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71. Exploring the Awareness of China Pakistan Economic Corridor: A Stakeholder’s Perspective

Author:
Fouzia Hadi Ali and Aban Abid Qazi
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
South Asian Studies
Institution:
Department of Political Science, University of the Punjab
Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to examine the prospects of China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) from a stakeholder’s perspective. The identification and communication of stakeholders can play a vital role in identifying the perceptions of all who are directly or indirectly involved in a project. Moreover, this study focuses on the general nature of stakeholders and their awareness about the mega project. An exploratory study was conducted through a structured survey instrument to tap the awareness and opinions of the stakeholders connected to the likely benefits of CPEC. The results revealed interesting findings relating to their opinions about CPEC. The study further suggests some important implications and future directions to introduce an inclusive approach to mitigate the misconceptions about CPEC.
Topic:
Development, International Cooperation, Infrastructure, Economy, and Economic Growth
Political Geography:
Pakistan, China, South Asia, and Punjab

72. Breaking the Bonds of Poverty: Effectiveness of Microcredit in Improving the Wellbeing of Brick Kilns’ Laborers in Pakistan

Author:
Jafar Riaz Kataria, Ahmed Usman, Shabbir Hussain, Muhammad Usman, and Aaisha Amjad
Publication Date:
01-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
South Asian Studies
Institution:
Department of Political Science, University of the Punjab
Abstract:
This study examines the effectiveness of microcredit to enhance family income, eradicate peshgi and improve the wellbeing of brick kiln laborers. A survey was carried out to determine the effectiveness of microcredit among laborers working at brick kilns located in Lahore and Kasur districts. Linear regression analysis was run at 418 cases to track patterns in the data. The results of study indicated that microcredit significantly increased the family income, eradicated peshgi and improved the wellbeing of borrowers. Furthermore, segregated data indicated that female, married, aged, illiterate, beneficiaries having 6 and above children, beneficiaries having 9 and above family members, family income more than 20001, family expenditures more than 20001, beneficiaries who consulted their families and repeaters experienced higher benefits of microcredit scheme. The researchers recommend increasing the microcredit access to the poor people living in urban slums and rural areas, where the facility of formal lending institutions is lower and people are forced to take peshgi (advance) for meeting their basic needs.
Topic:
Development, Economics, Labor Issues, and Microcredit
Political Geography:
Pakistan, South Asia, and Punjab

73. Demystifying the Indian Smart City: An Empirical Reading of the Smart Cities Mission

Author:
Persis Taraporevala
Publication Date:
08-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
The newly elected federal Government of India (GoI) launched the Smart Cities Mission (SCM) in 2015 with the stated purpose of improving the governance and infrastructural deficiencies that plague Indian cities. Missing, however, in the pageantry of the new programme is a cohesive understanding of a smart city. While the government documentation repeatedly implies infinite liberty for cities to self-define their understanding of ‘smartness’, the actions demonstrate that there is a larger idea of ‘smartness’ that the federal government seeks to implement. It is at this disjunction, between the rhetoric and practice of the Mission, that this paper finds its core research question – ‘What constitutes a smart city in India?’ Through a detailed reading of the government documentation of the top 99 cities, the paper argues that the there is a profound chasm between the professed objectives of the Mission and the strategies enacted to achieve these objectives.
Topic:
Development, Government, Infrastructure, Social Policy, and Urban
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Asia

74. Census Towns in India - Current Patterns and Future Discourses

Author:
Shamindra Nath Roy and Jaya Prakash Pradhan
Publication Date:
05-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
The surge in census towns (CTs) during Census 2011 has drawn a lot of attention to the ongoing and future dynamics of these in-situ urban settlements in India. Using the village level information from the previous and current censuses, the present study attempts to identify the villages that can be classified as a census town in 2021. While the prevailing dataset bears some obstacles for a neat identification of such settlements, it can be observed that a fairly high number of rural areas may be classified as CTs in future, which currently accommodates a population of 17.9 million. While the current nature of regional distribution of these areas may not vary much over the future, their areal characteristics over time portray multiple spatial processes undergirding India’s urban trajectory. A lot of these prospective CTs are also relatively prosperous than their current rural neighbourhoods, which reinforces the persistence of similar pattern of urban transformation in future.
Topic:
Demographics, Development, Urbanization, Census, and Rural
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Asia

75. Engines without Drivers: Cities in India’s Growth Story

Author:
Partha Mukhopadhyay
Publication Date:
03-2018
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
It is now almost axiomatic that cities are the engines of growth. Historically, federal support programmes have focused on rural areas, but over the past fifteen years, the need to devise such programmes for urban local bodies has come to be recognised, with JNNURM in its various forms, being the most visible early manifestation. This trend has continued, even strengthened, in this government and among the menu of urban support programmes on offer from the Government of India, the vision of the city as the engine of growth is most clearly evident in the Smart City Mission, with its focus on area based development – like an engine within the city. Yet, even in the mainstream economics literature, while there is evidence for cities as places of higher productivity, there is less evidence for cities as drivers of growth – with learning being the primary driver and urban primacy being an important obstacle. The primary questions are whether cities are places of learning, whether there are identifiable mechanisms of such learning and the kind of city institutions – economic, social and political – that facilitate such learning. This paper will interrogate the empirical characteristics of such urban institutions in India in the context of the theoretical literature and learning mechanisms that emerge from international evidence. In particular, it will argue that the nature of the labour market, which is largely contractual, the transfer of rural fragmentation in social relations to cities and the absence of city-level political agency, all reduce the potential of the city as a location of learning economies. For cities to even have the possibility of being engines of growth, we need to ensure that drivers of these engines are in place and we have a mechanism to think about paths to follow.
Topic:
Development, Government, Urbanization, and Economic Growth
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Asia

76. Note on Faecal Sludge Management in Rural India: Graded Solution, legal and Regulatory implications and Possible Administrative Structure

Author:
Arkaja Singh and Anindita Mukherjee
Publication Date:
08-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
Rural areas in India are experiencing significant gains in toilet coverage under the public funded programmes. Given the rate of ‘in-situ urbanization’ in a growing urban paradigm,the rural areas, in many parts, seems to emulate urban infrastructural preferences for their toilets. This may remain annulled due to non-availability of urban like service facilities in the rural context. The first part of the report focusses on establishes the urbanising characteristics of the Large and Dense Villages (LDVs) in India for usage of a specific typology of Sanitation Infrastructure which in turn links to the gaps in terms of service availability across the Faecal Sludge Management (FSM) value chain. In this context, in the second half of the report, the authors examine the various environmental and municipal laws applicable to Sanitation in rural areas. The report also sheds light on how the capacities of various institutions and legal instruments may be leveraged for graded interventions, ensuring safe and sustainable sanitation in rural areas in India.
Topic:
Development, Government, Urbanization, Sanitation, and Services
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Asia

77. An Overview of the Smart Cities Mission in India

Author:
Ashwathy Anand, Ajai Sreevatsan, and Persis Taraporevala
Publication Date:
08-2018
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
The newly elected federal Government of India (GoI) launched the Smart Cities Mission (SCM) in 2015 with the stated purpose of improving the governance and infrastructural deficiencies that plague Indian cities. The Mission categorically states that there is no one definition of a 'smart city' and implies infinite liberty for cities to self-define their understanding of 'smartness'. Towards demystifying the Mission, the researchers utilised government documentation from the 99 cities to answer one question-What constitutes a smart city in India.
Topic:
Development, Government, Urbanization, and Social Policy
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Asia

78. Unpacking the Processes of Open Defecation Free Status in Udaipur: A case study of Udaipur, Rajasthan

Author:
Devashish Deshpande and Avani Kapur
Publication Date:
08-2018
Content Type:
Case Study
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
This report is the culmination of a study conducted by the Accountability Initiative (AI) on Swachh Bharat Mission-Gramin in 2017 on the request of the Udaipur district administration. The study understands the outcomes, and the processes, which led to Open Defecation Free status in selected Gram Panchayats.
Topic:
Development, Health, Social Policy, Sanitation, and Services
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Asia

79. Integrating Urban Development and Climate Objectives: Insights from Coimbatore

Author:
Ankit Bhardwaj and Radhika Khosla
Publication Date:
07-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
Indian cities routinely make decisions on land use, housing, water, transport, economic growth and waste management that have implications for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Aligning these sectoral actions with climate goals involves understanding how infrastructural systems interact and how these choices address both development and climate objectives. City governments, as managers of these various infrastructure systems, can co-ordinate such decision-making. However, so far, this is largely ad hoc. We show how cities can use a ‘multiple objective’ approach to systematically examine, and make explicit, the linkages between local objectives, climate change mitigation and adaptation across their planning portfolio.
Topic:
Climate Change, Development, Water, Economic Growth, Urban, and Sanitation
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Asia

80. Midcourse Manoeuvres: Community strategies and remedies for natural resource conflicts in India

Author:
Kanchi Kohli, Meenakshi Kapoor, Manju Menon, and Vidya Viswanathan
Publication Date:
06-2018
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
Land transformation has been at the centre of economic growth of post-colonial, Asian nation-states. While their political reforms and economic policies have focused on land governance, the outcomes have resulted in promoting privatisation and speculative business interest in ecologically sensitive landscapes that are also under diverse forms of common use by resource-dependent communities. A three-year study undertaken to understand community-level responses to land use transformation in India, Indonesia and Myanmar shows that the current scale and approach of land–intensive development in these large democracies is facilitated by fast-paced, top down policy changes. These policies are ‘stacked’ (when multiple layers of current and revoked laws are simultaneously in use) rather than integrated and their implementation is the responsibility of various authorities and agencies that overlap. Growing private investments in land that has remained within varying degrees of state control have changed the way land is managed. Land has become increasingly securitised and ‘out of bounds’ for small farmers and other land-users with or without recognised forms of ownership and use rights. Land conflicts are caused due to coercive acquisition processes or land grabs, unlawful operations of projects and long pending remedies to social and environmental impacts. In many instances, these conflicts begin even before the final decisions on projects are taken and persist for years. Highly capitalised land use change brings powerful investors and corporations, governments and local communities in unequal and precarious arrangements of negotiation and confrontation. Citizens and communities affected by land use change, use varied strategies such as administrative complaints, protests, litigation, media campaigns and political advocacy, and engage in improving project design and implementation, increase compensations, restore community access to resources and get a review on the operations of harmful projects. These are done under conditions of political intransigence and criminalisation of those who speak up. While all three countries have recognised land conflicts and their impact on development plans and proposals, they are yet to give affected people a formal and effective role in land and natural resource governance. This is the study report on India.
Topic:
Development, Privatization, Natural Resources, Business, Economic Growth, Land Law, Conflict, and Land Rights
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Asia