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India’s tryst with colonialism has had deep impact not just on Indian psyche but also on Indian policy-making. The colonial experiences have made Indian policy makers sensitive to the fact that humanitarianism can come with a price tag. After independence therefore Indian policy makers became strong supporters of non-intervention and state sovereignty. In the post-colonial phase and even before India could complete the process of decolonisation the world had become bipolar. Tied to that was a deep unease about great power configurations that made Indian leadership desirous of striking an alternate note in foreign policy making, thereby creating an independent space for itself and other decolonised nations. Even though critical of international humanitarian regime and especially about international humanitarian interventions Indian past history bears testimony to the fact that India is not above such interventions when it is considered in its national interest. In the post economic liberalisation period Indian attitude to humanitarianism has seen some major shifts. Progressively India is giving humanitarian assistance to countries to reinforce India’s major power status. But there is a concern that Indian humanitarianism is bypassing its own people. This essay will address India’s humanitarian responses internationally and internally, towards its own people.

The twentieth anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) is in October 2020. It is a landmark resolution on women’s role in peacebuilding, but progress on women’s rights and leadership in peace and security decision making continues to fall short. This discussion paper brings together three regional essays commissioned to explore what needs to happen. What needs to happen to ‘transform power’ to women and communities most affected by crises and conflict so that they shape the decisions that affect their lives? What would a feminist peace and security agenda look like? The essays illustrate how transformative change rarely comes from within the system; rather, it often comes from outside: from disruption by protest, and from women’s, youth, local and grassroots movements. Access the full essay collection on this page, or read the individual essays at the following links: Transforming Power to Put Women at the Heart of Peacebuilding: Introduction Feminist Peace and Security in Africa Feminist Peace and Security in the Middle East and North Africa Feminist Peace and Security in the Pacific Islands

Although much work has analyzed the relation of labour and logistics in the context of ports, less attention has been paid to the nexus of logistics and crime. This is the case for Kolkata, even though the port has for long been closely associated with crimes perpetrated in the city. No discourse on logistics can be complete without a discussion of crime. The routes through which goods and ideas move are often the same routes taken by organized crime groups and networks. Legitimate business hubs often transform into markets for smuggled goods. Sometimes even the players remain the same. Exploring the nexus of crime and logistics in and around the Kidderpore docks in Kolkata, this chapter considers the gendered and social dimensions of the situation, both historically and in the present day.

This chapter examines the relationship between social justice, security and peace. The authors note significant internal heterogeneity in India and Europe, despite the statebuilding efforts in India and standardization processes in Europe. The authors give an overview of five sets of ideas which have linked social justice and peace. All five sets of ideas are showing that if social justice is taken seriously then social harmony will be preserved and at the same time tensions will be reduced, together with chances for conflict. However, they find that peace accords have a tendency to emphasize security rather than welfare. This is because international interventions are usually led by leading actors from the global north who are guided by neoliberal agenda. They usually underplay social aspects of the state and emphasise its security aspect. This is one of the reasons why priority is given to security over social justice, when sequencing of activities in the intervention. The authors give an example of reforms in Georgia which led to drastic undermining of state in terms of social provision. They conclude that international attempts which focus on social justice are much fewer in numbers than those which address security issues.

This article deals with the notion of how borders have a penchant for becoming a marker of security. The moment borders become securitized the question of flows across them acquires particular importance. In the colonial period this was marked by concern over dacoits, thugees and hooligans who crossed the district border at will. In the post-colonial period concern remains over undocumented migrants and whether their arrival threatens the nation form. Against this background the article addresses the notion of flows and increasing violence at the borders, fencing as the most recent marker of such violence and how women and the evolution of their relationship to the border is shaped through the discourses of violence.

e18702Background: Concern exists that patients’ self-reports may be biased in open-label trial designs. We compared PRO emotional domain results between investigational arms of paired open label an...

This paper addresses questions of women’s autonomy in India and analyses its location within the legal discourse. The women’s movement has primarily tried to analyse questions of women’s autonomy through exploring women’s position in law. Among other indicators, women’s position in society is often analysed through marriage, divorce and property acts. This paper analyses the evolution of these acts and critiques whether they have led to women’s autonomy or merely subsumed questions of autonomy resulting in further marginalization of women in the polity. The paper begins with the assumption that locations matter and that laws affect different women differently, particularly in the context of India where civil law is constantly pitted against personal and customary law. To understand the situation of women in India, therefore, an understanding of the evolution of laws seems necessary, because laws are considered to be primary markers of autonomy.

Alcohols and volatile anesthetics affect the function of members of the nicotinic acetylcholine (nACh) superfamily of receptors. Studies on glycine and GABA(A) receptors implicate amino acid residues within transmembrane (TM) regions two and three of these receptors as critical for alcohol and anesthetic enhancement of receptor function. The serotonin-3 (5-HT(3)) receptor is a member of the nicotinic acetylcholine receptor superfamily, sharing sequence and structural homology with the other members. We tested the hypothesis that amino acids of the 5-HT(3) receptor homologous to those shown to affect alcohol and anesthetic potentiation in GABA(A) and glycine receptors also determine the effects of these compounds on the 5-HT(3) receptor. Six 5-HT(3A) mutant cDNAs were generated by site-directed mutagenesis of two amino acids, phenylalanine-269 (14') and lecucine-270 (15') in transmembrane domain two (TM2). When assayed electrophysiologically in Xenopus oocytes, wild-type 5-HT(3) receptors exhibit enhancement of function by enflurane, halothane, isoflurane, chloroform and ethanol, but not by decanol and propofol. Mutations in transmembrane domain two markedly affected alcohol and anesthetic enhancement of 5-HT(3) receptor function. Some mutations had differential effects on the abilities of the isomers enflurane and isoflurane to potentiate 5-HT(3) receptor function.

In South Asian social science discourses over the last few years a few studies have appeared on the borderlands but hardly any on the myriad roles that women play there and this collection of essays concentrates on that aspect of the borderlands of India.

Research partnerships are the foundation of successful engaged scholarship, which typically unites partners across disciplines, institutions, sectors, and countries. While rewarding and generative, these partnerships can also be challenging due to differences in expectations, power, and culture, and difficulties in trust and communication. This article reports on interviews with members of an international refugee research network about participating in global partnerships. Responses are interpreted in light of community university partnerships and South-North partnerships and suggest that both face many similar challenges arising out of structures and norms that privilege Northern, theory-based scholarship, institutions, and outcomes. Vigilance and awareness regarding context can help to confront these challenges. Moreover, global partnerships can benefit from strategies developed in the area of community university partnerships to facilitate trust, communication, and shared ownership of international research projects.

The purport of this paper is to explain that citizenship and statelessness are part of the same grid. There are many people in South Asia who fall within that grid who will not be accepted as a citizen by competent authorities within a state and neither will they be called stateless by the international legal interpreters. Those in places like Geneva might say that these people should be called citizens by a particular state, and can be called a citizen if the citizenship laws of that state are improved, but the reality remains, the people in question are completely unable to access even the most elementary of the rights attributed to a citizen. This paper will map some of these indeterminate people in South Asia and discuss how national and international practices instead of helping them often leave them as permanent exceptions to citizenship.

It is estimated that around 27 million people today are living in conditions similar to that of slavery and human trafficking has become a global industry worth $ 12 billion a year. It is even more baffling to note that twice as many people are enslaved today than during the days of the African slave trade. How can that be and what exactly is human trafficking? Human trafficking can be described as the forced movement of people for purposes of labour, such as prostitution and other kinds of work, including domestic work. If one looks at the history of the term ‘trafficking’ it can be traced back to ‘white slave trade’. Before the great wars it meant the coercion or transportation of Caucasian women to the colonies to service white male officers. From 1904 there were efforts to stop ‘white slave trade’ leading to the Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Person and the Exploitation of Others in 1949. It is the Palermo Protocol to the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime that made trafficking in persons an international criminal offence in the year 2000. The Protocol was drafted to meet all aspects of trafficking, whether for sexual or labour exploitation. The Protocol's objectives are to prevent trafficking, punish traffickers and protect victims. The Protocol urges states to criminalize trafficking. It also specifies the activities, means and purposes that constitute the offence. The important features of the Protocol are

Series Note Preface I. IDEAS & IDEOLOGIES: Introduction - Samir Kumar Das Shefali - Ranabir Samaddar Security, Gender and Conflict Prevention: Perceptions from South Asia - Sumona Dasgupta Ethnicity and Democracy Meet When Mothers Protest - Samir Kumar Das Afterword - Stree Shakti Sanghatana Islam, Feminism and the Women's Movement in Pakistan: 1981-1991 - Fauzia Gardezi Women, Nationalism and War: "Make Love Not War" - Rada Ivecovic II. MOVEMENTS: Introduction - Kalpana Kannabiran Women in Sri Lankan Peace Politics - Saro Thiruppathy and Nirekha De Silva Motherhood as a Space of Protest: Women's Political Participation in Contemporary Sri Lanka - Malathi De Alwis Negotiating Peace: Feminist Reflections - Kalpana Kannabiran, Volga and Vasantha Kannabiran The Space Between: Women's Negotiations with Democracy - Paula Banerjee Minorities, Women and Peace: A South Asian Perspective - Meghna Guhathakurta III. VOICES: Introduction - Anuradha Bhasin Jamwal Shed No More Blood: Mothers for Peace WAF to Continue Protest Against Discriminatory Laws The Way of the World - Josiane Racine and Jean Luc Racine Chadur Aur Diwari - Fehmida Riyaz Drawing Lines, Erasing Lines: Feminism as a Resource in Opposing Xenophobia and Separatism - Cynthia Cockburn In Conversation with Dr Hanan Ashrawi - Aditi Bhaduri Further Readings on Themes in Peace Studies Index