South Asia Project Research Articles

Asian Century Dream and Power Politics: A Study of India China Rivalry of 21st Century

The concept of ‘Asian Century’ has yet to be widely embraced among the scholars and practitioners of International Relations. If the Asian Century has indeed become ‘a defining feature of the 21st century’, it matters to discuss the rivalry between two super powers of Asia and its relationships with the outside the region. The current century has been signalled as the age of Asia that is marching forward, beginning of the current century has witnessed the degree of economic progress of emerging powers like China and India. It has significantly surpassing that of the United States and the European Union. The regional economic growth is likely to determine the potential of the current century as ‘Asian Century’. India and China are the two most populous nations globally; geographical neighbours seek global and regional influence through economic progress and a mixed option of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ power. Limits to India’s traditional influence in South Asian regional politics have been exacerbated by China’s recent expansion of trade, military, diplomatic and developmental ties with countries of South Asian, which challenge the India’s hegemonic traditional influence in the South Asian region. In response, India is developing a new, proactive security policy that seeks to counter Chinese political narratives and infrastructure projects in South Asia. The rivalry between India and China has entered its sixth decade. Although the territorial disputes began in the 1950s, it has become a deep-rooted, enduring rivalry since the 1962 border warfare between the two states. Sino-Indian tensions and suspicions have remained over their disputed border, called LAC (the Line of Actual Control). This study examines the idea of ‘Asian Century dream’ in the context of India-China strategic rivalry. The article is structured into three main parts. The first part outlines the concept of the ‘Asian century dream’, while the second part analyzes the current power politics in Asia. Finally, the third part investigates how the competition between the two major Asian powers affects the realization of the Asian century dream.

Mitigating Tannery Pollution in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia

The global leather market is worth more than $270 billion annually, and provides an important and accessible source of manufacturing exports for countries in the Global South. Leather is the source for a range of apparel items, including handbags, belts, shoes, wallets, gloves, and various other products, such as furniture, car seats, and luggage. Behind all leather goods is the tannery industry, with much of the raw materials processing located in the Global South (Lund-Thomsen, 2009, Journal of Business Ethics, vol. 90, p. 57). Unlike most synthetic fibers, which are derived from plastics and associated with the petrochemical industry, leather has the potential for a comparatively lighter footprint because it is based on natural and renewable materials not associated with the carbon emissions of fossil fuels. However, leather has suffered from various concerns, including animal rights and toxic effluents. It is ranked as the fourth most dangerous global industry to human health, with many tanneries in the Global South lacking basic protection for the workers and leaching toxic chromium into rivers (Green Cross and Pure Earth, 2016, World’s worst pollution problems: The toxics beneath our feet). This article explores the prospects for reducing the environmental footprint of tanneries in the Global South, focusing on the Sustainable Manufacturing and Environmental Pollution (SMEP) program, a series of projects in South Asia (SA) and Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) that explore ways to reduce manufacturing pollution. The article lays out a series of technical and managerial interventions that would vastly reduce the negative impacts on human health and the natural environment.

Imperial Cartography and National Mapping in Afghanistan

Afghanistan assumed its modern cartographic form in piecemeal fashion between the late 1860s and early 1890s in the context of British imperial boundary-making projects in South Asia and the Middle East. The bordering of Afghanistan was contextualized by the global British empire and multiple boundary conflicts and frontier anxieties involving the British and the French, German, Russian, and other imperial powers as well as local rulers. The fundamental point here is that the map of Afghanistan is a product of imperial and interimperial concerns, and it has not benefited the Afghan people. The map of Afghanistan may or may not have served the imperial purposes for which it was created, but more importantly, by uncritically accepting it and its imperial heritage, we Afghans have become victims of an imperial map of ourselves. Afghans and non-Afghans will benefit from directly confronting the coercive impact of imperial mapping agendas on the largely invisible people “on the map” of Afghanistan. This essay historicizes the production of maps of modern Afghanistan, exposing imperial and crypto-colonial influences upon our national cartography. In so doing, it critically reimagines our spatial politics and reconfigures our intellectual infrastructure. It is an exercise in historical recentering designed to instill Afghan humanity and agency onto the map of Afghanistan.

Management of involuntary resettlement in infrastructure development projects in South Asia

Development of infrastructure projects particularly in South Asia has led to physical and economic displacement of local communities. Majority of those project affected, or displaced people are from vulnerable sections. Once removed from their communities and local environment due to acquisition of land for the infrastructure projects, they experience trauma and face many challenges, particularly in the process of resettlement and restoration of their livelihoods. Hence, management of land acquisition and resettlement of displaced people is prerequisite to be done well through planning, designing, engaging with stakeholders, compensating for loss of properties, restoring livelihoods, addressing the needs of vulnerable people and monitoring social impacts. This paper presents a conceptual framework on involuntary resettlement and discusses existing policies and laws on land acquisition and resettlement in South Asian countries particularly in India and Bangladesh. It also presents resettlement case studies of infrastructure projects of both countries to assess in the light of international best practices.

Approaches and Growing Impacts of Problem-Based Learning in Teaching and Learning at Jigme Namgyel Engineering College

Academic enhancement through meaningful teaching and learning approaches is vital in any educational institution. Achieving the aspiration for innovative approaches and pedagogy in teaching and learning needs continuity and variation depending on its learning environment, diverse learners and other relevant factors. This study focused on the ‘Strengthening Problem-Based learning in South Asian Universities (PBL South Asia)’ project which is co-financed by European Union. It is qualitative research that made use of published records from institution and government reports, media, and website along with relevant literature as the based-reference resources. More so, Jigme Namgyel Engineering College (JNEC) as one of the beneficiary partners of this project has its own pace of activities that were developed and materialized. The commitment and progress of the PBL South Asia project at JNEC was recorded in this study. It shows a significant progress on materializing ‘Capacity Building in Higher Education’ in realizing the vision of the college to be one of the recognized institutions of applied engineering, technology and management in the region.

Development Trends China’s Belt and Road Initiative in South Asia :

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is one of the major undertakings in China's "peaceful rise" strategy. South Asia has a particularly important position in this plan because it is the confluent area between the two pincers "Silk Road Economic Belt" and "21st Century Maritime Silk Road" of the BRI. The progress of the BRI in South Asia plays a relatively vital role as a model and reference, as well as has encountered many obstacles and challenges. The successful implementation of ambitious BRI projects in South Asia requires China to have a dynamic, development mindset to take the advantages and deal with the challenges posed. The article mentions the advantages and disadvantages of the BRI development trend in South Asia in the coming time and some implications for countermeasures for South Asian countries when they participate in this initiative of China.

Sustainability and CDM potential analysis of a novel vs conventional bioenergy projects in South Asia by multi-criteria decision-making method.

In this study, the multi-attribute utility theory model, one of the most widely utilized multi-criteria decision-making methods, is employed to analyze the relative sustainability and cleaner development mechanism (CDM) potential of a novel bioenergy project in Pakistan and four registered CDM bioenergy installations in China, India, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. Four major sustainability evaluation criteria selected for the study are technology, economy, environment, and social aspects, whereas "simple multi-attribute rating technique" (SMART) and "additive synthesis method" were utilized for the calculation of weighting factors. The most significant indicator was emission reduction, and least significant indicator was job creation with 24% and 15% respective weightages, in the sustainability scoring. Moreover, for three considered evaluation scenarios, (I) base case, (II) per kilowatt, and (III) per kilowatt hour, the bioenergy project in Pakistan has the highest comparative sustainability values of 0.735, 0.592, and 0.492 respectively. This analysis will provide an insight assistance to developing countries for establishing sustainable energy installations under CDM.

A spatiotemporal analysis of Indian warming target using CORDEX-SA experiment data

It is important to estimate a high-resolution spatiotemporal distribution of temperature rise under climate change for effective adaptation and mitigation planning. This paper studies the threshold crossing time (TCT) for eight Indian warming targets (IWTs) between 1.5 and 5 °C based on regional climate models (RCMs) participating in The Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX)—South Asia project. To evaluate the performance of CORDEX experiments in simulating the near-surface mean temperature, the model performance index (MPI) is used which represents that the CanESM experiment performs best for simulating Tmean over India. All India average Tmean projected by the multi-model ensemble (MME) represents that 1.5 °C TCT is about 2033 ± 3 and 2028 ± 3 in RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios, respectively. During the twenty-first century, Indian subcontinent can experience five IWTs (1.5–3.5 °C) under RCP4.5 and all eight under scenario RCP8.5. The fastest warming region in India is the western Himalayan region (North India) and north-west region (Indian Thar Desert).

Institutional Framework and Financial Arrangements for Supporting the Adoption of Resource Recovery Reuse Technologies in South Asia

Open dumping of waste and discharging untreated wastewater into environment are key causes of environmental pollution in the developing world, including South Asian countries. Waste and wastewater however can be a source for recovering energy, nutrients and water if properly treated or recycled rather than a cause of pollution and diseases spread. The importance of adopting Resources Recovery and Reuse (RRR) technologies increases under growing demand for food and energy in contrast to depleting fossil fuel mines and groundwater reservoirs. However, institutional framework including the organizations and various stakeholders involved in the waste and wastewater management sectors, government policies and legislation, as well as financial arrangements and incentives to technological change play a pivotal role in adopting and scaling up RRR options. This study therefore focuses on institutional and financial aspects of challenges and opportunities for implementing RRR options in South Asia. It is argued that improving financial capacities, easing to obtain land use permits to expand RRR facilities, maintaining quality of RRR products (compost, biogas), and raising environmental awareness are imperative for the successful performance of the RRR projects in South Asia.

What are the strategic and economic implications for South Asia of China's Maritime Silk Road initiative?

ABSTRACTThis article focuses on South Asia's role in China's Maritime Silk Road (MSR) initiative. Given the saliency of this MSR enterprise as part of ChinesePresident Xi Jinping’s “One-Belt-One-Road” strategy, how this ambitious scheme impacts China’s relations with South Asian states along the MSR’s route, i.e. India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Bangladesh, merits investigation. The fate of the MSR will be determined by China’s relations with these states, since South Asia is in the middle of major sea-lanes between East/Southeast Asia and Middle East/Europe. The study examines the intentions and executions of China’s MSR projects in South Asia, evaluates the political and economic calculations of participating in the MSR for regional states, and identifies actions taken by them that can decide the initiative’s success. Politically, reactions of South Asian states to the MSR are explained as: fear of expanding Chinese influence in the Indian Ocean for India; and attempts by which Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Bangladesh use China to counteract possible domination by India. Economically, two MSR pathways for South Asian states are analyzed: increases in Chinese infrastructure investments; and expansion in South Asia-China trade; both of which are reducible by loans owed to China, or “strings”/conditions attached.

Regional cooperation on energy in South Asia: Unraveling the political challenges in implementing transnational pipelines and electricity grids

Political challenges are arguably the biggest constraint to the realization of regional energy projects in South Asia, an issue that has impeded cooperation despite the existence of substantial economic incentives. Although challenges such as technical difficulties, financial constraints and bureaucratic inefficiency are important, they are essentially subsidiary issues, the solutions to which are held hostage by often mentioned but rarely examined political impediments. While existing accounts of political obstacles in contemporary literature are relatively abstract, this paper draws on interviews with government officials, academics, representatives of regional institutions and officials of multilateral development banks in Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan and India to get insights into their experience of possibilities for and limitations to energy cooperation. By synthesizing the findings of interviews with relevant literature, this paper undertakes a systematic analysis of the political challenges to regional energy projects and provides a number of policy recommendations to overcome these impediments.

A SURVEY OF INDIA’S STRATEGIC ENVIRONMENT

This paper examines India’s strategic environment in the round. ‘Strategic’ refers here to politico-military aspects of international relations, particularly those with implications for the use or potential use of force in the future. Thus economic factors are considered secondarily, and only insofar as they have diplomatic and military ramifications – as in the case of Chinese infrastructure projects in South Asia, or Indian port-development in Iran. This approach also sets aside what we might call ‘structural’ factors, such as large-scale multilateral trade deals, such as the US-led Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), and sociological-demographic trends, such as relative population growth rates, also such issues necessarily influence the real and perceived balance of power over the long-run. The paper begins by considering India’s most salient adversary, Pakistan, before looking at the connected issue of Afghanistan and Central Asia. It then turns east to examine another rival, China, followed by the United States, the smaller states of South Asia, and finally the Middle East.

Registration, procurement, distribution, and use of misoprostol in Uganda: an interview-based observational study

BackgroundPoor access to essential medicines remains a barrier to improvement of health in low-income countries. The maternal mortality rate from post-partum haemorrhage (PPH) in Uganda is one of the highest in the world. Uganda launched a misoprostol rollout programme for prevention of PPH in 2009, before WHO added it to the Essential Medicines List. We assessed the rollout programme in Uganda. MethodsWe reviewed relevant documents (WHO and Ministry of Health guidelines, registration dossier), interviewed key informants, and assessed procurement data collected from the Accessing Medicines in Africa and South Asia project (2010–13). We interviewed informants from purposively selected districts of Mbarara, Bundibugyo, Kampala, and Apac (one for each Ugandan Ministry of Health performance rank). We interviewed key informants about the introduction, registration, procurement, distribution, availability, and use of misoprostol, treatment guidelines, and human resources. FindingsWe interviewed 82 participants. Civil society organisations promote misoprostol rollout across Uganda as part of a larger assemblage of groups working on maternal health and had a key role in misoprostol registration with the National Drug Authority and development of clinical guidelines. Evidence-based requirements for registration, guideline development, and addition to the Essential Medicines List of Uganda were scarce. Civil society and national medical stores were procuring and distributing misoprostol to health centres 2 years before its inclusion in clinical guidelines and Uganda's Essential Medicines List, despite the contested evidence for its effectiveness. Promotion and distribution of misoprostol is continued by local affiliates offering incentives to private health-care providers promoting their programmes. InterpretationCivil society organisations accelerated misoprostol rollout in Uganda. Despite its introduction as a second choice treatment, evidence suggests an increasing trend of misoprostol procurement and availability over the medicine of choice—oxytocin. Absence of guidelines and lack of training precludes rational use of misoprostol and has ramifications for maternal care that need urgent evaluation. FundingEuropean Union.

Two participatory projects in South Asia

This paper assesses the experience from two participatory projects in South Asia and concludes that participatory approaches can be severely constrained by institutional factors, including hierarchical systems and attitudes. The adoption of participatory approaches may be a necessary condition for successful projects and programmes but it will rarely be sufficient in itself to guarantee that success. There is a need for renewed attention to the development of professional capacity to first enter into dialogue with community members and then respond to their needs in appropriate ways. Participatory systems that build from local organisations up to the level of a town or city as a whole are conceptually attractive but are likely to prove difficult to implement in practice.

Two participatory projects in South Asia

This paper assesses the experience from two participatory projects in South Asia and concludes that participatory approaches can be severely constrained by institutional factors, including hierarchical systems and attitudes. The adoption of participatory approaches may be a necessary condition for successful projects and programmes but it will rarely be sufficient in itself to guarantee that success. There is a need for renewed attention to the development of professional capacity to first enter into dialogue with community members and then respond to their needs in appropriate ways. Participatory systems that build from local organisations up to the level of a town or city as a whole are conceptually attractive but are likely to prove difficult to implement in practice.

British Military Information Management Techniques and the South Asian Soldier: Eastern India during the Second World War

This article examines the dissemination of military propaganda and the operation of censorship structures within the Indian Army ‘units’—a term used in historically contemporary documentary sources to denote regiments, divisions or battalions—serving in the eastern provinces of the subcontinent during the Second World War. Instead of presenting propaganda as merely being misleading information, this work operates with Philip Taylor's interpretation of it being a combination of ‘facts, fiction, argument or suggestion’, and concentrates instead on unravelling its form and the intent behind its deployment. Moreover, the often artificial distinction between ‘propaganda’ and ‘counter-propaganda’ is avoided, since the many wartime British public relations projects in South Asia that were aimed at contradicting particular enemy claims were very frequently represented as having other concerns. Particular attention is devoted to describing the military's attitudes towards policies of propaganda and information between 1942 and 1945, as these years saw Eastern India, defined in wartime official documents as being comprised of Assam, Bengal, Bihar, Orissa, the eastern districts of the United Provinces and the sparsely populated frontier areas bordering Burma, develop into an important base of operations against the Japanese armies located in Southeast Asia.

Soil erosion in developing countries: where geomorphology fears to tread!

Geomorphology claims an expertise in the study of soil erosion and the development of conservation solutions. Yet what are presented as “facts” about erosion, especially in developing countries where the need for conservation is greatest, is usually unhelpful and sometimes wrong. To understand why the scientific message becomes distorted, geomorphologists should see themselves as actors on a political economic stage, constrained in their role by ideological modes of analysis which themselves shift as science adopts particular ways of promoting itself. The answers given by geomorphological analysis are as much a product of ideology as they are of the process being studied. As applied scientists, geomorphologists could assist their cause greatly by providing quality information on erosion process rates and their impact in a timely and applicable way. Descriptive and predictive models hold scope for extending geomorphological information beyond empirical confines. Examples throughout the paper are drawn from projects in South Asia, South America and southern Africa.

Ponna Wignaraja. Women, Poverty, and Resources. New Delhi Newbury/ London: Sage Publications. 1990.242 pp.

Poverty alleviation with reference to gender has been the focus of attention of national and international organizations since the seventies. Massive international assistance, both financial and technical, has been given for such programmes. However, the success rate of such projects has been fairly low. Two major reasons can be given for this low rate of success: (i) the projects have been imposed from the top without due regard to the local conditions, and the target group, i.e., the women, have been treated as objects rather than subjects; (ii) the donors and the implementing agencies have not always focused on the ultimate goal of sustainable development The success stories are quoted quite extensively but they have not been followed. The underlying factor behind their success was a strong faith in the capabilities of the masses at the grassroots level and the maximum use of local talent and expertise. Ponna Wignaraja has produced a wealth of infonnation by providing an in-depth review of the successful poverty alleviation projects amongst women which can lead to sustainable development in South Asia. He first analyses the successful cases in detail, and then he looks at the not very successful projects in Africa and Latin America, suggesting guidlines from specific successful projects in South Asia.

Organizing Community Participation in Family Planning Projects in South Asia

"Community participation" is a popular phrase with policymakers but the operational implications of putting the idea into practice are not clearly understood. This paper presents the findings from a comparative analysis of seven case studies of community participation projects implemented by the nongovernmental Family Planning Associations (FPAs) of India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. The analysis focuses on the interactions between staff and communities and assesses the extent to which the organization of the FPAs encourages and enables participation in project implementation. The results suggest that, despite the policy rhetoric seeking greater community involvement and self-reliance in program implementation, FPAs most commonly use participation as a means to generate new demand for services by presenting family planning in a manner that is acceptable and appropriate to the communities involved.

Public Subsidy and Private Forestry Investment: Analyzing the Selectivity and Leverage of a Common Policy Form

Cost-share subsidies are commonly used to promote public forestry objectives on land that is beyond direct public control. The subsidy may take the form of a proportional share, as has been the case of public efforts in the U.S. to promote productive investments on nonindustrial private forestland (NIPF). It may be in the form of lump-sum allocations and tied technical assistance, as is generally applied to village forestry projects in South Asia. It may be a transfer of public rights in land or usufruct to private parties, a form that has been used in the Philippines and in American forest homestead programs, or the analogous shift of public to private rights by reduction of taxes on timber or forestland. In all