Suchergebnisse

Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have the potential to be valuable in-struments of economic growth and development in India. Yet, as a result of the resistance facing them, SEZs in India have not delivered economic benefits to their fullest potential. For this reason, reducing the resistance facing SEZs is critical to their success. This article seeks to reduce this resistance by devising a consensus-building plan based on a regulatory negotiation approach. The ar-ticle first shows that the past and present resistance facing India's economic zones is a product of the lack of public input in the design of their policy. It then presents a platform for understanding the proponents' and opponents' argu-ments by distilling the current legislation and regulation governing India's SEZ policy into a cohesive operational framework. Next, the article examines pro-ponents' and opponents' arguments pertaining to the operational framework of the SEZ policy. Finally, the article seeks to retroactively counterbalance the lack of public input in the design process of India's SEZ policy by suggesting two sets of reforms to the operational framework. One set of reforms—procedural reforms—suggests securing greater opponent involvement in the es-tablishment and operation of SEZs. The other set—substantive reforms—recommends rules that will further opponent interests through, not despite, the establishment and operation of SEZs.

India's National Mental Health Program (NMHP) was initiated in 1982 with the objective of promoting community participation and accessible mental health services. A key component involves central government calculation and funding for psychotropic medication. Based on clinical ethnography of a community psychiatry program in north India, this article traces the biosocial journey of psychotropic pills from the centre to the periphery. As the pill journeys from the Ministry of Health to the clinic, its symbolic meaning transforms from an emphasis on accessibility and participation to the administration of a discrete `treatment.' Instead of embodying participation and access, the pill achieves the opposite: silencing community voices, re-enforcing existing barriers to care, and relying on pharmacological solutions for psychosocial problems. The symbolic inscription of NMHP policies on the pill fail because they are undercut by more powerful meanings generated from local cultural contexts. An understanding of this process is critical for the development of training and policy that can more effectively address local mental health concerns in rural India.

The field of Global Mental Health (GMH) aims to influence mental health policy and practice worldwide, with a focus on human rights and access to care. There have been important achievements, but GMH has also been the focus of scholarly controversies arising from political, cultural, and pragmatic critiques. These debates have become increasingly polarized, giving rise to a need for more dialogue and experience-near research to inform theorizing. Ethnography has much to offer in this respect. This paper frames and introduces five articles in this issue of Transcultural Psychiatry that illustrate the role of ethnographic methods in understanding the effects and implications of the field of global mental health on mental health policy and practice. The papers include ethnographies from South Africa, India, and Tonga that show the potential for ethnographic evidence to inform GMH projects. These studies provide nuanced conceptualizations of GMH's varied manifestations across different settings, the diverse ways that GMH's achievements can be evaluated, and the connections that can be drawn between locally observed experiences and wider historical, political, and social phenomena. Ethnography can provide a basis for constructive dialogue between those engaged in developing and implementing GMH interventions and those critical of some of its approaches.

This article explores the challenge of measuring effectiveness in social work, building from an evaluation of a service for those with drug- and alcohol-related problems in Scotland conducted in 2012. Drug and alcohol misuse have long been recognised as major issues for the Scottish economy, health service and population, affecting high numbers of individuals, families and communities in Scotland. For this reason, it is vital that the services provided give 'best value' for service users and the country as a whole. But what is an effective service and how might this be measured? We will argue that demonstrating social work effectiveness is always difficult, but that the complex and interconnected nature of drug and alcohol problems makes it even more difficult to isolate the effectiveness of one intervention from another and from the context in which it is located. This suggests that, as we move forward, we need an approach to evaluation that acknowledges the systems within which individuals and services are operating (see Forrester et al., 2013), as well as the inevitably political nature of all evaluation (Gray et al., 2009).

Caste is a complex ontological construction. Despite several anti-caste movements and constitutional provisions, caste exists in the Indian psyche as part of everyday life. Even in the advent of globalization, caste continues to foster social and economic inequalities and exclusion in newer forms and perpetuates violence. The available research on caste-based stigma and humiliation provides a limited understanding as it deals with Dalits only; and ignores caste-Hindus (upper-caste) agency. Based largely on qualitative data collected at an intense three-day workshop, including two Focus Group Discussions and a year-long ethnography, this article illustrates the micro processes of everyday life experiences of caste-based stigma and humiliation among university students, academic staff and administrative staff. It explores subtle and overt caste discrimination, prejudices and stereotypes existing in the spatial morphologies of Indian higher education, its perpetuation on campuses and its impact on students' psyche. It highlights the dearth of scholarship in this area of caste identity and stigma; and proposes nuanced questions for future research to understand why universities in India are turning into places of social defeat for Dalit and OBC students. The article argues the basis of caste discrimination and humiliation in universities is not the same as it exists in other social institutions. Instead of asserting conclusions on this matter we set out justifiable lines of inquiry. There are two issues that this article examines: first, how students in Indian higher education evolve strategies for coping with threatened identities. Second, what structural repair in higher education is required to heal the wounded (caste) psyche?