helen Jackson (H. H.). 20. Kelley, p. 125. 21. Quoted in Odell, pp. 65. 22. Susan Coultrap-McQuin's Doing Literary Business: American Women Writers in the Nineteenth Century (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1990) contains an entire chapter on Jackson which explores in detail Jackson's motives for pseudonymity and anonymity, and their effect on her sales and reputation. See especially pages 158-64. Also helpful is Ruth Friend's summary of the Saxe Holm controversy in Helen Hunt Jackson: A Critical Study, unpublished dissertation, Kent State University, 1985, pp. 183-88. 23. Friend, pp. 184-85. 24. Odell, p. 148. 25. Anna Mary Wells, Dear Preceptor: The Life and Times of Thomas Wentworth Higginson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1963), pp. 201-11, and Antoinette May, pp. 28-29. 26. Friend, p. 201. For an assessment of the various attributions that have been made about the novel, see pages 201-05. 27. George Whicher, This Was A Poet (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1965), p. 128. 28. Wallace Martin, Recent Theories of Narrative (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 1986), p. 46. 29. "H. H." [Helen Hunt Jackson...

Dr. Thomas A. Bland, Critic of Forced Assimilation

On Valentine’s Day, 14 February 1882, former-Indian-superintendent-turned-reformer Colonel Alfred B. Meacham related a recent premonition of death to his friend Dr. Thomas A. Bland. Believing his earthly mission nearly fulfilled, Meacham implored Bland to continue publication of his monthly periodical devoted to Indian reform, The Council Fire. Two days later, Meacham died at his editorial table, and Bland became editor of the journal.’ Bland used The Council Five and the National Indian Defence Association, which he founded in 1885, as vehicles for his particular philosophy of Indian reform. Bland largely accepted the goal of Indian assimilation as outlined by humanitarian reformers of his generation. However, in his view, proponents of coercive allotment of reservation land had mistaken the end for the means. He insisted that successful assimilation demanded a gradual and voluntary conversion and not compulsion.2 Convinced that sudden change was detrimental, Bland began a crusade to protect tribal institutions and property rights. As a critic of forced assimilation, he clashed with reformers in the Women’s National Indian Association, the Indian Rights Association, the Board of Indian Commissioners, and the Lake Mohonk Conference of ”Friends of the Indians,” who campaigned vigorously to make severalty compulsory. Indeed, Bland’s outlook and struggle against rapid assimilation provides significant

The Vanishing American: Hollywood's Compromise to Indian Reform

Jewish culture is also the one that remains a constant while all other cultural differences fade away. One can see the irony in Joey's comment. The Jews are different because they will not go kill things and because they will not do so, they are marked for persecution. This difference will also cause their disappearance. David Mamet, in an interview with Matthew C. Roudan?, stated : Endings in tragedies are resolved. The protagonist undergoes a reversal of the situation, a recognition of the state, and we have a certain amount of cleansing.12 In the last scene of The Disappearance of the Jews, Bobby is supposed to renew his relationship with an old flame with some encouragement from Joey. Because of the failures of all the previous beginnings this new plot does not seem to stand a chance of development. For the play to move toward a resolution there should be an expulsion of the elements that cause the engine to stall. But there will be no cleansing, no lynching, no tragedy. Not even the periodic entertainment given to Didi and Gogo in the person of Lucky, will help our men pass the time. Lucky is just another scapegoat and Joey and Bobby would not be amused by his torment.

Helen Hunt Jackson and Her Indian Reform Legacy.

Journal Article Helen Hunt Jackson and Her Indian Reform Legacy. By Valerie Sherer Mathes. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990. xviii + 235 pp. $27.95.) Get access Lisa E. Emmerich Lisa E. Emmerich California State University, Chico Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 78, Issue 2, September 1991, Page 688, https://doi.org/10.2307/2079612 Published: 01 September 1991

Helen Hunt Jackson and Her Indian Reform Legacy

Helen Hunt Jackson and Her Indian Reform Legacy

Review: Helen Hunt Jackson and Her Indian Reform Legacy, by Valerie Sherer Mathes

Review: <i>Helen Hunt Jackson and Her Indian Reform Legacy</i>, by Valerie Sherer Mathes