Children’s rights and early years provision in India

The term ‘participation’ is vague, and it’s meaning has been increasingly contested in early years education. This chapter analyses children’s everyday experiences in a formal preschool setting in India, and offers a series of reflections on what such experiences mean for the concept of children’s rights. Considering pedagogy as a contested terrain where different world-views, perspectives and power positions intersect, this chapter examines the power inherent in everyday interactions between children and teachers, and suggests that participation is an ongoing negotiated process. Whether children’s rights to participate in early years provision are realised, depends on how they are positioned in everyday contexts. My research demonstrates the active agency of young children, suggests that young children have the ability to contribute to everyday pedagogy and practice, and that their participation is meaningful if it is rooted in their everyday lives. Children should be recognised as active players who can learn things in many ways and acquire knowledge through their embodied experiences

Changing views at Banaras Hindu University on the Academic Study of Religion: A first report from an on-going research project

Given India’s vibrant religious landscape, there is a somewhat surprising paucity of depart‐ ments, centres or even programs for the academic study of religion. This article discusses this issue based on the preliminary results of an interview study conducted at Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi, India, in 2014 and 20 Its focus is on the views of university teachers and researchers concerning the place, role and function of religion and religious stud‐ ies at BHU. Twenty‐eight semi‐structured interviews were conducted. In the course of their analysis, six themes emerged: 1) the place and role of religion in society; 2) religion as ‘religi‐ osity/spirituality’ or sanatana dharma vs. political ideology/communitarianism; 3) religion vs. dharma; 4) secularization; 5) religion in education in general; and, 6) religion in the education at BHU. The informants agreed on the increasing importance of religion in India, and most of them viewed the meaning of secularization as being ‘equal respect for all religions’. Moreover, a majority distinguished between ‘religion’, in the Western sense, and the Indian conception of dharma, considering it regrettable that the latter, described as the common ground of all reli‐ gions, is not taught more extensively at BHU. They also considered the original ideal of BHU’s founder, Madan Mohan Malaviya, to be of signi cant importance. That ideal involved not only teaching students the knowledge and skill sets found in a standard modern university, but also equipping them with a value‐based education, grounded upon sanatana‐dharma. As our project progresses, further understanding of this turn toward dharma education is something we intend to pursue through the lens of multiple modernities, developed by Marian Burchardt et al. as multiple secularities

Promoting sustainable Indian textiles: final report to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), London, UK

In 2009, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), through the Sustainable Development Dialogue (SDD) fund, backed the Centre for Sustainable Fashion (CSF) at London College of Fashion and Pearl Academy of Fashion (PAF), New Delhi to run a project to promote Indian sustainable textiles. Improving patterns of sustainable consumption and production (SCP) in India and the UK is one of the agreed areas for collaboration under the UK-India Sustainable Development Dialogue. The project is also part of a body of work taking place under the Defra Sustainable Clothing Roadmap, which aims to improve the sustainability of clothing. Defra has identified that ‘while an economic success story (globally worth over £500 billion) the industry has a significant environmental and social footprint across its supply chain.’ The Roadmap aims to improve the sustainability of clothing by gathering a robust evidence base of impacts and working with a wide range of stakeholders, to build on existing interventions. For more details on the roadmap see: http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/business/products/roadmaps/clothing/index.htm This report is only one of the dissemination tools associated with the project. The project film, images and website should be viewed in conjunction with this report

India as a global security actor

Thanks to sustained economic growth and key investments in military capabilities, India will face growing demands from within and the international community to seek and play a greater role in global security affairs. The values and interests likely to guide India’s future behavior will be a mixture of old and new, eastern and western. India’s international aspirations have an important pre-history, covered in this chapter’s first section where non-alignment, as idea and practice, is explored for its enduring significance. India’s relevance as a security actor is assessed in terms of its activities and capacity to influence developments within two security zones of major contemporary importance: Afghanistan and the Indian Ocean. Finally, a section on the constraints and challenges examines India’s ability to navigate a multi-polar world, the fallout and gains of nuclearization, the 2008 Indo-US nuclear deal, as well as ‘the weaknesses from within’ in terms of human security

Reinterpreting Buddhism: Ambedkar on the Politics of Social Action.

B R Ambedkar’s reinterpretation of Buddhism gives us an account of action that is based on democratic politics of contest and resistance. It relies on a reading of the self as a multiple creature that exceeds the constructions of liberal autonomy. Insofar as Buddhist groups do not jeopardise or restrict their members’ capacities and opportunities to make any decision about their own lives, they do not risk violating democratic principles. But to remain socially relevant they must continue to contribute to a practical impact on the social world which is so neatly intertwined with the political in present-day India

Challenges in ‘translating’ human rights: perceptions and practices of civil society actors in western India

Rights-based approaches have become prevalent in development rhetoric and programmes in countries such as India, yet little is known about their impact on development practice on the ground. There is limited understanding of how rights work is carried out in India, a country that has a long history of indigenous rights discourse and a strong tradition of civil society activism on rights issues. In this article, we examine the multiple ways in which members of civil society organizations (CSOs) working on rights issues in the state of Rajasthan understand and operationalize rights in their development programmes. As a result of diverse ‘translations’ of rights, local development actors are required to bridge the gaps between the rhetoric of policy and the reality of access to healthcare on the ground. This article illustrates that drawing on community-near traditions of activism and mobilization, such ‘translation work’ is most effective when it responds to local exigencies and needs in ways that the universal language of human rights and state development discourse leave unmet and unacknowledged. In the process, civil society actors use rights-based development frameworks instrumentally as well as normatively to deepen community awareness and participation on the one hand, and to fix the state in its role as duty bearer of health rights, on the other hand. In their engagement with rights, CSO members work to reinforce but also challenge neoliberal modes of health governance

Small NGO Schools in India: Implications for Access and Innovation

In addition to the proliferation of private, fee-paying schools in India, NGOs play an important role in providing educational services, especially in un-served and under-served communities. This paper uses qualitative research to critically examine the nature and potential of NGO provision of primary schooling in India. In particular, it explores the contributions of one NGO programme which has sought to increase access for socially and economically marginalised children by establishing and providing support for small, rural, multigrade schools. The paper argues that NGO programmes like these have had positive impacts in terms of both access and quality because, firstly, the programmes are small-scale and locally-rooted, and secondly, their organisation allows for greater flexibility and room for innovation in areas such as curriculum design, teacher education, and school networking than is commonly possible within government schools

Innovation Dynamics in Tuberculosis Control in India: The Shift to New Partnerships

Innovation dynamics in Tuberculosis control in India: The shift to new partnerships Tuberculosis remains the biggest infectious killer in India and worldwide, and it has recently regained substantial international attention with its come-back in drug resistant forms. The environment, the disease and the societal response to it are changing and with it challenges and opportunities to control the disease. Innovation in a variety of areas such as improved diagnostic tests, drugs, delivery mechanisms, service processes, institutions and treatment regimes is needed in order to be able to respond to the changing public health challenge. Recent developments in the literature emphasize that innovation is a complex endeavour that includes processes of negotiation, learning and alignment amongst researchers, health practitioners, firms and public authorities. The ground level realities for innovation in countries such as India where TB is a social as much as a clinical problem are complicated with challenges and constraints inherent to the health and wider social system that hamper learning, experimenting and thus innovation. Based on preliminary results from qualitative fieldwork in India this paper will examine the innovation dynamics in one of the recent policy changes in TB control in India: the emergence of new partnerships between private medical providers, NGOs and the government. The paper traces where new ideas come from, how they make their way through the existing control structure and how the existing efforts to control TB respond to and cope with these new developments. The central argument is that the dynamics of innovation in a complex, conflicting and confusing setting like TB control can be understood as a continuous evolution of problems, promises and solutions.Innovation dynamics, public-private mix, Tuberculosis, India

Epistemología de la comunicación en India: Una aproximación histórica más allá del “desarrollo”

This paper attempts to outline various recent contributions that can illustrate in developing an epistemological understanding of Communication in India, which is a country that could be considered as a continent due to its demography and territorial extension; but more importantly, due to its multiculturality, multilingualism, and strong cultural roots that transcend beyond colonising and neocolonising processes. It is assumed that conventional contemporary understanding of Communication is oriented toward the conquest of modernity and Western development from principles of Eurocentric rationality. Certain divergences and contradictions are observed here by drawing evidences from the indigenous cultures of the Indian society. The recent writings and contributions provide enormous intellectual resources to formulate a knowledge perspective that emerges from the critique of the conventional utilitarian understanding of communication and helps to formulate a critical epistemological perspective of communication in India. In this paper, we describe various contributions to the communication research in India, and the influence that development as an economic concept had on culture, resulting from the influence exerted by communication. Additionally, this article documents participatory approaches that are also original in the search for holistic and endogenous solutions in communication in India, and that follow a critical cultural perspective of their own.En este trabajo se intentan esbozar diversas contribuciones recientes que pueden ilustrar en el desarrollo de una comprensión epistemológica de la Comunicación en India, un país que en sí mismo es un continente por demografía y extensión territorial, pero sobre todo por su multiculturalidad, multilingüismo y sus fuertes raíces culturales que trascienden más allá de los procesos colonizadores y neocolonizadores. Entendiendo que la comprensión convencional contemporánea de la comunicación está orientada a la conquista de la modernidad y el desarrollo occidental desde principios de racionalidad eurocéntrica, observamos divergencias y contradicciones evidenciadas desde la cultura autóctona de la sociedad india. Los escritos y contribuciones recientes proporcionan enormes recursos intelectuales para formular una perspectiva del conocimiento desde la crítica de la comprensión utilitarista de la comunicación y a formular una perspectiva crítica epistemológica de la Comunicación en India. En este artículo se describen las contribuciones de la investigación en comunicación en India y la influencia que el desarrollo como concepto económico tuvo en la cultura desde la influencia ejercida por la comunicación. A partir de ahí se documentan enfoques participativos originales en la búsqueda de soluciones holísticas y endógenas en la comunicación en India desde una perspectiva cultural crítica y propia