Satu Kahkonen and Anthony Lanyi. Institutions, Incentives, and Economic Reforms in India. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 2000. 516 pages. Hardback. Price Indian Rs 595.00.

2001 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-74
Author(s):  
Attiya Y. Javed

The economic reform process began in India in 1991. However, the reform agenda is still far from its goals as is evident from low per capita income. Thus, this reform effort has not produced the desired outcome of a faster rate of economic and social development in a meaningful way. It is the premise of this volume that to transform the social and economic landscape, the proposed reforms should be broadbased and multi-pronged which take into account incentives for the stockholders in both the private and public sectors. The institutions are the rules that govern economy and include the fundamental legal, political, and social rules that establish the basis for production, exchange, and distribution. The two editors of this volume have received contributions from a number of authors and the wide range of papers are grouped under five main headings: political economy of reforms, reforming public goods delivery, reform issues in agriculture and rural governance, and reforming the district and financial sector.

2010 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-158
Author(s):  
Rashid Amjad

This volume comprises a compilation of essays written by distinguished Indian economists, and international economists and observers on India, in honour of Montek Singh Ahluwalia, an eminent economist and currently Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission, widely recognised as one of the main architects and drivers of the economic reform process. In a very well-written Introduction to this festschrift, capturing the essence of the contributions to the volume and weaving them into an excellent overview, Shankar Acharya and Rakesh Mohan state, “Indeed the story of India’s economic policies over the past three decades could easily be woven around Montek’s career as the pre-eminent government economist through most of this time”. This role is earlier acknowledged in the foreword to the volume by the current Indian Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, the initiator of the overall reform process as Finance Minister from 1991-96, when Montek (as he is popularly known) worked under him in important positions. This recognition also finds strong support amongst the authors, who were close associates of Montek in policy-making, as they recount the role he played in both shaping and driving the economic policy reform agenda. How a small but well-knit team of economists, most of whom had earlier worked in the World Bank or the IMF, could actually achieve this in a country as large and complex as India would baffle any observer. While the book provides no explicit answer, the reform process appears to have initially found favour in response to the economic crisis in 1991. The process then gained momentum as the reforms showed measurable success, and this helped win over the trust and confidence of the political ruling élite.


Author(s):  
Anastasios Koutoulas ◽  
Joel P. Franklin ◽  
Jonas Eliasson

Off-peak-hour delivery programs are a promising but challenging concept for promoting sustainable urban logistics. Stockholm, Sweden, initialized a nighttime freight deliveries program in 2014, aimed at a more efficient and environmentally friendly delivery system within the central area of the city. The policy of shifting freight deliveries from daytime to off-peak hours generates a wide range of effects that can be analyzed from several angles. This paper identifies the social costs and benefits, how these are distributed between stakeholders, and their effects on the everyday life and operations of all interested parties. According to information and data collected through in-depth interviews with private and public stakeholders, the social benefits mainly consist of increased efficiency and productivity for carriers and receivers, reduced transport costs, fuel cost savings, and reduced congestion and accidents when trucks are moved from peak to off-peak hours. Social costs may include increased noise levels and noise disturbances; additional staff requirements, equipment, and wage costs; and higher risks in handling goods deliveries at nighttime, especially in the case of unassisted deliveries. This paper concludes by discussing the lessons learned from the trial, challenges and opportunities that arose during implementation, and the implications for enhancement of off-peak-hour delivery in Stockholm and other cities.


2020 ◽  
Vol 338 ◽  
pp. 265-275
Author(s):  
Daniel Zimmermann

In July 2019 the new president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, presented her guidelines for the period of presidency 2019-2024. While most proposals perpetuate the current reform agenda, the focus on the social dimension of the single market is remarkable. Von der Leyen has not only announced the full implementation of the European Pillar on Social Rights, but also highlighted new investment in digital competences seen as a key to competitiveness and innovation of the European economy. This paper will discuss whether the dynamics of the digital single market could lead to a new impetus on EU social policy and on European funding of training programmes. Therefore, an overview of significant funding programmes promoting digital skills is given.


1993 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 226-228
Author(s):  
Zakir Hussain

The book; under review provides a valuable account of the issues and factors in managing the irrigation system, and presents a lucid and thorough discussion on the performance of the irrigation bureaucracies. It comprises two parts: the first outlines the factors affecting irrigation performance under a wide range of topics in the first five chapters. In Chapter One, the authors have attempted to assess the performance of the irrigation bureaucracies, conceptualise irrigation management issues, and build an empirical base for analysis while drawing upon the experience of ten country cases in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. The Second Chapter focuses on the variations in the management structures identified and the types of irrigation systems; and it defines the variables of the management structures. The activities and objectives of irrigation management are discussed in Chapter Three. The objectives include: greater production and productivity of irrigation projects; improved water distribution; reduction in conflicts; greater resource mobilisation and a sustained system performance. The authors also highlight the performance criterion in this chapter. They identify about six contextual factors which affect the objectives and the performance of irrigation, which are discussed in detail in Chapter Four. In Chapter Five, some organisational variables, which would lead to improvements in irrigation, are examined.


Author(s):  
Nisha P R

Jumbos and Jumping Devils is an original and pioneering exploration of not only the social history of the subcontinent but also of performance and popular culture. The domain of analysis is entirely novel and opens up a bolder approach of laying a new field of historical enquiry of South Asia. Trawling through an extraordinary set of sources such as colonial and post-colonial records, newspaper reports, unpublished autobiographies, private papers, photographs, and oral interviews, the author brings out a fascinating account of the transnational landscape of physical cultures, human and animal performers, and the circus industry. This book should be of interest to a wide range of readers from history, sociology, anthropology, and cultural studies to analysts of history of performance and sports in the subcontinent.


Author(s):  
Augusta Rohrbach

This chapter looks to the future of teaching realism with Web 2.0 technologies. After discussing the ways in which technologies of data modeling can reveal patterns for interpretation, the chapter examines how these technologies can update the social-reform agenda of realism as exemplified by William Dean Howells’s attempted intervention into the Haymarket Riot in 1886. The advent of Web 2.0 techologies offers students a way to harness the genre’s sense of social purpose to knowledge-sharing mechanisms to create a vehicle for political consciousness-raising in real time. The result is “Realism 2.0,” a realism that enables readers to engage in their world, which is less text-centric than it was for previous writers.


Südosteuropa ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 408-431
Author(s):  
Irena Petrović ◽  
Marija Radoman

AbstractThe authors analyze the changes in value patterns—patriarchy, authoritarianism and nationalism—in Serbia in the context of the social changes that have marked the postsocialist transformation period. They focus on the extent and intensity of two sub-patterns within each of these three basic value patterns: private and public patriarchy, general and specific authoritarianism, organic (natural) and ethnic nationalism. The conclusions about changes in these value patterns are drawn on the basis of three empirical studies conducted in 2003, 2012, and 2018. They show the prevalence of private patriarchy, general authoritarianism, and organic (natural) nationalism over their counterparts. Private patriarchy has weakened, which is largely to be explained by the significant structural changes in Serbia. On the other hand, support of general authoritarianism and organic (natural) nationalism has been on the rise, which clearly mirrors the unfavorable economic and political situation in the country.


2021 ◽  
pp. 001946462110203
Author(s):  
Dikshit Sarma Bhagabati ◽  
Prithvi Sinha ◽  
Sneha Garg

This essay aims to understand the role of religion in the social work of Pandita Ramabai (1858-1922). By focusing on a twenty-five-year period commencing with her conversion to Christianity in 1883, we argue that religion constructed a political framework for her work in Sharada Sadan and Mukti Mission. There is a lacuna in the conventional scholarship that underplays the nuances of religion in Ramabai’s reform efforts, which we try to fill by conceptualising faith and religiosity as two distinct signifiers of her private and public religious presentations respectively. Drawing on her published letters, the annual reports of the Ramabai Association in America, and a number of evangelical periodicals published during her lifetime, we analyse how she explored Christianity not just as a personal faith but also as a conduit for funds. The conversion enabled her access to American supporters, concomitantly consolidating their claim over her social work. Her peculiar religious identity—a conflation of Hinduism and Christianity—provoked strong protests from the Hindu orthodoxy while leading to a fall-out with the evangelists at the same time. Ramabai shaped the public portrayal of her religiosity to maximise support from American patrons, the colonial state, and liberal Indians, resisting the orthodoxy’s oppositions with these material exploits. Rather than surrendering to patriarchal cynicism, she capitalised on the socio-political volatilities of colonial India to further the nascent women’s movement.


1999 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 224-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
Khaled Fahmy

AbstractThe reform of the Egyptian criminal justice system in the nineteenth century traditionally has been viewed as forming an important step in the establishment of a liberal and just rule of law. By studying how forensic medicine was introduced into nineteenth-century Egypt, I argue that the need to exercise better control over the population and to monitor crime lay behind the reform process as much as liberal ideas borrowed from Europe did. Drawing on a wide range of archival material, both legal and medical, I analyze the role played by autopsy in the criminal system and argue that the practice of autopsy was viewed differentially by 'ulamā', by Arabic-speaking, French-educated doctors and by the mostly illiterate masses. And contrary to the common wisdom, I conclude that the "modernization" of the Egyptian legal system was intended not to displace the sharīa but to support it.


2008 ◽  
Vol 52 (5) ◽  
pp. 29-35
Author(s):  
Theodor Strohm

Abstract This article shows clearly the experiences of the author concerning the social restart of Germany after 1945. The ZEE was and is a place for reflection and reorientation. Personal encounters with personalities of the »first hour« constitute the opening. This is followed by five central situations which were witnessed and devised by the author. They had a direct effect on the ZEE. 1. The participation in the senior staff of Willy Brandt had an effect on the contemplation of an »ethos of inner reforms«. 2. The reform process in South Africa with its »peaceful revolution« brought the author there, having intense working relations to the leaders of the »black majority«. These experiences found their way into the ZEE. 3. As chairman of the chamber for social order of the EKD (Evangelical Church in Germany) the author worked nearly 20 years intensively on memoranda concerning the reorientation of the welfare state in many dimensions. The ZEE was a central place of scientific debate. 4. and 5. As head of the Diakoniewissenschaftliches Institut (I. for Christian social work) of the University of Heidelberg basic questions of deaconry theologically and at the same time world wide aspects were at the centre of interest also at the ZEE


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