The tribes, especially of mainland India, have lost their lands and livelihoods to development projects which have not brought them any benefits. In fact, they have been displaced without rehabilitation and adequate compensation.
Low demand, high trade costs, poor infrastructure, unstable law and order and the lackadaisical nature of government impede the economic growth of the North Eastern Region. This prolonged underdevelopment points to the urgent need of the NER to integrate with the global economy for faster economic growth. Such an integration and subsequent economic transformation can be made possible through participation in global value chains. The NER has comparative trade advantage in producing labour-intensive products, and participation in services-based GVCs, particularly tourism, can be very profitable for the NER.
Paternalistic governance of mental health practices and advocacy fail to locate mental health problems in the broader spectrum of personal, social, political, and economic lives.
The Gujarat Government's efforts to push for the Dholera Smart City and other Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) projects have resulted in lopsided policies. These policies prove that agriculturists have no representation in the state’s legislative processes.
After 70 years of independence, India continues to languish at the bottom of the comity of nations on every parameter that constitutes real development. The widening economic disparities and relentless violence against Dalits, Adivasis and minorities demonstrate that B R Ambedkar’s dream of social and economic equality accompanying political equality remains elusive.
By way of analysing and interpreting the outcome of the West Bengal assembly elections 2016, the article “West Bengal Elections: The Verdict of Politics” (EPW, 11 June 2016) has raised some vital questions of immense theoretical importance which deserve serious deliberation. With this object in view, some issues of general interest have been picked up.
The 21 new districts created in Telangana may not entail a proportional increase in the bureaucracy needed for functional district administrations. There is a case to merge departments with similar functions in order to ensure a well-functioning administrative machinery.
In Kerala, a state with its time-tested social and political tradition which seeks to bind all sections of people together, irrespective of religion or caste, the emergence of the National Democratic Alliance as an alternative to the two mainstream political fronts had its repercussions among a section of the minorities. The fluctuation in the voting preferences signals the crisis the Left Democratic Front is facing. Except for the extremely poor, all other socio-economic groups, including Dalits, Other Backward Castes, the lower classes and the younger generation, are highly volatile and are changing their political preferences, depending on the unfolding social reality.
Three key dynamics have come to the fore in the fresh cycle of capitalism that is unfolding in the new state of Andhra Pradesh. First, capitalist accumulation is happening with a weak articulation and incorporation of labour. Second, capitalist development is being visualised in a city-centric paradigm with a weak vision of integrating the hinterlands. Third, these two dynamics are perceived by the state and the ruling elite to have little opposition, a kind of thesis with a weak antithesis. This paper provides a critique of these emerging dynamics in the hope of imagining a more inclusive Andhra Pradesh.
The question of regional development holds special significance for India, given that the regions are not entirely homogeneous. The high growth rate of the economy as a whole has not led to a similar growth pattern for its regions. An analysis on regional convergence across 15 major states in India suggests that there is divergence of the aggregate economy for the period 1970–71 to 2013–14. The findings therefore do not lend support to the expectations of the neoclassical convergence hypothesis according to which poor regions tend to catch up with the advanced regions in the long run leading to regional convergence.
Globally, planners play a vital role in planning liveable, sustainable and resilient cities. In the Indian context, planners and planning need to be placed at the heart of our development process. By undermining our states' town planning machinery and shunning town planners from the task of planning our cities, we, in turn, risk undermining the potential benefits of such programmes to urban India.
