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11. The Skills They Want: Aspirations of Students in Emerging India

Author:
Devesh Kapur, Megha Aggarwal, and Namrata Tognatta
Publication Date:
12-2012
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Abstract:
This report investigates student awareness, interests and aspirations around general and vocational education. Using a survey administered to class 12 students in one district each in Rajasthan, Chattisgarh, and Karnataka, we attempt to gain a better understanding of student aspirations, awareness levels, sources of information, key stakeholders and factors that influence their education and career choices. We then map student interests against sectors that are slated to experience the highest growth in terms of job creation. Our results indicate aspirations of students are largely misaligned with the needs of the Indian economy. It is important to create opportunities, generate awareness about various career options and the respective pathways available to realise career goals. Our findings have implications for policies aiming to improve participation in vocational education and training.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Education, and Labor Issues
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

12. Seeing Beyond Dharma: Ethical Excellence in Vikram and Vetaal Stories

Author:
Vasanthi Srinivasan
Publication Date:
11-2010
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Abstract:
Besides canonical texts such as Bhagavad Gita and Dharmasutras, reflections upon dharma's complexity and dilemmas abound in popular narratives such as Pancatantra, Hitopadesa and Vikram and Vetaal stories. Popularised by Amar Chitra Katha and Chanda Mama as Vikram and Vetaal, this classic is second only to Pancatantra and has been part of the narrative repertoire of many Indians. It is about the encounters between King Vikramaditya and a superhuman daemon, Vetala dwelling in a corpse. In several stories, King Vikramaditya is presented with two or more instances of noble or generous or virtuous actions and asked to judge which is greater. This essay examines ethical reasoning and judgment as they are presented in five stories about superlative nobility, magnanimity and virtue. Focusing on Vikramaditya's verdicts, I argue that judging extraordinary nobility or generosity or virtue involves going beyond dharma whether we take it as customary duty (based on caste and class, stage of life or family usage) or even occupational duty (svadharma). It appears that ethical greatness is all about sovereign gestures through which one responds to the challenges posed by the sacrifices of others.
Topic:
Religion and Culture
Political Geography:
India and Asia

13. Empowerment of Dalits and Adivasis Role of Education in the Emerging Economy

Author:
Narendra Jadhav
Publication Date:
11-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Abstract:
Well, ladies and gentlemen, I feel greatly honored to have been invited to deliver this inaugural keynote lecture in the Nand Jeet Khemka Distinguished Lecture series for this international conference on India's Dalits. I am indeed grateful to my friend Professor Devesh Kapur, Director of CASI, and his colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania for providing me this opportunity to participate in this conference on a theme that has been very close to my heart. I understand that the Nand Jeet Khemka Distinguished Lecture series comprises public lectures on contemporary India that will stimulate a dialogue on campus. Given this focus of the distinguished lecture series and the fact that this also happens to be the inaugural keynote lecture for this International Conference on India's Dalits, I have chosen to share some thoughts with you this evening on the theme of “Empowerment of Dalits and Adivasis: Role of Education in the Emerging Indian Economy.”
Topic:
Development, Economics, and Education
Political Geography:
India and Asia

14. Arguing Democracy: Intellectuals and Politics in Modern India

Author:
Sunil Khilnani
Publication Date:
10-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Abstract:
The idea of democracy, brought into being on an Athenian hillside some 2,500 years ago, has travelled far, and today attaches itself to a growing number of political projects. In everyday political talk, as well as in the specialised fields of the political and social sciences, terms like “spreading democracy,” “promoting democracy,” and, of course – “imposing democracy” – have become ubiquitous. Underlying such talk is a belief in democratic universalism; the idea that, as Larry Diamond, erstwhile advisor to Paul Bremer in Iraq, has put it: “Every country in the world can be democratic.” Yet, even as the ambition is asserted to spread democracy across the globe, our conceptions of what democracy is have narrowed: to a “checklist” model, a prescriptive blueprint, based almost entirely on Western experience.
Topic:
Democratization and Governance
Political Geography:
India and Asia

15. Food as a Metaphor for Cultural Hierarchies

Author:
Gopal Guru
Publication Date:
10-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Abstract:
The above title, I claim, represents multiple meanings that are attached to Food as substance and the Jaika or “taste” as an idea emanating from the substance. Hence, it is necessary to lay bare different possible meanings that are associated with food. These meanings are both contiguous to and separate from each other. Let us see how they assimilate and dissociate from each other. Food and cooked food are different from each other in a major way. Food has a universal value to the extent that it, as a substance, becomes an essential need for the very survival of all the organic bodies: plants, animals and human beings. Thus, food, at one level, suggests an ontological equality cutting across several organic bodies. Of course, food acquires a specific importance when looked from the point of view of human beings. Unlike plants, human beings require a particular kind of food for their very survival. They require, in most cases, food grains as a primary condition. Thus the denial of food would jeopardize the very survival of human beings. Hence, food falls into the realm of human rights. Furthermore, the denial of food constitutes a violation of human rights. Some of the laudable efforts led by Jean Dreze – who with the help of some NGOs has prepared the bill concerning the right to food – are directed towards making the right to food a safety network against the violation of human rights.
Topic:
Human Rights and Culture
Political Geography:
India and Asia

16. Markets and Manu: Economic Reforms and Its Impact on Caste in India

Author:
Chandra Bhan Prasad
Publication Date:
01-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Abstract:
In this paper, I study the impact of economic reforms in India, and its impact on the centuries-old caste order. Specifically, I argue that capitalism, like caste, is a social order and therefore uniquely qualified to subvert and destroy the caste system from the inside, as opposed to the State, which is a political order and intervenes in the caste society from the outside. The fourfold caste system in India, as preached by Manu and practised for millennia thereafter, is based on the twin principles of blood purity and occupational purity, whereas Dalits, or the untouchables, are left outside of the caste system. We surveyed the backgrounds of the employees of multinational fast-food outlet in a large mall in eastern Delhi, the capital of India, the housekeeping staff and a few street food joints just outside of the mall. We find that the new capitalist economy, with an emphasis on wealth creation, is disrupting the caste system wherein a large number of the workers at the fast food outlet are upper castes, as in the housekeeping department, effectively destroying occupational purity.
Topic:
Reform
Political Geography:
India

17. The Internationalization of Indian Companies: The Case of Tata

Author:
Andrea Goldstein
Publication Date:
01-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Abstract:
The Tata Group plays a central role in the Indian economy and is currently at the fore in the internationalization of Indian companies. Tata has some specific features, including the role played by Tata Sons and Tata Industries in coordinating financial and managerial activities and managing the Tata brand, as well as the strong emphasis on corporate social responsibility, mainly though not exclusively through the Tata trusts. This paper first assembles available evidence on the internationalization of Tata firms through both mergers and acquisitions and green field investments and considers the relative importance of underlying factors driving the process: market access for exports and delivery of services, sources of raw materials, and horizontal or vertical integration. It then analyzes how internationalization is changing the nature and corporate culture of Tata, before discussing the post-merger integration of Tetley into Tata Tea, seven years after this acquisition-then the largest-ever by an Indian company in a foreign country-was finalized. In the conclusions, the paper explores the implications of the Tata experience for the internationalization of large firms from India and other emerging economies.
Political Geography:
India

18. Beyond the ABCs: Higher Education and Developing Countries

Author:
Megan Crowley and Devesh Kapur
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Abstract:
This paper analyzes a relatively neglected facet of the complex debate regarding human capital–higher (or tertiary) education. It addresses five broad questions examining higher education in developing countries. One, are the economic effects of higher education on developing countries different from those in industrialized countries, with its links with labor markets of lesser importance than its impact on institutional development? Two, how does the impact of higher education depend on the type of education and its beneficiaries? Three, with the state unable to meet growing demand pressures, what should be the proper role of the state to ensure not just quality but also equity and access? Four, how should countries rethink the provision of higher education in an "open economy" from seeking education abroad or encouraging foreign providers into the country or simply linking domestic institutions with foreign quality assurance mechanisms? And five, do new technologies offer developing countries a new paradigm to expand the provision of high quality but low cost higher education? The aim is not to provide categorical answers to these complex questions, but rather highlight the analytical and empirical lacuna with regard to each of these questions.
Topic:
Education
Political Geography:
India

19. Will India Emerge as an Eastern or Western Power?

Author:
Kishore Mahbubani
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Abstract:
Founded in 1992, the Center for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania is the only research institution in the United States dedicated to the study of contemporary India. A national resource, it fills an urgent need for objective knowledge of India's rapidly changing society, politics and economy, and the processes of transformation underway in an ancient civilization emerging as a major power.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, and Sovereignty
Political Geography:
United States, India, East Asia, and Asia

20. Economic Growth and India's Future?

Author:
Joydeep Mukherji
Publication Date:
03-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for the Advanced Study of India
Abstract:
Recent optimism about India is based on the view that the country may finally be on a higher growth trajectory after more than a decade of halting economic reform. Spurred by a balance of payments crisis a decade ago that pushed the government of India to nearly defaulting on its foreign debt, a series of coalition governments have slowly deregulated the once most-regulated economy outside the communist world. Over the years, the government has enlarged the role of market forces, given more freedom to the private sector, and cut barriers to domestic and foreign competition. At the same time, India's state governments have gained considerable autonomy from the central government, making India into the federal state envisaged in its constitution.
Topic:
Development, Economics, and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
India, East Asia, and Asia