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From the 1950s up to the early 1990s the All-India data show an ever-declining share of informal credit in the total outstanding debt of rural households. Contemporaneous micro-level studies, using more qualitative research methodologies, provide evidence that questions the strength of this trend, and more recent All-India credit surveys show, first, a levelling, and then a rise, in the share of rural informal credit in 1990/91 and 2000/01, respectively. By reference to findings of a study of village moneylenders in Rajasthan, the paper notes lessons to be drawn. First, informal financial agents have not disappeared from the rural financial landscape in India. Second, formal-sector financial institutions can learn much about rural financial service needs from the financial products and processes of their informal counterparts. Third, a national survey of informal agents, similar to that of the 1921 Census survey of indigenous bankers and moneylenders, would provide valuable pointers towards policy options for the sector. A recent Reserve Bank of India Report on Moneylender Legislation not only explores incentive mechanisms to better ensure fair practice, but also proposes provision for a new category of loan providers that would explicitly link the rural informal and formal financial sectors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholarly writings on Kashmir have primarily discussed state-centred initiatives that are aimed at fostering nationalism among border communities. In this paper, I use the example of Brogpas—a border community living on the contested line-of-control between India and Pakistan—to argue that national identity for Brogpas is the product of fostering their national boundaries through their everyday labour practices. A focus on khral (mandatory labour) among Brogpas illuminates how national identities are constituted in the peripheries rather than being 'imposed and built from the centre outward'. 1 Khral also underscores the centrality of border practices in creating and maintaining national consciousness. 2 The customary practice of khral demonstrates that citizenship to the village and the Indian nation-state are not construed as distinct processes by Brogpas. Brogpas establish and/or maintain their allegiance to a particular village by doing khral that among other things includes working for the Indian army as porters. An attention to khral highlights how national identity is instantiated among Brogpas though everyday practices of working for the Indian border rather than through mere symbolic constructions of an imagined community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of public works programmes using the theory of real options argues that the effectiveness of these programmes can be studied by examining the switches the workers make between public works and other labour market activities. The wage rate between these two options is the focus of the analysis under the theory of real options. This paper critically examines the applicability of the econometric methods of the theory of real options by studying the same public works programmes through a local management perspective using a case-study approach. Local elites enjoy 'informal ownership' of public works programmes, and the rights of the poor are therefore shrouded in micro-politics. Besides, for a large number of the poorest people who are trapped in a vicious cycle of debt and seasonal migration, rights and options are foregone. The power of the local elites is discounted heavily in the approach of theory of real options. Relying on such outcome variables—which are manufactured by the local elites—can mislead policy decisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As a celebration of the 20th anniversary of the British Association for South Asian Studies (BASAS), its 2006 annual conference marked an auspicious juncture in the history of the association. One of the conference's central themes was to highlight several important shifts, both imminent and long term, in the pace and direction of South Asian studies in the United Kingdom. The unprecedented large international turnout at the conference provided concrete proof that the interdisciplinarity and global reach of the academic community working on this region remains as strong as ever. Growing recognition within the media, government and business of the significance of South Asia in international affairs, particularly the emergence of India as a global economic and political power, has given a much-needed impetus to the spirit and purpose of BASAS. The ambition to maintain and build on the capacity of British and European universities to produce linguistically and culturally skilled South Asianists, both for furthering knowledge as well as meeting the requirements of industry and the diplomatic services, has never before been so crucial. There are promising signs that the role of BASAS in fostering an intellectually vibrant environment for South Asianists is winning broader institutional support. This article surveys the key themes covered during the conference, some of which are well reflected in the diverse range of papers selected for this special edition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a case study of how a prevailing socio-cultural environment affects the practice of journalism and the consequent coverage or non-coverage of minorities and peripheral regions. It specifically examines the way India's influential English-language press approaches events and issues related to the seven states in the country's northeastern corner. For various reasons, general awareness about this region and its people has been peripheral in the Indian public sphere. Since independence, conflicts of various hues have been occurring in the region without resonating much in other parts of India. Culturally and ethnically, the Northeast is closer to Southeast Asia than to South Asia, and its otherness is acknowledged in India's official discourse. The lack of coverage of the region in the national English-language press means its events and issues rarely figure in the public agenda and little pressure is put on the government to ‘do something’ to address its myriad problems. It is argued that news is mainly influenced by the socio-cultural environment and journalists' notions of ‘us’ and ‘them’—a key binary present in all societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conditions of production in women's handicrafts are related in complex and contradictory ways to discourses about them. The semblance of tradition and authenticity that surrounds women's craftwork masks the alienated production of handicraft commodities for the market. Indeed, commoditisation and commercialisation depend upon such constructions, just as home-based labour and hand-power, while fully consistent with capitalisation processes, tend to strengthen assertions about the survival of traditional practices in handicraft production. This paper focuses initially on the chikan embroidery production of Lucknow, India. Widely portrayed as a leisure-time activity, embroidery production employs poor. Muslim women workers on piece rates. The embroiderers' distinctiveness is used to shore up primarily urban, middle-class ideals about tradition and heritage that are necessary in order to create demand for handicraft products. Similar discrepancies between what is written about crafts and what it means to make them appear in other women's handicrafts in India. While women are heavily involved in handicraft production, their contribution is often masked by discourses that tend either to ignore or marginalise them, or portray their work as use value production. Overall, there is very little critical analysis of women's handicrafts. While development projects involving handicrafts have been favoured by the state and non-governmental organisations as low-cost, low-risk interventions, their value is compromised by the persistence of exploitative forms of production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the limitations and prospects of the security of Bhutan, a landlocked buffer state between India and China, and a country that is geographically very small and poor in economic development. Normally, a country would like to have various options to provide national security, and diplomacy to protect its sovereign status and national boundaries. However, Bhutan is largely isolated from the outside world, suffers from poor internal communications, and continues with the monarchy system with very limited options to formulate its own security and foreign policy. While the country's military remains weak (mainly due to lack of funds), Bhutan's diplomacy, economic development and cultural status have proved very useful. For all its limitations, Bhutan has succeeded in maintaining its sovereign status and relative autonomy of action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Indian state of Uttar Pradesh is not immediately associated with the Partition of 1947. Yet western districts of the state were afflicted by immigration and emigration, violence and disorder. This had wider social and economic ramifications. This paper focuses on reactions to incoming refugees and responses to the departure of local Muslims in Uttar Pradesh. The reactions of the state government, Congress Party and Hindu right to the Partition crisis are also analysed. With this in mind, some tentative questions are asked about the nature of communalism and secularism in the immediate post-independence years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The idea of the nation-state continues to dominate the way in which political collective identities are conceptualised in South Asia. One of the challenges the nation-state faces is the situation in which large sections of its population are located outside state boundaries. This paper reflects on the way in which the displacement of peoples can lead to the displacement of a conventional understanding of the nation-state as combining the idea of one government, one land and one people. It explores the impact of displacement, both empirically and conceptually, on the notions of collective identity, illustrating the argument by reference to the Kashmiri narratives of identity being articulated in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wireless in Local Loop (WiLL), a radio communications solution with implica tions for the provision of cheaper telephony in urban and rural areas, has become a topic of a debate in India over what has become known as the 'Poor Man's Mobile Phone'. This paper examines access to 'telematics' (not simple phone ownership), the validity of 'teledensity' as a statistical tool, the view that rural people are too poor to justify phone infrastructure, and the validity of cross-subsidy arguments from city to rural areas. The need to seek overseas investment is questioned, since developing countries can avoid expensive foreign telecommunications equipment through low-cost, high-quality, indigenous telematics equipment production. India, for instance, has installed more than 20 million such indigenous phone lines, saving billions of dollars. Internet, not just phone, connectivity, is essential for rural people to increase earnings. Politics, price, technical differences, and internet access are examined in relation to two competing WiLL products: India's corDECT, and the American/South Korean CDMA. Finally, it is suggested that the information gap cannot be 'bridged'. Instead, developing countries will have to wrest control of the web for their own regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the internet's effect on India's nation-building efforts; specifically in the context of its switch from planned development to economic liberalization that has exposed the country to transnational influences. A concise history of India's postcolonial development is provided with an explanation of the specific challenges that were faced by the nation-state. The internet provides some definite benefits. A virtual Indian community can be imagined in cyberspace that also contains a discursive Indian domain. This assists the survival of India's national culture on a global level. However, the internet provides no support towards the maintenance of a state structure in a transnational world, and is also beneficial to counternational movements. These indicate the inevitability of a post-national existence. The paper concludes that devising a system of electronic citizenship might be the only solution for the continuation of the Indian nation-state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper opens a window on the local state in eastern India. It studies the ways in which government officers in five districts of Bihar and West Bengal re-shaped one of India's major poverty alleviation programmes, the Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS). District and Block-level officials in Bihar converted a participatory programme of employment generation into a scheme for the construction of durable assets. Many poorer men and women obtained no work under the EAS. Outside Midnapore District, West Bengal, members of the rural poor were unaware of their right to demand work from the state. The acts of translation that we document were largely inspired by a fear of corruption on the part of junior officials. District and Block-level officials in Bihar worried that labour-intensive schemes would increase opportunities for rent-seeking and simple looting. That principals sought to constrain the actions of agents in this way suggests a weakness in the model of rent-seeking behaviour favoured by some economists. That the EAS was re-worked by well-educated, English-speaking government officials--and not by their subordinates--also suggests the need for refinement of a body of work on the 'vernacular' nature of the local state. No sharp distinction between elite and vernacular lifeworlds is evident in the field area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the creative adjustment undertaken by some segments of the Indian corporate sector to economic reforms. While economic dynamism has been far short of expectations, the commercial maturity of Indian firms in certain segments has been noteworthy. The steel, auto, and software industries in India are examined to outline some of the broader strategies of Indian firms. The diversity of strategies reflects the evolving institutional arrangements which continue to filter, regulate, and accommodate increased market pressures in contingent ways. Moving away from the historically correct but static perception that family-owned conglomerates are non-innovative, I show that today Indian capitalists, even if family-controlled, have matured considerably. The introduction of professional management and deployment of modern technologies are indicators of greater corporate dynamism. The steel, auto, and software sectors, none of which revealed any competitive strength in the pre-reform period, are good examples of Indian firms coping with market pressures at home and taking advantage of global opportunities as well. Notwithstanding such successes, the study concludes that most Indian firms remain structurally dependent on foreign technology and constrained by limited domestic markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary discourse on governance and social conflict is generally marked by its state-centric approach, particularly in the mass media. Issues which are perceived to have a bearing on national interest/security, particularly those relating to defence, foreign policy, insurgency, and human rights are usually portrayed from a state security perspective, relegating the priorities and concerns of the people to invisibility. The Indian press is no exception to this practice, with the coverage of the human rights situation in Kashmir an explicit case in point. Given the fact that to most Indians an understanding of the situation in Kashmir is largely gathered from the mass media, this paper strives to analyse the nature of the coverage of the human rights situation in Kashmir by the Indian press. In order to enable a comprehensive analysis the focus of this study has been restricted to a content analysis of three English language newspapers over a period of three months. The nature of the coverage of the situation by the Indian press is juxtaposed against the actual situation in the Kashmir Valley as depicted by alternate media sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on Pakistan's Kashmir policy in the 1990s. It argues that this policy has been embedded in the context of negative imagery in India and Pakistan of the 'other'. But it has not been devoid of pluralism; different views exist in Pakistan on the appropriate approaches to resolving the dispute. While the Orthodox and the Islamists favour a combative approach, the moderates favour accommodation and negotiation with India on Kashmir. While the Orthodox-Islamist nexus dominated Pakistan's Kashmir policy for most of the 1990s, gradually moderate voices have been heard favouring a different approach to resolving the issue. This plurality of views has continued, even after the military took over power in October 1999, causing it to adopt a managerial position. The Pakistan government has been engaged in an act of balancing and addressing different 'constituencies' on Kashmir. The process has not changed after the terrorist attacks on the United States and the Indian Parliament in September and December 2001, respectively. Operating in a new international environment that identifies terrorism as a major global threat, and prompted by its renewed strategic relationship with the United States, the Pakistan government has attempted to curb the activities of the Islamists. However, its ability to fully achieve this goal is limited. The Indian government needs to appreciate this, and to work creatively with Islamabad within the framework of Pakistan's limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India's peacekeeping role is paradoxical; it is a regional belligerent but also a global peacekeeper. India's long-standing disputes with Pakistan over Kashmir and its reluctance to support the United Nation (UN) presence in the disputed territory are widely known. But little is said about India's active involvement in UN peace missions overseas. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate India's growing support for UN peacekeeping operations abroad. While this is reflected in its consistency and size of participation, India's pro-active commitment can be also seen in the way it responds to the growing demands and challenges of post-Cold War peacekeeping operations. To date, India has been making large and simultaneous troop commitments in more operations than in the past. Along with this, India's willingness to take risks and sustain its commitment in hazardous operations has demonstrated its 'reliability' as a peacekeeper. While India takes an eager interest to participate and contribute actively to UN peacekeeping operations, India is highly motivated by the need to enhance its international identity and political image within the UN. This provides India with opportunities to not only further strengthen and increase its presence within the UN, but also to be considered as a favourable candidate for a permanent seat on the Security Council. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]