Decentralized planning for the Ganga Basin. Decomposition by political units

This book offers a qualified defense of a territorial states system. It argues that three core values—occupancy, basic justice, and collective self-determination—are served by an international system made up of self-governing, spatially defined political units. The defense is qualified because the book does not actually justify all of the sovereignty rights states currently claim and that are recognized in international law. Instead, the book proposes important changes to states’ sovereign prerogatives, particularly with respect to internal autonomy for political minorities, immigration, and natural resources. Part I of the book argues for a right of occupancy, holding that a legitimate function of the international system is to specify and protect people’s preinstitutional claims to specific geographical places. Part II turns to the question of how a state might acquire legitimate jurisdiction over a population of occupants. It argues that the state will have a right to rule a population and its territory if it satisfies conditions of basic justice and facilitates its people’s collective self-determination. Finally, Parts III and IV of this book argue that the exclusionary sovereignty rights to control over borders and natural resources that can plausibly be justified on the basis of the three core values are more limited than has traditionally been thought.

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The Danger of Analogical Myths: Explaining the Power and Consequences of the Sykes-Picot Delusion

AJIL Unbound ◽

10.1017/s2398772300002944 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 110 ◽

pp. 132-136 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Toby Dodge

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Middle East ◽

The United States ◽

Historical Background ◽

Minor Role ◽

Historical Significance ◽

Historical Analogy ◽

History Of ◽

Political Units ◽

Postcolonial States

Even before its hundredth year anniversary on 16 May 2016, the Sykes-Picot agreement had become a widely cited historical analogy both in the region itself and in Europe and the United States. In the Middle East, it is frequently deployed as an infamous example of European imperial betrayal and Western attempts more generally to keep the region divided, in conflict, and easy to dominate. In Europe and the United States, however, its role as a historical analogy is more complex—a shorthand for understanding the Middle East as irrevocably divided into mutually hostile sects and clans, destined to be mired in conflict until another external intervention imposes a new, more authentic, set of political units on the region to replace the postcolonial states left in the wake of WWI. What is notable about both these uses of the Sykes-Picot agreement is that they fundamentally misread, and thus overstate, its historical significance. The agreement reached by the British diplomat Mark Sykes and his French counterpart, François Georges-Picot, in May 1916, quickly became irrelevant as the realities on the ground in the Middle East, U.S. intervention into the war, a resurgent Turkey and the comparative weakness of the French and British states transformed international relations at the end of the First World War. Against this historical background, explaining the contemporary power of the narrative surrounding the use of the Sykes-Picot agreement becomes more intellectually interesting than its minor role in the history of European imperial interventions in the Middle East.

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Application of multi-element relationships in stream sediments to mineral exploration: a case study of Walawe Ganga Basin, Sri Lanka

Applied Geochemistry ◽

10.1016/s0883-2927(00)00038-x ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 16 (3) ◽

pp. 339-350 ◽

Cited By ~ 39

Author(s):

Rohana Chandrajith ◽

C.B Dissanayake ◽

H.J Tobschall

Keyword(s):

Sri Lanka ◽

Mineral Exploration ◽

Stream Sediments ◽

Ganga Basin

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Setting up a new CZO in the Ganga basin: instrumentation, stakeholder engagement and preliminary observations

10.1002/essoar.bfe245c93cb55808.b3f3df49a9514dcb.1 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Surya Gupta ◽

Shivam Tripathi ◽

Rajiv Sinha ◽

Sri Harsha Karumanchi ◽

Debajyoti Paul ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Stakeholder Engagement ◽

Ganga Basin

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Political Matrix and Political Representation: Prolegomenon to a New Departure from an Old Problem

American Political Science Review ◽

10.1017/s000305540026231x ◽

1969 ◽

Vol 63 (2) ◽

pp. 427-441 ◽

Cited By ~ 20

Author(s):

Kenneth Prewitt ◽

Heinz Eulau

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Empirical Research ◽

Political Representation ◽

Scientific Work ◽

The Other ◽

Past Century ◽

City Councils ◽

Political Units ◽

The One ◽

Special District

Scholars interested in theorizing about political representation in terms relevant to democratic governance in mid-twentieth century America find themselves in a quandary. We are surrounded by functioning representative institutions, or at least by institutions formally described as representative. Individuals who presumably “represent” other citizens govern some 90 thousand different political units—they sit on school and special district boards, on township and city councils, on county directorates, on state and national assemblies, and so forth. But the flourishing activity of representation has not yet been matched by a sustained effort to explain what makes the representational process tick.Despite the proliferation of representative governments over the past century,theoryabout representation has not moved much beyond the eighteenth-century formulation of Edmund Burke. Certainly most empirical research has been cast in the Burkean vocabulary. But in order to think in novel ways about representative government in the twentieth-century, we may have to admit that present conceptions guiding empirical research are obsolete. This in turn means that the spell of Burke's vocabulary over scientific work on representation must be broken.To look afresh at representation, it is necessary to be sensitive to the unresolved tension between the two main currents of contemporary thinking about representational relationships. On the one hand, representation is treated as a relationship between any one individual, the represented, and another individual, the representative—aninter-individualrelationship. On the other hand, representatives are treated as a group, brought together in the assembly, to represent the interest of the community as a whole—aninter-grouprelationship. Most theoretical formulations since Burke are cast in one or the other of these terms.

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The Anomalous Ixil-Bypassed by the Postclassic?

American Antiquity ◽

10.2307/279043 ◽

1976 ◽

Vol 41 (1) ◽

pp. 74-80 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Benjamin N. Colby

Keyword(s):

Belief System ◽

Classic Maya ◽

Religious Change ◽

Archaeological Evidence ◽

Ancestor Worship ◽

Animal Companion ◽

Political Units ◽

New Religion

The Ixil differ from other Mesoamerican societies in their extensive ancestor worship and their absence of a belief in animal companion spirits. The historical and archaeological evidence shows Ixil continuity with the lowland Classic Maya with comparatively little change during the Postclassic. The conclusion is tentatively drawn that the lowland Classic Maya were ancestor worshipers, and that the predominant characteristic of those Postclassic changes outside IxU country which led to the demise of Classic ceremonial centers in some areas and the later fragmentation of political units in others, derived from a basic religious change which was reflected in a change in the use of the 260-day ritual calendar. The new religion opposed ancestor worship and introduced a depersonalized soul belief system.

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Water–food–energy nexus with changing agricultural scenarios in India during recent decades

Hydrology and Earth System Sciences ◽

10.5194/hess-21-3041-2017 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 21 (6) ◽

pp. 3041-3060 ◽

Cited By ~ 18

Author(s):

Beas Barik ◽

Subimal Ghosh ◽

A. Saheer Sahana ◽

Amey Pathak ◽

Muddu Sekhar

Keyword(s):

Food Production ◽

Monsoon Rainfall ◽

Central India ◽

Recent Decade ◽

High Energy ◽

Western India ◽

Groundwater Storage ◽

Ganga Basin ◽

Strong Negative Correlation ◽

Food Energy

Abstract. Meeting the growing water and food demands in a densely populated country like India is a major challenge. It requires an extensive investigation into the changing patterns of the checks and balances behind the maintenance of food security at the expense of depleting groundwater, along with high energy consumption. Here we present a comprehensive set of analyses which assess the present status of the water–food–energy nexus in India, along with its changing pattern, in the last few decades. We find that with the growth of population and consequent increase in the food demands, the food production has also increased, and this has been made possible with the intensification of irrigation. However, during the recent decade (after 1996), the increase in food production has not been sufficient to meet its growing demands, precipitating a decline in the per-capita food availability. We also find a statistically significant declining trend of groundwater storage in India during the last decade, as derived from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite datasets. Regional studies reveal contrasting trends between northern and western–central India. North-western India and the middle Ganga basin show a decrease in the groundwater storage as opposed to an increasing storage over western–central India. Comparison with well data reveals that the highest consistency of GRACE-derived storage data with available well measurements is in the middle Ganga basin. After analysing the data for the last 2 decades, we further showcase that, after a drought, the groundwater storage drops but is unable to recover to its original condition even after good monsoon years. The groundwater storage reveals a very strong negative correlation with the electricity consumption for agricultural usage, which may also be considered as a proxy for groundwater pumped for irrigation in a region. The electricity usage for agricultural purposes has an increasing trend and, interestingly, it does not have any correlation with the monsoon rainfall as computed with the original or de-trended variables. This reveals an important finding that the irrigation has been intensified irrespective of rainfall. This also resulted in a decreasing correlation between the food production and monsoon rainfall, revealing the increasing dependency of agricultural activities on irrigation. We conclude that irrigation has now become essential for agriculture to meet the food demand; however, it should be judiciously regulated and controlled, based on the water availability from monsoon rainfall, specifically after the drought years, as it is essential to recover from the deficits suffered previously.

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