Public interest litigation in India: A socio-legal study.

Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in India began in the late 1970s. For the first time the rights of prisoners, bonded labourers, other neglected peoples and issues were considered in the judicial forum. Using their inherent powers under Articles 32 and 226 of the Constitution, a few judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts made access to justice easier. Anyone acting in the public interest was permitted to file a petition on behalf of those unable to do so themselves, or for issues of grave public importance. Lawyers, social activists, concerned individuals and even judges approached the courts. Aside from locus standi, other procedural norms were relaxed, including the need to file a proper petition. Once admitted, attempts were made to resolve litigations using a conciliatory form of justice. Offending state authorities were encouraged to co-operate with the Court, which in turn took on the role of fact-finder, when appropriate, and appointed commissions of enquiry. Most of the reported and many unreported PIL cases, filed from its inception until April 1994, have been examined. Interviews with petitioners and lawyers have revealed much about PIL, and have resulted in the discussion of many unreported cases. Interviews of Supreme Court Judges, administrative officials in the courts and analysts of Indian law have enabled the study to extend to all aspects of the legal process as it relates to PIL. This new form of litigation in the courtroom thus provides a focal point for the study of the Indian legal system. The perception that inequities could be resolved through the legislative or administrative processes had given way to a belief that recourse to legal action was the only mechanism through which rights could be upheld. Thus, the initial agenda was to introduce the social justice considerations of poverty and inequality into the court, whilst making legal institutions more accessible. The hundreds of documented PIL cases reflect a huge range of issues and concerns. While many do fulfil the initial mandate, PIL has often been used as another available legal tool that facilitates access to the courts and increases the public profile of the petitioner. For many of those who have used PIL in an effort to counter serious violations of rights, the inherent limitations of legal action and the poor implementation of favourable Court orders have rendered PIL a meaningless exercise. For some, PIL has provided necessary short term redress or has focused attention on issues never before discussed in a national forum. Whatever the outcome, PIL has necessitated the recognition that every Indian citizen should have access to justice

The Yellow Revolution in Malwa : alternative arenas of struggle and the cultural politics of development

Thesis (Ph. D. in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HASTS))--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science, Technology and Society, 2009.Includes bibliographical references (p. 319-331).This dissertation engages with two analytical frameworks to explore questions of social transformation and structures of power in rural society in India. The first is a specific critique of various types of development discourse and development projects that have been elaborated by national and international elites during the last forty years, focusing on the dry land Malwa region in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. This includes a project to introduce soyabean cultivation to the region in the 1970s, which has been post-facto labeled as a yellow revolution, and a discourse which argues that providing market information through new information and communication technologies is empowering farmers. I argue that these projects and discourse have mostly steered away from engaging with the structures of power framing rural society, and thus, have failed to bring about much change in the condition of rural people in central India. The second analytical framework is a recovery and foregrounding of alternate arenas of struggle that rural people in the Malwa region have been participating in. The platform of democratic politics is one such avenue that marginalized groups have used to make demands upon the state to provide them with support and allows them to hold the state accountable for the same. Participating in cultural projects that question and subvert the forms of caste and gender based exclusion that frame the lives of people is another such arena which provides women and adivasis (tribals) with a language of empowerment. This research argues that for the language and practice of development to have more relevance to the lives of the poor and for it to engage with the deeper aspirations in their lives, the role of these political and cultural projects as vital platforms for rural people to exercise agency and bring about change, must be recognized.by Richa Kumar.Ph.D.in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology and Society (HAST

Custodial Atrocities and the status of Human Rights: An Analytical Study with Reference to Women in the State of Gujarat, India

Not availabl

Science, technology and innovation development of India

Аннотация на англ. яз

Hybridising (e)-governance in India : the interplay of politics, technology and culture

This research, based on a neo-institutional model explores how a techno-managerial variety of e-governance reform as espoused by a transnational governance reform agenda affects the level of governance that hinges upon a dynamic relationship between state and society. Since such a research endeavour focuses on the relationship between technology and governance, a social constructivism approach is deployed to explicate how this relationship is mediated through an array of political, social and cultural factors which further calls for a context-specific analysis of e-governance. Consequently, a detailed analysis of e-governance policies and practices in India along with a case study of the Common Services Centres (CSCs) Scheme under the National e-Governance Plan of the Government of India has been undertaken. Such analyses often denotes substantial gap between the macro-policies of reform and their actual impact which is further explained through the analytical category of hybridity. Hybridity shows how both policies and practices go through a process of hybridisation in negotiating the hiatus between ‘imported’ institutional set up and the ‘inherited’ social set up in the post-colonial context of India. Thus, the implication of e-governance in India goes much beyond in explaining (e) governance as a complex interplay between politics, technology and culture. Hence, this research transcends the specific context of India firstly in explicating the relationship between technology and governance and secondly, by devising a unique yet holistic methodological approach to address the entanglement of politics, technology and culture in the complex whole of governance

The drivers and dynamics of money laundering mechanisms: the case of India

This thesis examines the fundamental institutional changes and continuities in the Indian economy from an institutional-structural lens, i.e., India’s economic reforms of 1991. These reforms signaled a paradigm shift resulting in significant changes in monetary and fiscal policy. This study acknowledges preexisting systems of money laundering and explores whether, or not the introduction of open market reforms in India has facilitated the emergence of more complex money laundering mechanisms. These include capital flight and development of sophisticated book-entry mechanisms, all benefiting from convergence since the 1990s of IT technology, globalisation and free-market policies. The analysis traces the pre-existing practices related to money laundering including money transfer mechanisms of hundi and hawala. Furthermore, it provides rich empirical evidence to show how the Indian economy can be thought of as a complex eco-system in which the formal, the informal and the black (illegal) are continuously connected through the novel and interesting mechanisms that this study brings to light – namely ‘de-laundering’ and ‘parking.’ The thesis relies on primary and secondary literature as well as qualitative interviews with a range of policymakers, politicians, Members of Parliament, members of state legislatures, bureaucrats, business leaders, finance professionals, lawyers and accountants. These included actual players in the chain of money laundering and ‘de-laundering’. I argue that the existence of the black economy, as well as mechanisms of money laundering, are rooted in the socio-economic fabric of the Indian economy. I link the Indian black economy and money laundering to a nexus between politicians, businessmen and bureaucrats. This argument is illustrated through an analysis of selected mini-case studies from different sectors of the economy. The analysis shows that the black and the white economy are linked, and that money goes through cycles of laundering and de-laundering as it moves back and forth from black to white