Dwindling Ground Water Table: An Ecological Study of Southern Haryana

The dwindling ground water level is one of the critical issues that plague India in the present times. This research study primarily has its basis in the secondary data, gathered from the Ministry of Water Resources. The main aim of the present research study is to highlight the issues related to ground water in various parts of India with the main focus on southern part of Haryana state. The spatial pattern of the ground water depth is studied using the secondary data from various sources. The water table depth and fluctuation maps in Arch GIS 9.3 are analysed by making use of geological analysis extension. The water elevation is examined by employing the Kriging estimator. Also, the different ways of prevention that can help in checking the quick dwindling of ground water table are discussed so that the sustainable use of ground water can be encouraged and achieved. It is observed that the menace of ground water depletion has posed alarming threat to the states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and some south Indian states. This is attributed mainly to the agricultural, industrial and human needs amidst the ever-rising rate of population in India. In the southern Haryana, the Mahendergarh district and Firozpur block of Mewat area have been identified as most critical zones in relation to water depletion. The study suggests judicious and sustainable use of water resources so as to check the alarming dwindling of the ground water table

Forced resettlement: lessons from the Bhils affected by the Sardar Sarovar Dam in Maharashtra

The construction of the Sardar Sarovar Dam in western India has been the subject of great controversy as it became a go-to example of environmental protection and indigenous rights discourses in the 1990s and 2000s. Drawing on his PhD research, Vikramaditya Thakur challenges the conventional narratives and argues the problem of forced displacement has no easy answers but can be best understood when analysed within the rubric of regionally specific set of processes

Corporate Crime Legislation: A Political Economy Analysis

Corporate crime has once again become an important issue on the U.S. legislative agenda, leading Congress and the various regulatory bodies to tighten the law and enhance honesty and completeness in disclosure. However, the continued and rather explosive growth of corporate crime legislation leaves one with a rather strange puzzle: how can such a state of the world arise? After all, corporations and business interests are considered some of the most, if not the most, powerful and effective lobbyists in the country. Yet, we witness the continued expansion of legislation that criminalizes their behavior (one estimate suggests over 300,000 federal regulatory offenses that can be prosecuted criminally). How could this have happened? This Article sets out to explain this puzzle. Overall, my analysis suggests that most corporate crime legislation arises when there is a large public outcry over a series of corporate scandals during or around a downturn in the economy. In such situations, Congress must respond. Corporate crime legislation may be the preferred response for some corporate interests because it satisfies public outcry while imposing relatively low costs on those interests, thereby avoiding legislative and judicial responses that are more harmful to their interests and sometimes deflecting criminal liability away from managers and executives and onto corporations. This explains not only the impressive growth of corporate crime legislation but also leads to some surprising normative conclusions. In particular, it suggests that if one starts with the view that there is under-deterrence of corporate wrongdoing, then one would probably prefer to reduce corporate criminal liability and focus more on corporate civil and managerial liability

Situating the Gaddi Community of Himachal Pradesh, India in a Wider World

How does the process of claiming historically and socially situated identities play out? How are anxieties of reconfigured gender relations expressed in the present? The anthropolo-gists of this Special Issue (SI) interrogate these questions by focusing on what it means to be a Gaddi person in the mountainous state of Himachal Pradesh. This commentary focuses on three articles that are based on multiple, long-term fieldwork focused on the travails of being marginalized and possibilities of subaltern agency. Whether it is status competition among Sippis (Christopher), a community with both Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe designations in different states, or women being stigmatized as ‘witches’ (Simpson), espe-cially among caste groups considered inferior within the Gaddi hierarchy, these are far from isolated phenomenon. These struggles reflect crucial aspects of ‘Gaddiness’ in the present where the term Gaddi is an ethnonym to refer to various unequally stratified caste groups that is popularly abstracted to mean high-caste pastoralists (Christopher and Phillimore). The three articles also reflect on the socioeconomic transformations across South Asia in general but particularly experienced in rural India. Himachal Pradesh may have been more geographically remote only a few decades ago, but deeper penetration of the state and market along with new infrastructure are forcing a reconsideration of colonial stereotypes about ‘tribality’. As a scholar who primarily works on western India, my commentary flags some key issues dealing with social theory, identity, state-formation and gender roles by comparing trends cross India with the specific Gaddi case study

Corporate Defendants and the Protections of Criminal Procedure: An Economic Analysis

Corporations are frequently treated as “persons” under the law. One of the fundamental questions associated with this treatment is whether corporations should receive the same Constitutional protections and guarantees as natural persons. In particular, should corporations receive the Constitutional protections of Criminal Procedure? After all, corporations cannot be sent to jail so the sanctions they face are essentially the same as in civil proceedings. If so, then why not have the same procedural protections for corporate defendants in civil and criminal cases? Little scholarly analysis has focused on this issue from an economic perspective and this article aims to fill that gap. My analysis concludes that the concerns animating most procedural protections in the corporate context (i.e., reducing the costs of adjudicative errors and abusive prosecutorial behavior) would require procedural protections that differ for corporate defendants depending on the identity of the moving party (e.g., government or private litigant), and the type of sanction the corporation is facing, but not on the type of proceedings (criminal or civil) against the corporation. The analysis thus calls for a reorientation of procedural protections for corporate defendants along these lines rather than on the current criminal – civil dichotomy. The implications of such a reorientation are sketched in this paper and may, at times, suggest having stronger protections for corporations in civil proceedings than in criminal proceedings

Paddy Stubble Management: A Study on Farmers’ Opinions

The purpose of the study is to examine the paddy straw management practices by farmers amidst the various difficulties faced by them in terms of machinery, resources, etc. The study was conducted in Rohtak district of Haryana (India). A well-structured interview schedule was formulated and one hundred farmers were interviewed accordingly. Simple random sampling technique was adopted for the selection of twenty paddy growing farmers from each of the blocks viz. Rohtak, Sampla, Meham, Lakhan Majra and Kalanaur of the selected district. The data was analysed, tabulated and the results were drawn using the statistical tools of SPSS and MS Excel. The Chi-square test was used to establish the relation between the paddy straw management technologies and the reasons for non-adoption of these technologies. It is found that maximum number of farmers are marginal land holders. Many farmers are unaware of the conservation techniques to manage paddy stubble viz. use of decomposers, etc. The high cost and low availability of paddy stubble management machinery also plague the farmers. The results of the study help in understanding the behaviours of farmers towards tackling the paddy stubble. Also, useful inputs can be drawn to design, manufacture and adopt the agricultural implements for stubble management. The study is based on a sample of just hundred farmers and is limited to Rohtak district only. Nevertheless, the study is valuable for it comprehensively interrelates the myriad aspects of paddy stubble management in the stubble burning prone area of Rohtak

Corporate Defendants and the Protections of Criminal Procedure: An Economic Analysis

Corporations are frequently treated as “persons” under the law. One of the fundamental questions associated with this treatment is whether corporations should receive the same Constitutional protections and guarantees as natural persons. In particular, should corporations receive the Constitutional protections of Criminal Procedure? After all, corporations cannot be sent to jail so the sanctions they face are essentially the same as in civil proceedings. If so, then why not have the same procedural protections for corporate defendants in civil and criminal cases? Little scholarly analysis has focused on this issue from an economic perspective and this article aims to fill that gap. My analysis concludes that the concerns animating most procedural protections in the corporate context (i.e., reducing the costs of adjudicative errors and abusive prosecutorial behavior) would require procedural protections that differ for corporate defendants depending on the identity of the moving party (e.g., government or private litigant), and the type of sanction the corporation is facing, but not on the type of proceedings (criminal or civil) against the corporation. The analysis thus calls for a reorientation of procedural protections for corporate defendants along these lines rather than on the current criminal – civil dichotomy. The implications of such a reorientation are sketched in this paper and may, at times, suggest having stronger protections for corporations in civil proceedings than in criminal proceedings

Two Concepts of Education

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College. The foundation of the current discourse on education is grounded in the funding and distribution of a ‘good’ called education. The Common Core State Standards, as a set of shared goals stipulated by the federal government, considers education to be a “stepping stone” towards joining the workforce in a competitive global marketplace. The lexicon of economic commodities instrumentalizes education due to its tacit assumption that education is a means to an occupational end. It treats education as an individual possession deposited by a school, via its teachers, into the student, viewed as a receptacle, as opposed to a shared possession which emerges through dialogue. It has been the economists and politicians who have dominated public discourse by focusing on the distributive questions in relation to education. The basis of their conception of education as training so as to enter the workforce has neglected the dialogic and, by extension, democratic nature of the educative process. Furthermore, this compartmentalization of the educative process, represented by the unilinear process by which information is deposited into the student, oriented towards securing employment, prevents the fostering of bridging ties. The positive vision of a truly democratic education that comes closer to realizing the fundamental egalitarian commitments, held by the drafters of the Declaration of Independence, unmoored from their discriminatory personal choices, emerges from the coupling of two philosophers, separated by a century, yet bridged by a common recognition of the profound necessity of dialogue, sharing and co-creative participation: John Dewey and Danielle Allen

Parfois Le Hasard Fait Bien Les Choses: The Biography of Justus Rosenberg

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College. As the authorized biographer of Professor Justus Rosenberg, who, as a young man, functioned as a courier in Varian Fry’s Emergency Rescue Committee, and thus facilitated the escape of émigrés from Vichy France, I experiment in this project with a form of storytelling that juxtaposes his classroom dialogues about twentieth century novels with my account of his experiences as a guerrilla fighter during the French Resistance. By analyzing archival material, interviewing Professor Rosenberg and retracing his journey across Europe during World War Two, while simultaneously learning French and exploring the Pyrenees, I have gradually discovered, under the tutelage of biographer Elizabeth Frank, the art and the craft of biography. My storytelling mode, which has emerged from the dialogic interplay between my subject as a member of the Resistance and his subsequent career as a Professor of languages and literature, seeks to deviate from the biographical cannibalism that not only reproduces works on well-trodden lives but also pastiches the form of previous biographers

Enforcement of Corporate and Securities Laws in India: The Arrival of the Class Action?

Chapter from Enforcement of Corporate and Securities Law: China and the World. Howson, N.C. and Huang, R.H., eds. Corporate governance in Asia has garnered a great deal of recent scholarly attention.1 One topic that permeates discussions across countries is the enforcement of corporate and securities laws – with some countries relying primarily on public enforcement (i.e. enforcement by government) while others rely on some combination of public and private enforcement (i.e. enforcement by private shareholders). Further, understanding how enforcement is operationalised and its concomitant strengths and weaknesses enables us to better appreciate the actual corporate governance situation in many countries. In light of this, the enforcement of corporate and securities laws in India is examined in this chapter with special attention paid to the recent reforms that allow for class actions, for the first time, under Section 245 of the Companies Act 2013 of India. To explore this issue in greater depth, this chapter examines the likely value of private enforcement against the background of India’s ownership structure aand institutional context. This involves laying out what the pre-existing methods of enforcement are and how, if at all, the class action provision builds on their edifice. It also involves a general assessment of how successful this incarnation of the class action is likely to be in the Indian corporate governance space. The overall conclusion is that class actions are likely to be of limited value because of: (1) the glacial speed of the Indian courts, (2) the lack of contingency fees, (3) the limited availability of monetary remedies under the class action provision, and (4) the interaction between ownership structure in India – virtually all firms are controlled – and the absence of fiduciary duties owed by controllers to minority shareholders. The last point suggests that the class action in India is a procedural device that is only weakly tethered to an underlying duty