[Review of] Crawford Young, ed. The Rising Tide of Cultural Pluralism: The Nation-State at Bay. And, United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. The State of the World\u27s Refugees: The Challenge of Protection

Interest in ethnic conflict and identity politics has led to an increase in the number of works attempting to understand this phenomena. The two works examined here follow in the same tradition

[Review of] Leonore Loeb Adler, ed. Women in Cross-Cultural Perspective

This is a collection of essays by women writers from several countries including the United States, Great Britain, the former Soviet Union, India, China, Nigeria, and Thailand. These writers examine the interaction of biology, social role, and culture in shaping women\u27s roles in different societies. They attempt to provide a broad overview of the conditions and the problems faced by women in their respective societies

Sustainable Practices in Watershed Management: Global Experiences

Watershed management is considered by scholars as well as practitioners across the world as the most appropriate approach to ensure the preservation, conservation and sustainability of all land based resources and for improving the living conditions of the people in uplands and low lands. More over watershed management technologies have proven to be effective for mitigating erosion on sloping land, stabilizing landscapes, providing clean water, stabilizing and improving agrarian production systems on small and medium scale. The degree of success of watershed management interventions primarily depends on the will of the people and the scale of activities involved in it. A watershed can be defined as a catchment or drainage basin. It refers to an area which has a ridgeline on three sides and whose surplus run-off is drained from a drainage point. Watershed management is the art and technique of managing watershed resources in way that maximum benefits can be derived from them without affecting the ecological sustainability. Watershed management requires an integration of all scientific knowledge from many disciplines and a combination of technologies, strategies and techniques with the development and use of available tools. Watershed management is a holistic concept, which tries to integrate several components like soil and water conservation, forestry development, agriculture and livestock. It tries to bring about the best possible balance in the environment between natural resources on the one side, and human and other living beings on the other. Recently, participation of people has become a core component of watershed management programmes. As FAO [Food and Agricultural Organization] rightly remarked, “The pendulum appears to be swinging in support of empowerment of people with regard to conservation of natural resources. Application of the integrated participatory approach has created, in some instances, social environments where varied cultures are working together to manage their natural resources on watersheds” . Thus, the process of stakeholder centric watershed management programme has provided a stimulus for the recovery and valuation of traditional practices resulting in a mix of ancient and current natural resource management practices. Against this context the present paper attempts to present certain specific models of sustainable watershed management successfully implemented in different parts of the world. The objective of the paper is to explore the methods, tools and strategies involved in these sustainable models.watershed Management, Water, Natural Resource

Legal and Policy Framework for Promoting Equitable Access to Documentary Heritage

The National Mission for Manuscripts of India, in association with UNESCO, completed a research study to assist in the development of legal and policy framework and protocols for promoting equitable access to documentary heritage, relevant to India and other South Asian countries. This study report seeks to accurately identify and critically examine the legal and policy framework for promoting equitable access to our documentary heritage. The National Mission for Manuscripts is the most important institution in India creating bibliographic databases of manuscripts and engaged in the conservation and preservation of valuable manuscripts. This report engages with the legal and policy framework which envelops the lifecycle of the Mission’s work: the process of access to manuscripts, digitization of manuscripts and the creation of databases. By critically examining the legal rules in the practical context of the Mission’s work, the research team has put together the first such review of any such initiative in the protection of traditional knowledge in the country. The conclusions of the report are in the form of draft legal agreements and policy recommendations located in the discussion on various parts of the Mission’s work. While this report does not set out to be the final word on these significant policy initiatives, the report definitely makes significant progress in the policy debate and legal literature in this field. This report illustrates working patterns of the Mission within the legal and policy framework in the Country. This report will be a valuable sourcebook for understanding South Asian legal and policy framework for accessing documentary heritage collections. The draft legal agreements and policy recommendations, presented in this report, will also be valuable intervention tools for South Asian countries that share similar legal and policy framework within the sub-region

Is composite noise necessary for sudden death of entanglement?

The finite time disentanglement or entanglement sudden death, when only one part of the composite system is subjected to a single noise, is examined. While it is shown that entanglement sudden death can occur when a part of the entangled mixed state is subjected to either amplitude noise or phase noise, local action of either of them does not cause entanglement sudden death in pure entangled states. In contrast, depolarizing noise is shown to have an abilitiy to cause sudden death of entanglement even in pure entangled states, when only one part of the state is exposed to it. The result is illustrated through the action of different noisy environments individually on a single qubit of the so-called X class of states and an arbitrary two-qubit pure state.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures; Version 3: Accepted for publication in the Results in Physics: Comments welcom

Toddlers Acquire Verb Transitivity in Non-Social Overhearing Contexts

Acquiring word meanings is typically described as a social process involving live interaction and joint attention to the referent. However, the ability to learn meanings in non- social contexts could be useful in many overhearing situations, in which speech may not be child-directed, and learners may lack discourse and/or situational context. Is social context required to trigger toddlers’ abilities to map verbs to meaning? We address this question in the following experiment. Our results indicate that 2-year-olds can acquire a novel verb’s meaning even in socially impoverished contexts. This finding has implications for treatment of children with Autism Spectrum Disorders.American Philosophical Society (Franklin Research Grant

Right To Information Act and NREGA: Reflections on Rajasthan

This article explores the role of Right to Information Act in effective Implementation of NREGA through checking corruption. For substantiating the core argument, the paper examines the success story of NREGA in Rajasthan.Section one of the article explains RTI, its significance in giving transparency and accountability in NREGA , the procedures to be followed in using RTI, need for mass participation and role of civil society. Section two discusses the pioneering role of Aruna Roy and MKSS in Rajasthan for making RTI and NREGA a reality. Compare to other states, NREGA experiment was successful in Rajasthan mainly because of the mass awareness campaigns, muster roll verification, periodic social audit, active role of PRIs etc. The paper also highlight the achievements of NREGA in Rajasthan like checking migration to urban areas, Natural Resource Management include water conservation and harvesting structure, drought proofing, micro irrigation works, provision of irrigation facilities to land owned by SC/ST, rural connectivity, renovation of water bodies, and pasture land developmentNREGA; India;Rajasthan;Right to Information

Ground Water Management: Need for Sustainable Approach

Groundwater constitutes about 89% of the total fresh water resources in the planet. But in recent years, due to over exploitation of ground water and erratic nature of monsoon, there has been depletion of ground water across the world. Depletion of ground water has reached to the extent that it is virtually impossible to get the water table back. Even though there is a possibility of recharge of water from the other areas, the process is very slow and may take one year to replenish one meter. In view of this management of ground water has become one of the most significant issues in recent times. Added to it, there are also environmental problems such as aqua for mining, salt water intrusion, stream base flow reduction etc. For several reasons the efficient management of ground water resources through market mechanism has become difficult. Against this context the present article attempts to analyze the need for sustainable ground water management in India. The article also briefly discusses the concept of sustainable ground water management, factors affecting ground water availability, different approaches towards developing and using available ground water with out adversely affecting the hydro-geological balance. Further, the paper highlights strategies for sustainable groundwater management, including development of aquifers, rainwater harvesting and artificial recharge methods. The article offers some relevant policy recommendations for sustainable groundwater management in India.Ground water, India, Water

Grass root democracy and empowerment of people:evaluation of Panchayati Raj in India

As Gandhi often pointed out, India lives in villages and unless village life can be revitalized the nation as a whole can hardly come alive. When India became independent in 1947, perhaps one-third of the villages of India had traditional Panchayats and many of them were far from flourishing conditions. The congress government has made a determined effort to promote the creation of Panchayats and to make them effective units of local self- government. Article 40 of the Constitution clearly declares ‘The state shall take necessary actions to organize village Panchayats and to endow them with such powers and authority as may be necessary to enable them to function as units of self-government’. The aim was to foster democratic participation, to involve villagers in the development of the community and to reduce the burden of higher level of administration. Though various steps were taken by successive governments to revitalize the system, Gramswaraj through village Panchayats remained as a distant dream till 1992. Bureaucratic apathy, indifference of the people, lack of political will, lack of uniformity etc were the main factors behind the failure of the system. Realizing the potential of the PR system, Rajeev Gandhi government initiated a process of Constitutional amendment to give sanctity and uniformity to Panchayati Raj system so that it can be immune from political interference and bureaucratic indifference. Rajeev Gandhi introduced 64th Constitutional amendment Bill in 1989. But the Bill did not materialize because of the fall of his Ministry. Finally the P.V.Narasimha Rao government introduced Panchayati Raj system in India through the 73rd Constitutional Amendment in 1992. The article mainly focuses on the effectiveness of 73rd Constitutional amendment in securing empowerment of people. The article tries to capture the efforts of various states to implement panchayati Raj system and makes a comparative study of performance of states in terms of people’s participation, capacity building, de-bureaucratization and decentralization of powers. The salient features of 73rd Amendment Act including reservation of seats, provision for separate election commission and finance commission, gramsabha, taxes, periodic elections etc are discussed. More over it examines the initiatives of state governments towards democratic decentralization and highlights special programmes initiated by Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh etc to make the system effective. The article critically evaluates the effectiveness of PRIs as a system of governance for increased people’s participation empowerment and social change. Here attempt is made to incorporate the results of impact assessment studies conducted by World Bank. Concluding section highlights the need for revitalizing the system through integrating NREGP [National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme] and NRHM [National Rural Health Mission] etcDemocracy; decentralization; India; Panchayati Raj