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421. India-Japan Brief

Author:
Rani Mullen and Kashyap Arora
Publication Date:
11-2016
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
Japan and India constitute two of the oldest democracies in Asia and also stand among Asia’s three biggest economies. It was in the year 1952 that India and Japan signed their first treaty and six years later in 1958, India received its first official development assistance from Japan. However, a major breakthrough in the bilateral ties took place only in the year 2000 when Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiko Mori visited India. The visit witnessed establishment of ‘Global Partnership between India and Japan’. This relationship was elevated to ‘Global and Strategic Partnership’ in 2006 which was later followed by up gradation of the bilateral partnership to the status of ‘Special Strategic and Global Partnership’ in 2014. In December 2015, both Indian and Japanese leaders also laid out the future roadmap of India-Japan ties in a joint statement referred to as ‘Japan and India Vision 2025: Special Strategic and Global Partnership Working Together for Peace and Prosperity of the Indo-Pacific Region and the World’. Both the economies also find themselves in a mutually beneficial situation with Japanese economy finding it difficult to sustain economic growth due to its ageing and shrinking population size, whereas India suffers from infrastructural bottlenecks. More importantly, stronger India-Japan alliance also provides impetus to balance and counter the growing Chinese influence and ensure freedom of navigation and multilateralism in the Indo-Pacific. Both the countries also constitute a strong source of mutual support at multilateral level on global issues including each other’s candidature as a permanent member of an expanded United Nations Security Council (UNSC) as well as India’s membership in the four international nuclear export control regimes among many others.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, United Nations, Bilateral Relations, Partnerships, Economies, and Multilateralism
Political Geography:
Japan, South Asia, India, and East Asia

422. How Effective are Environmental Regulations to Address Impacts of Industrial and Infrastructure Projects in India

Author:
Krithika A. Dinesh, Meenakshi Kapoor, Kanchi Kohli, Manju Menon, and Preeti Venkatram
Publication Date:
11-2016
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
People around the world live in areas that have been altered for industrial, infrastructure or mining projects. Their lives and occupations are being negatively impacted by problems of access, encroachment or pollution. Though governments in many countries have regulatory procedures for implementing environmental and social safeguards that are applicable to such projects so that problems can be minimised or mitigated, the qualitative difference of such regulatory systems depends on the efficacy of their compliance safeguards. Typically, in countries where compliance is low, projects meant for development have also resulted in substantial environmental and social costs. Governments and investors fear the implementation of environmental policies and claim that these are bottlenecks or speed breakers to growth. Several new studies show that stringent compliance of environmental policies will neither affect competitiveness nor slow down GDP growth. On the contrary, it may result in bottom line benefits at the level of projects as well as sustain economic growth by enhancing efficiency and innovation. India promulgated a series of environmental legislations between 1980 and 2005 to ensure that environmental and social impacts of land use change, infrastructure development and industrialisation are kept in check and timely mitigation is undertaken. The laws establish detailed procedures for assessing the environmental impacts of the proposed projects that are likely to cause land use change. The laws also involve the laying of conditions that are attached to the approvals granted to these projects. These conditions are meant to mitigate or prevent damage or impacts to the extent ascertained by the project proponents and the government or regulator. Since the time these laws were first designed, there have been numerous amendments to them to change the scope of applicability of these laws, the time taken by regulators for decision-making and the sharing of responsibility between state and central governments in implementing these laws. However, one aspect of these laws that has seen minimal change is in their monitoring and compliance regimes. What happens to the projects once they are granted approvals? Do they comply with all the conditions imposed on them for mitigating or minimising environmental and social impacts? Who oversees these processes and what is the extent to which compliance is achieved? This report is the outcome of a research project undertaken to understand the efficacy of conditional compliance, institutional monitoring and enforcement of environmental regulations to address the impacts faced by communities living around industrial and infrastructure projects. The project identified the institutions responsible for monitoring and compliance under various environmental laws, their procedures and practices by which these roles are realised. While it has been known that government agencies and regulatory bodies hold the formal duties of monitoring, the project also focused on how affected communities engage these institutions for greater compliance and remedies in case of environmental and social impacts of various kinds, such as encroachment or damage to common or private property, loss of livelihoods and loss of access to public spaces. By analysing the efforts made by affected parties to engage with environmental institutions to craft remedies for existing environmental impacts, this research aims to highlight regulatory ingredients that are necessary for sound environment regulation and better outcomes through compliance. If translated into concrete policy on environmental monitoring and compliance, these lessons could address the chasm between enforcement of environmental regulations and the ever-growing difficulties of meeting environmental challenges.
Topic:
Environment, Industrial Policy, Natural Resources, Infrastructure, and Legislation
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Asia

423. Schizophrenic Subregionalism? Method and Madness in India’s Border Fencing Project

Author:
Nimmi Kurian
Publication Date:
04-2016
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
A problematic set of binaries stands at the heart of India’s narrative on borders, one that has rendered its political signaling contradictory as well as virtually unintelligible. India’s border fencing project is a stark metaphor of this conflicted discourse, perching uneasily as it were between the feel-good narrative of rethinking borders as bridges on the one hand and an almost pathological fear of open borders on the other. This binary is what characterises India’s schizophrenic subregionalism, a discourse virtually in morbid fear of itself. The paper argues that this twisted logic runs the risk of turning against itself to subvert India’s subregional project itself. Its political fate is also critically linked to the larger question of how India perceives its role in the region and the extent to which it prioritises subregional integration as a regional public good.
Topic:
International Relations, Border Control, Regional Integration, and Borders
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, and Asia

424. Urban Sanitation in India – Why Brazil Matters

Author:
Anjali Chikersal and Aditya Bhol
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
Since the launch of the Swachh Bharat Mission in October 2014, sanitation issues in India are receiving immense attention from policymakers, media and civil society alike. The sector however received enormous funds even before this scheme with little positive results. This paper argues that the translation of the current hype into the right policies and practical schemes for amelioration of the poor conditions depends upon a complete rethinking of the entire approach to the issue. Brazil has gone through a series of transformations in the sector that provide a useful lens to India to examine the issue with. It will need similar radical changes, starting from recognition of sanitation as a basic human right to effective regulation, for India to begin to address this massive challenge.
Topic:
Human Rights, Infrastructure, Regulation, Social Policy, Urban, and Sanitation
Political Geography:
South Asia, India, Brazil, and South America

425. Flows and Flaws: Diverting the Debate on Water with China

Author:
Nimmi Kurian
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Centre for Policy Research, India
Abstract:
China’s growing water thirst lends an urgency to understand China’s resource choices, the possible conditions under which it is likely to exercise these choices and the ripple effects these are likely to have across the borders. While overinterpretation and hysteria has tended to take the place of informed scholarship and media, India’s official narrative has largely tended to downplay many of these concerns. The paper argues that the debate has also unwittingly ended up being a single-issue debate fixated on water diversion, in the process inadvertently diverting attention away from other equally important issues. Can we frame the water debate with China in ways that can create institutional entry points for a whole set of missing issues that are currently invisible to the mainstream policy and research gaze? India and China’s willingness to begin a subregional conversation on regional public goods could pave the way to designing norms of benefit sharing, negotiating trade-offs, and allocating risks and burdens on collective goods and bads in the region.
Topic:
International Relations, Regional Cooperation, Natural Resources, Water, and Negotiation
Political Geography:
China, South Asia, India, and Asia

426. Pop culture with a purpose: Violence against women in Bangladesh

Author:
Conor Molly
Publication Date:
10-2016
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Violence against women and adolescent girls is a systemic and ingrained problem in Bangladesh. Oxfam Novib worked with a group of local partners in Bangladesh, including BRAC, WECAN, HASAB and Rupantur, to address the problem in the Khulna Division through an intervention strategy centered on the utilization of edutainment methodologies. The project combined interactive, high quality modern communications tools, including televised docudramas and public service commercials, and traditional edutainment, such as street theatre, together with targeted and more intense school and community interventions in 10 select locations in the Khulna Division. As a result, more than 3,000 students (60 percent were girls) and 3,000 parents reported changing their values and attitudes towards sexual violence against adolescents. Through a mass campaign, the project reached approximately 500,000 people across the Bangladesh.
Topic:
Communications, Culture, Social Movement, and popular culture
Political Geography:
Bangladesh, South Asia, and Asia

427. An Appraisal of Pakistan’s Nuclear Policy during War on Terror

Author:
Muhammad Ilyas Ansari and Iram Khalid
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
South Asian Studies
Institution:
Department of Political Science, University of the Punjab
Abstract:
This paper seeks to analyze that why some nations to nuclear in the international structure for the sake of national security when nuclear is an expensive and hard option? Due to fragile geopolitical position of Pakistan,security concerns have always forced her to find balance of power in the south Asian region through different ways. Having fought three major wars with India in 1948, 1965 and 1971 in an asymmetric military environment, Pakistan had been in disadvantageous position. War of 1971 in which Pakistan lost its Eastern wing (now Bangladesh, as an independent state) and nuclear explosion by India in 1974 forced Pakistan to follow the nuclear path. This paper analyzes the results of nuclear policy in the form of economic sanctions imposed by US and its allies, and reversal of US policy after 9/11 regarding sanctions against Pakistan. In the wake of 9/11 incident for joining the US led Global War on Terror, General Musharraf had announced that his objective was to save the nuclear and missile assets of Pakistan. This paper analyses that how Pakistani governments of General Musharraf, and Zardari from 2001 to 2013, had been under immense pressure through different coercive tactics ( from Dr. A. Q khan’s network to safety of nuclear program) to ruin the Pakistani nuclear program which had proved to prevent wars between India and Pakistan since 1999 to 2013. What costs Pakistan had to pay and what benefits Pakistan gained due to nuclear program.
Topic:
Cold War, Nuclear Weapons, Terrorism, War, History, Nuclear Power, and War on Terror
Political Geography:
Pakistan, South Asia, India, Punjab, and United States of America

428. Chinese Economic Challenges to the World Trade Organization: Separating Myth from Reality

Author:
Umbreen Javaid and Muhammad Sharreh Qazi
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
South Asian Studies
Institution:
Department of Political Science, University of the Punjab
Abstract:
China has taken the world with a different angle; an angle that kept China mostly behind its conservative mercantilist restrictions and access to foreign investors largely remained actively initiated. Even though China was admitted to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, and remained an observer to the General Agreement to Tariff and Trade (GATT), cost of receiving membership meant extreme modifications to Chinese system of economy. Modifications that required China to allow access and tariff concessions to global community and demanded Chinese nationalist mercantilist designs to be affable to international standards. This however, never meant that China would stop expanding, or at least take a recess from its economic augmentation. WTO quickly saw China rise to a point where even though it remained compliant to international economic norms, it still remained a formidable rebel to set patterns, tacitly compelling WTO and other international economic forums to feel impractical, if not impotent. Chinese economic investments, together with its dominance on international relations, has often raised questions on its intentions into becoming a member of WTO. It is often miscalculated that China intends to implode WTO from within by introducing a change in the international economic system through sheer pressure or somehow, China is strategizing to manipulate WTO as a nascent member in order to introduce another form of global competition against members that are already in antagonism towards China.
Topic:
International Trade and Finance, Political Economy, World Trade Organization, and Soft Power
Political Geography:
Pakistan, China, South Asia, Asia, and Punjab

429. Civil Military Relationship: Pakistan and India in Comparison

Author:
Shahid Ahmed Afridi
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
South Asian Studies
Institution:
Department of Political Science, University of the Punjab
Abstract:
Having drawn the inheritance of colonialism, both Pakistan and India have adopted very different course of Civil Military relations. The research attempts to analyze the developmental pattern of Civil Military relations of both countries through examination of inter connected roles of both military and political class. Despite their similarities at the time of partition, these two militaries and civilian institutions took completely different political trajectories. The argument is tested with paired-comparison case studies of Indian and Pakistani Civil-Military relations since independence. Both cases reveal how structures of domestic politics interact with military threat perceptions in order to explain civilians’ ability to maintain varying levels of control over the military. This present work is net assessment of Civil Military relations and influencing events and occurrences in both countries.
Topic:
Civil Society, Politics, Armed Forces, and Military Affairs
Political Geography:
Pakistan, South Asia, India, and Punjab

430. Analyzing the Dynamics of Pakistan-Afghanistan Relations: Past and Present

Author:
Umbreen Javaid
Publication Date:
01-2016
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
South Asian Studies
Institution:
Department of Political Science, University of the Punjab
Abstract:
Pakistan and Afghanistan, despite the convergence of prolong socio-cultural and religious heritage and geographical contiguity, the episodic distrust between the two countries has been highlighted in the historic narratives by various experts. The divergent perceptions developed by the political dynasties in Afghanistan accompanied with the disgust towards subcontinent due to the policies of colonial masters still haunt the literature dealing with the foreign policies of both countries. Involvement of super powers and regional powers in Afghanistan further complicates the situation for both countries. The ongoing reconstruction process in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s will to uproot religious militant networks provides a prolific hope not only for the regional actors but for the world at large. The chronology of the bilateral relations has been deeply dealt with in this paper aimed at providing the course of relation from colonial to post 9/11 contemporary scenario in the South Asian region replete with various opportunities for enhancing mutual understanding and cooperation between the two countries.
Topic:
Regional Cooperation, History, Bilateral Relations, and Peacekeeping
Political Geography:
Pakistan, Afghanistan, South Asia, and Punjab