Worldviews of Aspiring Powers provides a serious study of the domestic foreign policy debates in five world powers who have gained more influence as the US's has waned: China, Japan, India, Russia and Iran. Featuring a leading regional scholar for each essay, each essay identifies the most important domestic schools of thought—nationalists, realists, globalists, idealists/exceptionalists—and connects them to the historical and institutional sources that fuel each nation's foreign policy experience. While scholars have applied this approach to US foreign policy, this book is the first to track the competing schools of foreign policy thought within five of the world's most important rising powers. Concise and systematic, Worldviews of Aspiring Powers will serve as both an essential resource for foreign policy scholars trying to understand international power transitions and as a text for courses that focus on the same.

Collected here are papers from the conference, Thinking Outward, which dealt with a range of issues related to the key players in this process - firms, home countries and host countries and the book will have a foreword from Jeffrey Sachs. In the wake of the financial crisis, these issues remain increasingly critical for developing countries.

This book offers a multidisciplinary and comprehensive approach to understand the trends and issues of development, governance, and dynamics of gender in the South Asian region. It familiarizes the reader with the quantitative as well as qualitative aspects of governance and development. Contributing authors pay close attention to the socio-political and economic developments in South Asia in their respective chapters. The book is divided into four parts. The first part analyzes the social and economic development of South Asia in the context of human development, state apparatus, and migration. The second part focuses on issues of good governance and human rights. Issues related to minorities and corporate governance are also discussed specifically. The third part deals with the role of media and literature in the development narratives of South Asia. The last part highlights the inter-linkages between gender narratives and development. It is a must-read for those interested in understanding the socio-economic fabrics, political dynamics, and trajectory of development in South Asia.

How do policymakers, businesses and civil society in India approach the challenge of climate change? What do they believe global climate negotiations will achieve and how? And how are Indian political and policy debates internalizing climate change? Relatively little is known globally about internal climate debate in emerging industrializing countries, but what happens in rapidly growing economies like India’s will increasingly shape global climate change outcomes. This Handbook brings together prominent voices from India, including policymakers, politicians, business leaders, civil society activists and academics, to build a composite picture of contemporary Indian climate politics and policy. One section lays out the range of positions and substantive issues that shape Indian views on global climate negotiations. Another delves into national politics around climate change. A third looks at how climate change is beginning to be internalized in sectoral policy discussions over energy, urbanization, water, and forests. The volume is introduced by an essay that lays out the critical issues shaping climate politics in India, and its implications for global politics. The papers show that, within India, climate change is approached primarily as a developmental challenge and is marked by efforts to explore how multiple objectives of development, equity and climate mitigation can simultaneously be met. In addition, Indian perspectives on climate negotiations are in a state of flux. Considerations of equity across countries and a focus on the primary responsibility for action of wealthy countries continue to be central, but there are growing voices of concern on the impacts of climate change on India. How domestic debates over climate governance are resolved in the coming years, and the evolution of India’s global negotiation stance are likely to be important inputs toward creating shared understandings across countries in the years ahead, and identify ways forward. This volume on the Indian experience with climate change and development is a valuable contribution to both purposes.

The Wild East bridges political economy and anthropology to examine a variety of il/legal economic sectors and businesses such as red sanders, coal, fire, oil, sand, air spectrum, land, water, real estate, procurement and industrial labour. The 11 case studies, based across India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, explore how state regulative law is often ignored and/or selectively manipulated. The emerging collective narrative shows the workings of regulated criminal economic systems where criminal formations, politicians, police, judges and bureaucrats are deeply intertwined. By pioneering the field-study of the politicisation of economic crime, and disrupting the wider literature on South Asia’s informal economy, The Wild East aims to influence future research agendas through its case for the study of mafia-enterprises and their engagement with governance in South Asia and outside. Its empirical and theoretical contribution to debates about economic crimes in democratic regimes will be of critical value to researchers in Economics, Anthropology, Sociology, Comparative Politics, Political Science and International Relations, Criminologists and Development Studies, as well as to those inside and outside academia interested in current affairs and the relationship between crime, politics and mafia enterprises.

This book explores the emergence of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) as an alternative political force in Uttar Pradesh. It focuses on the historical continuity of Dalit social justice movements and organizational politics from pre- to post-colonial India and its subsequent institutionalization as a political force with the rise of the BSP in the state since the 1980s. The volume discusses the new age Dalit–Bahujan politics and its ethnicization of caste groups to create a bahujan samaj. The book analyzes the focused political leadership of Kanshiram and Mayawati, the strong party organization, and how they evolved an empowered Dalit ideology and identity by grassroots mobilization and championing Dalit icons and history. The author also explores the party’s strategies, slogans and alliances with other political parties and communities and its political manoeuvrings to retain its influence over the electorate. The book also effectively identifies the reasons for the political marginalization of the BSP in present times in the context of the phenomenal rise of the BJP in the state. The book will be of great interest to researchers and scholars of political science, sociology, Dalit and subaltern studies, exclusion studies and those working on the intersectionality of caste and class. It will also be useful for policy makers, think tanks and NGOs working in the domain of caste, marginality, social exclusion and identity politics.

Through what he terms "bibliographical sociology", Suman Gupta explores the presence of English-language publications in the contemporary Indian context – their productions, circulations and readerships – to understand current social trends.