Public Policy and Politics in India
Public Policy and Politics in India

Author: Kuldeep Mathur

Publisher: Oxford India Paperbacks

Published: 2016-04

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780199466054

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Policymaking in India evokes an image of rational decision-making and technical optimality. However, the arena of policymaking is characterized by conflict and contestation resolved through processes of negotiations and compromises. A significant amount of research in India focuses on policy goals and consequences, and less on policy processes. Breaking away from that approach, Public Policy and Politics in India directly addresses policy processes and discusses the role of institutions in policymaking in India. The wide-ranging essays cover issues such as environment, education, Parliament, liberalization, and governance. They highlight failures of implementation resulting from deep-rooted flaws in overall policy design. The volume aims not only to provoke a debate but also to encourage more systematic studies in the area.

Water and Public Policy in India
Water and Public Policy in India

Author: Deepti Acharya

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2021-09-16

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 1000442551

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book explores the conceptual and theoretical frameworks of Right to Water and analyzes its values in the context of water policy frameworks of the union governments in India. It uses a qualitative approach and combines critical hermeneutics with critical content analysis to introduce a new water policy framework. The volume maps the complex argumentative narrations which have emerged and evolved in the idea of Right to Water and traces the various contours and the nature of water policy texts in independent India. The book argues that the idea of Right to Water has emerged, evolved and is being argued through theoretical arguments and is shaped with the help of institutional arrangements developed at the international, regional, and national levels. Finally, the book underlines that India’s national water policies drafted respectively in 1987, 2002 and 2012, are ideal but are not embracing the values and elements of Right to Water. The volume will be of critical importance to scholars and researchers of public policy, environment, especially water policy, law, and South Asian studies.

Costs of Democracy
Costs of Democracy

Author: Devesh Kapur

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-06-13

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 019909313X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

One of the most troubling critiques of contemporary democracy is the inability of representative governments to regulate the deluge of money in politics. If it is impossible to conceive of democracies without elections, it is equally impractical to imagine elections without money. Costs of Democracy is an exhaustive, ground-breaking study of money in Indian politics that opens readers’ eyes to the opaque and enigmatic ways in which money flows through the political veins of the world’s largest democracy. Through original, in-depth investigation—drawing from extensive fieldwork on political campaigns, pioneering surveys, and innovative data analysis—the contributors in this volume uncover the institutional and regulatory contexts governing the torrent of money in politics; the sources of political finance; the reasons for such large spending; and how money flows, influences, and interacts with different tiers of government. The book raises uncomfortable questions about whether the flood of money risks washing away electoral democracy itself.

When Crime Pays
When Crime Pays

Author: Milan Vaishnav

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2017-01-01

Total Pages: 434

ISBN-13: 0300216203

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The first thorough study of the co-existence of crime and democratic processes in Indian politics In India, the world's largest democracy, the symbiotic relationship between crime and politics raises complex questions. For instance, how can free and fair democratic processes exist alongside rampant criminality? Why do political parties recruit candidates with reputations for wrongdoing? Why are one-third of state and national legislators elected--and often re-elected--in spite of criminal charges pending against them? In this eye-opening study, political scientist Milan Vaishnav mines a rich array of sources, including fieldwork on political campaigns and interviews with candidates, party workers, and voters, large surveys, and an original database on politicians' backgrounds to offer the first comprehensive study of an issue that has implications for the study of democracy both within and beyond India's borders.

The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy
The Oxford Handbook of Public Policy

Author: Michael Moran

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2008-06-12

Total Pages: 997

ISBN-13: 0199548455

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This is part of a ten volume set of reference books offering authoritative and engaging critical overviews of the state of political science. This work explores the business end of politics, where theory meets practice in the pursuit of public good.

Routledge Handbook of Indian Politics
Routledge Handbook of Indian Politics

Author: Atul Kohli

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-01-04

Total Pages: 399

ISBN-13: 1135122741

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

India’s growing economic and socio-political importance on the global stage has triggered an increased interest in the country. This Handbook is a reference guide, which surveys the current state of Indian politics and provides a basic understanding of the ways in which the world’s largest democracy functions. The Handbook is structured around four main topics: political change, political economy, the diversity of regional development, and the changing role of India in the world. Chapters examine how and why democracy in India put down firm roots, but also why the quality of governance offered by India’s democracy continues to be low. The acceleration of economic growth since the mid-1980s is discussed, and the Handbook goes on to look at the political and economic changes in selected states, and how progress across Indian states continues to be uneven. It concludes by touching on the issue of India’s international relations, both in South Asia and the wider world. The Handbook offers an invigorating initiation into the seemingly daunting and complex terrain of Indian politics. It is an invaluable resource for academics, researchers, policy analysts, graduate and undergraduate students studying Indian politics.

Rethinking Public Institutions in India
Rethinking Public Institutions in India

Author: Devesh Kapur

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018-02-16

Total Pages: 435

ISBN-13: 0199091285

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

While a growing private sector and a vibrant civil society can help compensate for the shortcomings of India’s public sector, the state is—and will remain—indispensable in delivering basic governance. In Rethinking Public Institutions in India, distinguished political and economic thinkers critically assess a diverse array of India’s core federal institutions, from the Supreme Court and Parliament to the Election Commission and the civil services. Relying on interdisciplinary approaches and decades of practitioner experience, this volume interrogates the capacity of India’s public sector to navigate the far-reaching transformations the country is experiencing. An insightful introduction to the functioning of Indian democracy, it offers a roadmap for carrying out fundamental reforms that will be necessary for India to build a reinvigorated state for the twenty-first century.

The Political Lives of Information
The Political Lives of Information

Author: Janaki Srinivasan

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2022-10-04

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 0262370379

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

How the definition, production, and leveraging of information are shaped by caste, class, and gender, and the implications for development. Information, says Janaki Srinivasan, has fundamentally reshaped development discourse and practice. In this study, she examines the history of the idea of “information” and its political implications for poverty alleviation. She presents three cases in India—the circulation of price information in a fish market in Kerala, government information in information kiosks operated by a nonprofit in Puducherry, and a political campaign demanding a right to information in Rajasthan—to explore three uses of information to support goals of social change. Countering claims that information is naturally and universally empowering, Srinivasan shows how the definition, production, and leveraging of information are shaped by caste, class, and gender. Srinivasan draws on archival and ethnographic research to challenge the idea of information as objective and factual. Using the concept of an “information order,” she examines how the meaning and value of information reflect the social relations in which it is embedded. She asks why casting information as a tool of development and solution to poverty appeals to actors across the political spectrum. She also shows how the power to label some things information and others not is at least as significant as the capacity to subsequently produce, access, and leverage information. The more faith we place in what information can do, she cautions, the less attention we pay to its political lives and to the role of specific social structures, individual agency, and material form in the defining, production, and use of that information.

Everyday State and Politics in India
Everyday State and Politics in India

Author: Sailen Routray

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-10-16

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 1351692100

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Kalahandi district in the state of Odisha in Eastern India is regarded as an iconic region of underdevelopment, and is often perceived to be the ‘Somalia’ of the country. It is also the site of a large number of governmental interventions. This book focuses on processes of governance in Odisha, and provides an ethnographic account of the changing forms of governmental actions in Kalahandi by analysing the implementation of WORLP (Western Orissa Rural Livelihoods Project), a new generation watershed development project. The book also shows the morphings of the forms of the state on the ground, and the ways in which it is perceived by the agents and objects of statist actions. Arguing that changes in the institutions and practices of the state in India over the last three decades are better understood through the conceptualisation of state-fabrication, rather than of state-formation, the author describes the governmental tactics related to emergent modes of governmental action. The book identifies an increasing convergence in the everyday practices of governmental and non-governmental organisations, and the growth of ‘the social’ as a terrain and object of governmental actions, as two important effects of the process of deployment of these tactics. It argues that the vernacular sphere of toutary is a key domain of sociality that frames the perceptions and actions of people related to the state in Odisha. As a domain, toutary is populated by social agents, called touters; toutary can be understood as the interstitial zone between state and society shaped by the increasing penetration by the state into society through social technologies. By providing an alternative analysis of state and politics in India, this book adds to the literature surrounding the everyday state by illuminating recent changes in state-society relations. It will be of interest to academics in the field of Political Science, Public Policy, Development Studies, Social Anthropology/Sociology, Social Work, and South Asian studies.

Public Policy
Public Policy

Author: Vishal Narain

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-05-03

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1108429580

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Discusses theories and concepts used in the analysis of public policy processes, studying theories of policy processes, monitoring and evaluation.