Articles by Vidhu Verma

One of the striking features of classical political philosophy until recently was that it assumed that principles of rights, sovereignty and distributive justice should operate at the state level. Global changes have not only questioned this dichotomy between domestic and international affairs but also raised concerns about the moral basis of politics at the international level. This paper argues that much of the confusion surrounding the analysis and justification of the need for global justice arises from the disparity between the wide usages of the term justice as it occurs in ordinary discourse related to humanitarianism and the way it has to do with the basis for making distribution of goods among citizens. It broadly proposes the need for reassessing concepts like state, democracy and sovereignty; to question membership-based sovereignty as the decisive determinant of democratic participation while working towards devolving decision-making to regional and local levels.

Recent feminist critiques of development have questioned some fundamental assumptions of feminist political theory; such critiques have also been successful in subverting long-held assumptions of conventional economic development. Viewed in the context of women's subordination in third world countries, a redefinition of development must not only be about economic growth, but ensure a redistribution of resources, challenge the gender-based division of labour and also seek to provide for an egalitarian basis in social arrangements. Further, as this article argues, any starting point for feminist critiques of development must also seek to link the end of gender oppression to multiple theories of justice - a justice not juridical but one that recognises the cultural membership of women in the community

On the face of it, nothing much has changed in Malaysia after the elections of 1999. But there has been expansion in the participatory basis of democracy and evolution of a more competitive party system during these elections. The article gives a background of the parties and examines in detail the current political scenario.

Should We Be Interested in a Theory of Exploitation?
Vidhu Verma Surplus transfer from one class to another is fundamental to Marx's theory of exploitation which involves denial of rights over one's product and external resources. But the types of injustices raised by new social movements are exactly the ones where this surplus transfer to capitalists is missing. This demands a rectification of the exploitation-centred critique of capitalism and an observance of a difference between exploitation and oppression. Any conception of alternative good society then requires not only elimination of exploitative conditions of wage labour but also of structures of domination beyond the sphere of production.