Coalition politics, ethnic violence and citizenship: Muslim political agency in Meerut, India, c. 1950-2004.

This dissertation examines the responses of the Muslim community in Meerut city, in western Uttar Pradesh, India, to the rise of militant Hindu nationalism and to the anti-Muslim violence that shook Meerut in April-May 1987. I show how Meerut Muslims engaged in adaptive economic and political strategies in the wake of the 1987 violence and how these strategies culminated in a new style of participatory politics. This emerged under the leadership of the hitherto low status Qureshi (butcher) community. I show how Qureshi political activism has worked to create a Muslim political community which can be mobilised in terms both of civic and Muslim identities. I also demonstrate how Muslim political leaders have engaged in an instrumental politics of vote-trading with Hindu low- caste political parties. Both communities are exploiting new possibilities for representation in an era of multi-party coalition politics at state and national levels. My account of the 'new Muslim politics' in Meerut examines how Islam is understood alongside civic, or even secular, accounts of what it means to be a Muslim in contemporary India. More generally, my discussion of the production of ethnic peace in Meerut since c.1990 allows me to contribute to an ongoing debate on the causes and differential geography of 'communal' violence in India. I do not attempt to adjudicate between the competing accounts of 'votes and violence' offered by Steven Wilkinson, Ashutosh Varshney, Paul Brass and others. Instead, I seek to build on their work by offering a more considered discussion of Muslim political agency in the face of provocative militant Hinduism. Behind concerted campaigns for security and survival, the 'new Muslim politics' mirrors a commitment to the goals of respect and dignity that is also to be found among the region's poorest Hindu communities and the Scheduled Castes (dalits)

Open Source Software for Integrated Library System : Relative Appropriatness in the Indian Context

Libraries in all fields of human activity are involved in collection, preservation, management, and effective distribution of information that determines the quality of development in concerned sectors including that of higher education and research. Now information is flooding and along with that the recorded information to be managed; which necessitates automation of libraries to make the information stored in their collections useful and retrievable. Hitherto the cost of commercial packages for automation has prevented millions of libraries from using those tools. The recent emergence of Open Source Software has drastically reduced the cost of automation as well provided tools for new and innovative information services. The present research work focuses on comparative study of library automation packages with stress to appropriateness of Open Source Integrated Library Systems (OSILS) for countries like India. Study is based on a survey among library professionals from India using commercial and OSILS packages. The sample users belong to 601 libraries covering university, college, school, special and research libraries using any one of the integrated library systems. Packages covered is limited to the software /versions used in India. The survey found that features users of library automation packages consider are cost effectiveness, technical infrastructure, staff skills, software functionality and the availability of support, documentation and community. Study revealed that OSILS provides technological freedom and so is changing the landscape of library automation. Survey found Koha to be most popular in India. Suggests solutions to improve the situation. Few recommendations are provided to help libraries to choose suitable OSILS by understanding their advantages. Opines that being an attractive alternative to costly commercial package for any type of libraries OSILS, which is free to experiment and easy to use and customize for local requirements needs to be promoted in Indian libraries

Is Web 2.0 a threat to representative democracy? A deliberation through the Australian carbon tax debate

The influence of social media is intensifying in global societies. As the technologies become cheaper and the acceptance of Web 2.0 becomes widespread, the power of social media on citizens, particularly the integrated influence of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and blogs cannot be underestimated. In this paper, we attempt a deliberation through the lens of carbon tax debate in Australia where the influence of social media has perhaps begun to portend the role of elected representation in this representative democracy

Impact of e – Governance System Practices on Good Governance in India - An Empirical Study

The governments across the world are changing and trying to be more responsive and cohesive in delivering services to citizens. The new facet of service delivery has come which is called e- Governance, delivers electronic services straightly to the citizens homes, community centers and far off locations. The mobility and responsiveness with improved information sharing and service delivery mechanism has given dynamic flow to the government functions and abilities. Focus is laid on evaluation of impact of e – governance on good governance and assessment of present scenario of e – Governance within the public institutions in India

Strategies for Alang's shipbreaking industry

Thesis (S.M. in Architecture Studies)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 137-143).Waste is an integral part of our contemporary civilization based on consumption and material culture. From an empty soda can to the spent nuclear fuel rod, we define waste as the matter without immediate use: rotten, broken, unwanted. The notion of waste is also spatial-waste is simply matter in the wrong place and consequently of no value. One defining feature of globalization is the flow of waste to the places that extract value out of this otherwise worthless matter. Situated on the western shore of the Gulf of Cambay in India, Alang is one such place. Alang owes its existence to the rise of modern maritime industry. Here obsolete end of life ships are broken, by manual labor, to transform them into a reusable commodity- steel. With an average lifespan of 25 to 30 years, most of these ships, often full of hazardous waste at the end of their working life, end up on the beach of Alang to be dismantled for their steel. Taking advantage of its unique geographical conditions, cheap migrant labor, and lax environmental regulations, Alang recycles half of the world's scrapped ships. It is the epicenter of a scavenger economy that turns obsolete vessels into reusable commodities for a rapidly developing economy. With the example of Alang, this thesis asserts that, due to their intricate connectivity to the global networks, places of resource extraction acquire an extra-territorial urban character. Only by acknowledging the urban nature of such places, can we start to design for these flows of waste, migration and resources. This thesis aims to explore the potential for urbanism to intervene into an industry like Alang to develop a regional strategy of urban metamorphosis.by Aditya S. Barve.S.M.in Architecture Studie

Enacting “Technology” and Everything Else: Gendered Practices and the System of Crop Intensification

This dissertation is a qualitative examination of the functioning of a rural development project in a Himalayan region of India, with a special focus on a particular project activity centred around an agro-ecological method of crop production, the System of Crop Intensification (SCI). Environmental changes and disasters along with rapid transformations in the rural economy in Uttarakhand has engendered a renewed interest in non-mainstream farming practices. However, the success and/or failure rates of adoption of new agricultural methods and technologies remains a poorly understood phenomenon. Studies of adoption rates tend to focus on the aspects of the technology itself, rather than its social life. Drawing from science, technology and society studies, agrarian studies, scholarship on rural livelihoods, political ecology, gender studies and practice theory, this research study examines how the discourse of SCI is articulated differently in different spaces, and the implications of these variations for extension and adoption practices. Beginning with the construction of knowledge at the institutional level, the research study first traces who articulates what, and how and why this process takes place, in both the national and regional contexts. Second, it examines how contestations in discourse translate into mediated practices and outcomes. Finally, the study focuses on the embodied identities of field development workers and the inhibitory as well as emancipatory effects of the structuring elements of the organisation. The study finds that SCI, and rural development projects more broadly, are co-produced both discursively and in practice, by project planners, development workers, and beneficiaries