Suchergebnisse

In 1986 the International Activities Committee of the Economic and Social Research Council decided to undertake reviews of progress in 'area studies', and to do this by means of small, inter-disciplinary conferences. A review conference on South Asian studies was held in Cambridge, and attended by forty-one scholars from different disciplines and from India, France, Holland and the USA as well as from Britain. The purpose of the review was understood to be a 'stock-taking' in different fields of research, intended to identify conceptual, theoretical and substantive issues at the frontiers of enquiry; and to examine the implications and contributions of research on South Asia for historical research and for the social sciences in general. In the pursuit of these objectives the conference had three components. First came sessions in which two economists (Toye and Chaudhuri), two historians (Tomlinson and Washbrook), an anthropologist (Fuller) and a sociologist (Hawthorn) presented views of 'progress and problems' in their fields. Then came two pairs of concurrent working groups on broad themes, drawing partly on the earlier papers and discussions; and finally three panelists (Bharadwaj, Breman and Lipton) offered commentary on the proceedings. The review papers by Toye, Tomlinson and Washbrook appear in this issue of Modern Asian Studies. What follows here is a commentary on some of the themes that emerged in the papers and discussions.

Examines the methodologies, assumptions and data base for the quantification of the local and non-local regional multiplier effects from agricultural development, and discusses the contradictory interpretations for agricultural policy which have arisen from these exercises of quantification. Makes an attempt to explain their bases. (Abstract amended)

AbstractResponding to three plenary addresses at the DSA conference 2008, and another written contribution, this paper comments on the invisible hand; the dynamics of institutional change; the role of the (commodified) state; 'markets' versus actually existing capitalism and the implications of global warming for development studies. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Despite the promise in the Constitution of India (1950) to establish universal elementary education within a decade, for many years this goal received neither the attention of politicians nor the resources for its achievement. This began to change in the early 1990s with several innovative programmes - notably the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, introduced in 2001 - and then with the passage of the Right to Education Act in 2009. Much has been achieved in this time. School infrastructure has been greatly improved, and enrolment is now virtually universal among girls and boys, and is nearly universal among members of historically marginalized groups in Indian society, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes. Nevertheless, education in India is still under-resourced, and there remain problems of retention and of the quality of education, which has deteriorated since the Right to Education Act came into effect. In addition, the numbers of children being educated in private schools has increased to about a third of the total. Analysing reasons for the continuing problems of elementary education in India - in which the needs for focus on learning, for attention to the training and accountability of teachers and for deepening of parental involvement are all generally recognized - this paper develops the argument that there has to be extensive innovation in the ways in which schooling is managed. In a sector that involves both very large numbers of transactions and high levels of discretion on the parts of the service providers, most importantly teachers, an administration that only follows rules will not do. ; Prepared for the UNRISD project New Directions in Social Policy: Alternatives for and from the Global South