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11. Food Security: Understanding Pakistan’s National Security Concerns

Author:
Iram Khalid
Publication Date:
12-2018
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Journal of Political Studies
Institution:
Department of Political Science, University of the Punjab
Abstract:
Food security has established as a concern of national security in terms of state development and progress.. Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. Concerns of food security and economic development act together reinforcing one another in the practice of development. A country which is not able to generate the required food and lacks resources and affordability of buying food from the international marketplace meeting the gap of supply and demand is not a state that is sufficient in food sovereignty. Food Security therefore is essential for national security.
Topic:
Climate Change, National Security, Urbanization, and Food Security
Political Geography:
Pakistan, South Asia, and India

12. Is the BJP in Trouble? Caste, Class, and the Urban-Rural Divide in Gujarat

Author:
Ashish Ranjan and Neelanjan Sircar
Publication Date:
12-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
After 22 years in power, the BJP is feeling the heat this year in Gujarat's election campaign. This paper analyses the reasons for this sudden frustration with the BJP – with a particular focus on caste mobilisation, urban-rural division, and emerging class politics in Gujarat.
Topic:
Politics, Urbanization, Elections, Class, Rural, and Caste
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Asia

13. Gender and Urban Sanitation Inequalities in Everyday Lives

Author:
Susan Esme Chaplin
Publication Date:
06-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
Even though sanitation was established as a separate human right by the United Nations General Assembly in January 2016, there has an been overall failure to reduce by half the proportion of the global population without access to basic sanitation (Millennium Development Goal 7, Target C). The Sustainable Development Goals have targets of gender equality, and the sustainable and universal provision of sanitation. Hopefully this will mean increased attention being given to the interests and well-being of poor women and girls living in slums and informal settlements who still lack access to adequate sanitation. The sanitation needs of women and girls are different from those of men and boys because of the former’s requirements of personal safety, dignity and menstrual hygiene; there is also the issue of the disproportionate burden of unpaid labour in managing household sanitary needs. These inequalities in urban sanitation access have a great impact on the health, well-being and socio-economic status of women and girls. These inequalities continue to exist despite efforts to make the needs of poor urban women and girls an integral part of sanitation policies and project planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. Despite the emphasis of low-income countries on gender inequalities and sanitation in their development goals, programmes and projects, there is still only a limited number of qualitative and quantitative evidence-based research articles available focusing on gender and sanitation continue to be available. This number further decreases when it comes to gender and urban sanitation in the Global South. The grey literature is more numerous, particularly that commissioned by international development agencies and non-government organisations. Missing from much of this evidence-based and grey literature are studies on the broader social, economic and environmental impacts on poor women and girls of daily life without access to adequate and safe sanitation. This means that there is very little evidence-based literature which examines how these inequalities in sanitation access affect the lives of poor women and girls who have to queue each morning to use public toilets, or decide which open defecation (OD) sites are the least dangerous to use. Also missing are studies on the socio-economic, health and well-being impacts on and coping strategies of women working in the informal sector, poor women and girls with a disability, elderly women, adolescent girls and homeless women or those living on the pavements, who all lack access to adequate and safe sanitation facilities. These sanitation inequalities are exemplified by the time poor women and girls have to spend each morning queueing to use the toilet or getting up earlier to go with other women to OD sites. The necessity for such actions furthers gender inequalities because it puts at risk the time women have available for paid employment and other household responsibilities. Truelove (2011, p. 148) has argued that this ‘curtailment of opportunities (from income to education) due to water and sanitation activities reinforces a further level of physical insecurity and emotional violence, as some women become locked in a feedback cycle that brings them into distinct spaces and networks in order to access water and sanitation’. Women and girls living in slums often report instances of gender-based violence, shame and loss of dignity when walking along badly lit narrow paths to poorly designed and maintained community toilets or places of OD (Bapat & Agarwal 2003, Lennon 2011, McFarlane 2015, SHARE 2015 and Amnesty International 2010a). Phadke, Khan & Ranade (2011, p. 85), in a study of women and risk in Mumbai, have suggested that ‘[what] the lack of public toilets says is that women are less equal citizens than men and don’t deserve the same consideration’ in the design of urban spaces and the provision of urban infrastructures such as sanitation facilities. These gender inequalities continue to exist despite the use of the concept of ‘gender mainstreaming’ in water and sanitation projects since the mid-1990s, which was designed to make the needs of women and girls an integral part of sanitation policies and project planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation. Instead, gender has become a term that is widely used in project documents and organisational policy documents ‘but is little theorised and ill-defined in most projects and supporting policy documents’ (O‘Reilly 2010, p. 49). Gender, according to the Water and Sanitation Program (2010, p. 9): is a concept that refers to socially constructed roles, behaviour, activities and attributes that a particular society considers appropriate and ascribes to men and women. These distinct roles and the relations between them may give rise to gender inequalities where one group is systematically favoured and holds advantages over another. Inequality in the position of men and women can and has worked against societies.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Water, Urbanization, Women, Inequality, and Sanitation
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Asia

14. Horizontal and Vertical Inequalities Explaining Disparities in Access to Urban Sanitation

Author:
Aditya Bhol
Publication Date:
04-2017
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
Burgeoning urbanisation coupled with policy implementation gaps have resulted in growing disparities in the provision of public infrastructure services in urban areas of India. Apart from the impact of this, a household’s ability to procure basic amenities is also subject to its economic and social condition and the prevalence of social or spatial inequalities. This paper considers a basic household amenity – toilets – and using survey data gauges a household’s likelihood of owning one based on economic and social conditions and infrastructural parameters such as water supply and drainage using a binary multivariate logistic regression model. Horizontal or social group-based inequalities, which are often neglected in the sanitation discourse in India, are found to have a significant impact on access to toilets along with the existence of disparities based on consumption expenditure and drainage. The findings ascertain the existence of multidimensional disparities at the state level, refuting centralised programmes adopted to meet Sustainable Development Goals.
Topic:
Infrastructure, Urbanization, Inequality, Sustainable Development Goals, and Sanitation
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Asia

15. Plugging In: A Collection of Insights on Electricity Use in Indian Homes

Author:
Radhika Khosla and Aditya Chunekar
Publication Date:
12-2017
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
Electricity use in Indian homes – from lights, ceiling fans, televisions, refrigerators, among other appliances – has increased 50 times between today and 1971, even though India’s per capita residential electricity consumption is less than a third of the world average. Residential electricity now outpaces growth in industrial, commercial and agriculture sectors. This striking statistic is on the increase, as India moves towards one of the largest urban transitions in history in the coming decades. What is the implication of this transition for household electricity use, as the urban population grows and income levels rise? What do we know about how electricity is currently used in homes across the country? And what drives our dramatically changing consumption patterns?These questions form the basis of a series on residential electricity consumption, jointly authored by the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi and the Prayas (Energy Group), Pune. The collected insights that formed the series are compiled in this document.
Topic:
Demographics, Energy Policy, Urbanization, and Electricity
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Asia

16. A Comparison of Hindu and Muslim Caste System in Sub-Continent

Author:
Ahmed Usman
Publication Date:
01-2017
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
South Asian Studies
Institution:
Department of Political Science, University of the Punjab
Abstract:
Caste system is an essential feature of both Hindu and Muslim societies in the sub-continent. This paper compares the dynamics of traditional caste system practiced across Hindus and Muslims of India and Pakistan respectively. Birth-ascribed statuses, definite occupations, hierarchical positioning of caste groups and endogamous form of marriage are found to be the common characteristics of caste system practiced across Indian Hindus and Pakistani Muslims. In the Hindu caste system, membership in a Jati determines the rules and regulations regarding food and touch ability for the members through socio-religious rituals of purity and impurity. In contrast the notions and rituals of pure and impure are virtually absent in Muslim Pakistan. Caste system in both India and Pakistan is decaying with time because of the increasingly urbanization. However, geographical isolation and long established social structures in rural India and Pakistan are the favorable conditions that uphold the caste practices.
Topic:
Religion, Culture, Urbanization, and Inequality
Political Geography:
Pakistan, South Asia, India, and Punjab

17. Understanding India’s Urban Frontier: What Is behind the Emergence of Census Towns in India?

Author:
Partha Mukhopadhyay, Marie-Hélène Zérah, Gopa Samanta, and Augustin Maria
Publication Date:
12-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
This paper presents the results of an investigation of selected census towns in northern India. Census towns are settlements that India’s census classifies as urban although they continue to be governed as rural settlements. The 2011 census featured a remarkable increase in the number of census towns, which nearly tripled between 2001 and 2011, from 1,362 to 3,894. This increase contributed to nearly a third (29.5 percent) of the total increase in the urban population during this period. Only part of this evolution can be attributed to the gradual urbanization of settlements in the vicinity or larger towns. Instead, the majority of census towns appear as small “market towns,” providing trade and other local services to a growing rural market. The case studies of representative census towns in Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, and West Bengal show the role of increased connectivity and growing rural incomes in driving the demand for the small scale and non-tradable services, which are the main sources of nonfarm employment in these settlements.The case studies also reveal that the trade-offs between urban and rural administrative statuses are actively debated in many of these settlements. Although statistical comparisons do not show a significant impact of urban or rural administrative status on access to basic services, urban status is often favored by the social groups involved in the growing commercial and services sectors, and resisted by the residents still involved in the traditional farming sectors.
Topic:
Urbanization, Economy, Census, and Rural
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Asia

18. Exclusion, Informality, and Predation in the Cities of Delhi

Author:
Cities of Delhi Team
Publication Date:
08-2015
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
Delhi is India’s richest city and as the capital of the nation has long enjoyed favourable treatment from the Centre. As the home to the country’s national bureaucracies, it also benefits from a large base of secure, well-paid, government jobs. Over the last decade the city has grown at an average real rate of 10 percent, and has benefitted from a dramatic increase in large-scale infrastructure development. Yet, despite these advantages, Delhi is a deeply divided city marked by layers of social exclusion. In the modern imaginary, the city represents the promise of freedom and opportunity. It marks a social space that is less constrained by traditional identities and one in which greater social interaction and density support economic dynamism. If development must, as Amartya Sen has so influentially argued, be based on strengthening basic capabilities, then the city can surely be a privileged site of capability-enhancement. Indeed, the migrants who flood the city often come in search of better livelihoods, education, health, and basic services. But as any resident of Delhi knows, the quality of such services varies dramatically across neighbourhoods, and the part of the city one lives in significantly impacts one’s ability to take full advantage of what the city has to offer. The Cities of Delhi (CoD) project starts with the simple recognition that India’s capital is marked by different settlement types, defined by diverse degrees of formality, legality, and tenure, which taken together produce a highly differentiated pattern of access to basic services. This report provides an overview of the findings from CoD. It builds directly on the place, process, and institution reports available at citiesofdelhi.cprindia.org, but in no way substitutes for these reports, all of which stand on their own as original empirical contributions. This overview is instead a synthesis, an effort to tie together the findings from the reports, to paint a broad picture of patterns of unequal access to basic services in the city and to provide an analysis of how these patterns of inequality are linked to structures and practices of governance.
Topic:
Development, Urbanization, Inequality, Economy, and Capital Flows
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Asia