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31. Debates on Administrative Reform in India: Training

Author:
Sonakshi Sharma, Aditya Unnikrishnan, and Karnamadakala Rahul Sharma
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
Since Independence, the government’s approach to training the IAS has undergone a sea of change. The IAS has evolved “from being a postcolonial civil service… to one that is rooted in the empirical realities of a developing and resurgent India” (Kiran Aggarwal Committee, 2014, p.1). Training programmes for the IAS have shifted their focus from regulation to socioeconomic development in keeping with the new demands faced by governance and administration (Second Administrative Reforms Commission, 2008). In spite of these changes, there remain similarities with the colonial civil service. Like the ICS, the IAS is a high-functional generalist service tasked with handling a variety of responsibilities. Reform committees continue to express concerns that trainees do not attach adequate value to the training process (Second Administrative Reforms Commission, 2008). Training is still expected to create strong bonds between officers and establish a camaraderie. Most importantly, the central principle remains the same; a merit-based process is used to select young people with little or no experience in governance and place them in positions of great responsibility. This kind of system inevitably relies heavily on training to impart skills. Better training, both at the formative and mid-career stages, is expected to bridge the “wide chasm between public expectation and service delivery” (Kiran Aggarwal Committee, 2014, p. 3). For this reason, it is vital to examine the history of reform debates and conversations on the subject. Tracing the evolution of these reform threads will better equip us to analyse current and future reform measures by understanding which problems are being addressed and how. To this end, this working paper closely reads the following: the Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) reports, Central Pay Commission (CPC) reports, and reports produced by reform commissions like the Alagh Committee, Kiran Aggarwal Committee, Hota Committee, Kothari Committee, Yugandhar Committee, VT Krishnamachari Committee and the Surinder Nath Committee. Apart from this, the working paper also draws on theNational Training Policy, 1996 and2012, and documents on Mission Karmayogi that reflect the government’s vision for IAS training. This paper begins with a short description of the current training format and the IAS ecosystem. This is followed by an analysis of the three streams that dominate reform thinking on IAS training: the strategy, structure and content of training; the role of and need for incentives in training programmes, and the institutional apparatus in place to operationalise training programmes.
Topic:
History, Reform, Colonialism, Training, Civil Servants, and Administration
Political Geography:
South Asia and India

32. Algeria & France: Untangling Past and Present

Author:
Intissar Fakir and Francis Gilles
Publication Date:
09-2022
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Middle East Institute (MEI)
Abstract:
French President Emmanuel Macron's recent visit to Algeria brought talks of cooperation and reconciliation to the fore in an otherwise frought relationship. France and Algeria share a long and painful history, including 132 years of colonial occupation and an eight year war of devastation. In an effort to unpack the motivations and context behind Macron's visit, MEI Senior Fellow and Director of the North Africa and the Sahel Program Intissar Fakir speaks with Francis Gilles, Senior Research Fellow with the Barcelona Center for International Affairs.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, History, Bilateral Relations, Colonialism, and Conflict
Political Geography:
Europe, France, Algeria, and North Africa

33. The PAIGC’s Political Education for Liberation in Guinea-Bissau, 1963–74

Author:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Publication Date:
07-2022
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Abstract:
The liberation struggle against colonialism, if it is to be a total liberation struggle, is not only for the political conquest of territory (‘flag independence’); it is a struggle to liberate the people from the tentacles of colonialism. The liberation struggle is a social and political phenomenon that gains strength when colonised people organise themselves to reclaim their political and economic sovereignty and to dismantle and destroy the institutions that overpower their own sense of themselves and their capacity to control the fruits of their labour. The liberation struggle employs – at different times – a range of means to end colonial domination, from armed struggle to economic strikes to educational projects, programmes, and cultural resistance.
Topic:
Sovereignty, Colonialism, Resistance, and Liberation
Political Geography:
Africa and Guinea-Bissau

34. Nela Martínez Espinosa (1912–2004) Women of Struggle, Women in Struggle

Author:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Publication Date:
03-2022
Content Type:
Research Paper
Institution:
Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research
Abstract:
The second half of the twentieth century was marked by national liberation struggles in the colonised countries of Africa and Asia. In Latin America, neo-colonial structures had subordinated the republics founded as independent countries at the beginning of the nineteenth century, cementing their subaltern position in the international division of labour. During decades of global crisis (1914–1948), Latin America saw battles between an oligarchy that violently sought to make the working class pay the price of the economic meltdown and a left-wing tendency boosted by two processes: the growing peasant and trade union organisations on the one hand, and a radicalised middle class on the other. Observing the new forms of material dispossession that made the promises of republican democracy impossible, peasant and worker organisations advanced a discourse highlighting class conflict and patriarchal and neo-colonial domination. They also voiced new visions of the nation state and the perspectives for democratic and socialist internationalism against the unfolding fascism, inspired by the mobilisations and transformations of public power achieved by the Mexican Revolution and the Russian Revolution. The fight for equality and liberation under the leadership of working people is ongoing in the anti-imperialist struggles of our time. In a myriad of ways, women powerfully shaped and continue to shape this struggle against oligopolistic, patriarchal, racist, and neo-colonial capitalism. In the Women of Struggle, Women in Struggle series of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, we present the stories of women in struggle who contributed not only to the wider arena of politics, but who also pioneered the establishment of women’s organisations, opening up paths of feminist resistance and struggle throughout the twentieth century. Praxis, as a knowledge of theory and of organisational methods of struggle as they change and respond to history, gives sustenance to ongoing struggles to face oppression. As militants, we study the diverse organisational methods of these women not only to better understand their political contributions, but also to inspire us as we build the organisations necessary for our fight against oppression and exploitation today. In this third study, we discuss the life and legacy of Nela Martínez Espinosa, an Ecuadorian fighter for the people. Nela was a writer and communist activist[i] from an early age with extensive internationalist experience. As the first woman elected to Ecuador’s parliament, she created one of the country’s first mass women’s political organisations in 1938 and, as the first woman minister of the interior, she was effectively in charge of the country in the chaotic three days that followed the insurrection known as La Gloriosa, or the Glorious May Revolution, in May 1944. Nela’s rich life-long activism teaches us about the history of women in local, national, and international struggles that linked women’s rights with anti-capitalist, anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-colonial, and anti-imperialist struggles throughout the twentieth century. In a speech at Ecuador’s National Congress in 2003 (a year before her death), Nela spoke about becoming the first woman legislator in 1945: I came [to the parliament] for the first time in a trance of my love for this homeland, which is still struggling with itself, but by then had been rescued from a dictatorship that intensified its oppression. Those of us who experienced the dangers of demanding a revolution which was subsequently denied to us were simply moved. A woman in Congress among those who spoke and not simply among those who listened? Those who ruled inherited the colonial way of thinking and acting […] which during the colony destroyed the culture […] of indigenous peoples to the point of becoming part of the norm, the way of life for those who later became the leaders of the republic. The practice that we are speaking of persisted in social norms and especially behaviour. That is why my presence was strange in the National Congress and, on welcoming it, political leaders for the first time also recognised women citizens in the upper echelons of power.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Labor Issues, Colonialism, Feminism, and Biography
Political Geography:
South America, Latin America, and Ecuador

35. Coercion and Violence in German Labor Conscription in Cameroon, 1880s-1914

Author:
Henry Kam Kah and Emmanuel E. Kengo
Publication Date:
12-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Brazilian Journal of African Studies
Institution:
Brazilian Journal of African Studies
Abstract:
Cameroon is officially bilingual with English and French used in public administration and in busines. It is multi-ethnic and multi-lingual consisting of over 250 ethnic polities that mek it aptly described as "a babble of tongues". Its location straddles the Central and West African sub-regions. The ecological zones of the country include the Sahel, Savanna and forest. through this, the coungry has been nicknamed "Africa in miniature" (Fanso 2017, 9). The country has a triple colonial heritage. It was first annexed in July 1884 by Germany. After the german defeat in World War I, the country, like other German colonies, was seized from Germany and eventually partitioned into two unequal halves by Britain and France after a botchd condominium. The economic foundation of the territory during the colonial period was laid by the Germans. Labour played a cutting-edge role in the German economic enterprise in Cameroon. The conscription and treatment of labour in the country and other German colonies was barbaric and dehumanising to say the least. This paper discusses this poor labour treatment and the ramifications on the population and in the redefinition of German labour policy in the territory.
Topic:
History, Labor Issues, Economy, Colonialism, Exploitation, and Conscription
Political Geography:
Africa and Cameroon

36. Through Armed Struggle: Colonial Occupation, National Liberation War and Independence in Mozambique

Author:
José Alejandro Sebastian Barrios Díaz
Publication Date:
12-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Brazilian Journal of African Studies
Institution:
Brazilian Journal of African Studies
Abstract:
Using primary sources from University of Coimbra’s Documentation Center “25 de Abril”, the objective of this paper is to understand the context of Mozambique’s national liberation war, which took place between 1964 and 1975, and to characterize FRELIMO’s role in this conflict from a historical perspective. The paper is divided in three parts, aside from the introduction and concluding remarks. First, the article narrates, in broad strokes, the colonial occupation of the Mozambican territory between the end of the 19th and the 20th century, to then approach the national liberation struggle. The third part describes FRELIMO’s work, its formation and its role in the struggle for independence.
Topic:
Colonialism, Independence, and Armed Resistance
Political Geography:
Africa, Mozambique, and Portugal

37. Colonial Designs, Arab Dreams, and the Making of the Modern Middle East

Author:
H. D. Wright
Publication Date:
04-2022
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Harvard Journal of Middle Eastern Politics and Policy
Institution:
The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University
Abstract:
The modern Middle East is a complicated formation of states, each with its own distinct history, religious identity, and relationship to the colonial powers. In non-academic circles, it is commonly assumed that each state has existed in roughly the same autonomous territory since antiquity; and colonialism, while harmful, merely briefly interrupted that long chain of independence, leaving no scars. This essay seeks to dispel that notion through an analysis of the European diplomatic engagements that pulled apart existing territories and forced them between the borders of new states, sealing a nearly inevitable destiny of domestic strife. Through that analysis, this essay derives a new Middle East diplomacy, dedicated to learning from the past to create a mutually-beneficial future.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, Diplomacy, and Colonialism
Political Geography:
Middle East

38. A Genealogy of African Islamic Modernity

Author:
Wendell Hassan Marsh
Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Center for Security, Race and Rights (CSRR), Rutgers University School of Law
Abstract:
African Islamic modernity is a discourse, a historical condition, and a project that highlights the entanglements of African racial identities, Islamic forms of life, and modernity as the globally hegemonic mode of social, economic, and political being. While there are many lineages by which one might trace the story of entanglement — situated differently in various locations, traditions, and contexts — the contemporary nation-state of Senegal is the ideal setting to think through these relationships. It is a space marked by a millennium of Islamic presence and over five centuries of integration in the global economy sequentially defined by the trans-Atlantic slave-trade, colonization, and neoliberal economic structural adjustment. It is also a space in which conflicting Africanist and Orientalist discourses have competed to represent a society that consistently escapes both constructions. Between and beyond these discourses, there is an important national discourse that narrates a story of modernity in three key episodes: 1) Islamic revolution that enshrines Islamic principles of governance, 2) anti-colonial messianism that carves out an autonomous space of Islamic economics, and 3) Racial accommodation in which the colonial state and Sufi orders negotiate the terms of the social contract. In this talk, I will show how these episodes together constitute a history of the present.
Topic:
Islam, Race, Religion, History, Hegemony, Colonialism, Discourse, and Modernity
Political Geography:
Africa and Senegal

39. Mission to Civilise: The French West African Federation

Author:
Christopher Zambakari
Publication Date:
04-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Conflict Trends
Institution:
The African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD)
Abstract:
Imperial powers such as Rome, Persia, Japan and China have justified their conquests as a benefit to those that were conquered by virtue of bringing a superior civilisation to their world.[1] Among imperial powers, one of the most strident were the Second and Third French Republics.[2] The civilising mission – or what French historian Raoul Girardet refers to as “colonial humanism”[3] – came to define French colonial statecraft in the early 19th century crusade to improve the lives of people who France saw as backward in Asia, Africa and the Pacific. For intellectuals such as Leroy-Beaulieu, civilisation was to be spread through commerce, trade and exchanges between people, rather than through conquest.[4] By the early 1800s, the republican ideals that inspired the French Revolution were slowly abandoned for a more forceful assimilationist policy exemplified by colonial expansionist policies. According to Jules Brévié, governor-general of French West Africa from 1930 to 1936 and of French Indochina from 1936 to 1939, the most important task for the French was to bring about a cultural renaissance to the indigenous people.[5] Brévié called for a redefined mission with a focus on teaching colonised subjects to live according to “authentic African traditions”.[6] As with the British before them, French policy adapted to the local context and shifted towards a more “indirect mode of rule”,[7] casting foreign rule as the protectors of indigenous cultures. This article analyses the French imperial project in Africa, with a focus on the Federation of French West Africa (consisting of today’s Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal). It outlines differences and similarities between the French mode of direct rule and the British mode of indirect rule. To understand the methodology of rule, one must first understand the system of knowledge production that informed, shaped and guided the colonial project. A policy change occurred after the French experienced a crisis of empire, which ushered in fundamental transformations before World War I (1909 and 1912) and the interwar years between 1918 and 1939 (from “assimilation” to that of “association”). The new policy shifted the focus from antagonism towards Islam to collaboration with Islamic representatives, from civilisations to conservation, from a focus on progress to law and order, and a preoccupation with local customs while managing social and cultural differences (pluralism).[8] This article is offered as an important contribution to the political and intellectual history of the largest colonial state in Africa: the Federation of French West Africa.
Topic:
Imperialism, Intellectual History, Colonialism, Assimilation, and Customs
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, France, Senegal, Mali, Guinea, Mauritania, Côte d'Ivoire, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Benin

40. Exploring the conflict-readiness of parties: The Dynamics of Proclivity Towards Violence and/or Conflict in Madagascar

Author:
Velomahanina T. Razakamaharavo
Publication Date:
01-2021
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
African Journal on Conflict Resolution
Institution:
The African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD)
Abstract:
Since the beginnings of the anti-colonial struggle, Madagascar, a former French colony and an island in the Indian Ocean, has gone through nine episodes of conflict, ranging from political tension to high intensity conflicts. These changes of conflict intensity demonstrate that the proclivity towards conflict may take different forms in various episodes of violence and conflicts in the country. This phenomenon may be explored by examining the causal configurations and the co-existence of positive and negative processes and mechanisms which are interacting and co-constructing each other. In order to untangle the intricacy behind the conflict-readiness of parties preparing for conflict at low, medium or high levels of violence, use is made of concepts and theories pertaining to peace, conflict, negotiation and mediation, conflict escalation and de-escalation to explore the roles played by the following factors: local narratives and metanarratives. repertoires of action of the actors the actors’ framing of the conflicts the actors’ polarising of public opinion construction of the image of the self and the other conflict dimensions (socio-economic, cultural, political and global external) accommodation policies This paper argues firstly that proclivities toward violence/conflict in Madagascar are related to the coexistence of positive and negative elements, and secondly, that such proclivities are built partly upon the fact that liberal strategies for maintaining peace give rise to negative as well as positive effects on the dynamics of keeping that peace.
Topic:
Colonialism, Conflict, Violence, and Local
Political Geography:
Africa and Madagascar