Search all library resources

Media as politics in South Asia

Water, democracy and neoliberalism in India : the power to reform

Since the early 1990s, the achievement of 'good governance' has been a dominant discourse in the pursuit of social and economic development. This book presents a critical challenge to the contemporary development paradigm of good governance. Based on original ethnographic fieldwork on urban water governance reforms in south India (Karnataka), the book examines the two propositions that underlie the current good governance debate. The first refers to a claim that good governance is both democratic and pro-market. The second to the claim that commercially-oriented water services, whether private or public, are good for poor and marginalised citizens. The book analyses these propositions as they intersect on three levels: policy, practice (process) and outcome. It argues that a number of tensions and contradictions exist within and between what the discourse promises, the everyday practises of how good governance policies are implemented and in the outcomes of such. It reveals the networks of power and the complexity of local reforms and their relation to global discourses as well as the motivations and every day practises of those who currently possess the power to reform. The book is of interest to academics in the fields of Development Studies, Asian Studies and Comparative Politics.

Global capital and peripheral labour : the history and political economy of plantation workers in India

This book presents a historical account of plantations in India in the context of the modern world economy. It brings history up to the present, thereby showing how history can assist in explaining contemporary conditions and trends. The author focuses on labour and economic development problems and uses the World Systems theory so as to demonstrate the practical utility of the theory and its limitations as a guide to historical research. Based on extensive archival research, the book interprets the dynamics of plantation capitalism by focusing on the work, life and struggle of the dalits on plantations in colonial and post-colonial South India as they evolved from the mid-19th century. It argues that these elements of the plantation life-world were fashioned by the specific characteristics of the workers' location within the capitalist world-economy, the then prevailing local social structure and the scheme of disciplining to which the workers were subjected to. Treating the relations among various social forces -- the planting communities, the oppressed communities (dalits in India), the regional and national state, and the Imperial regime, this book fills a gap in academic literature on capitalism, economic development, and globalization.