Joint Sem­i­nar on South Asian Pol­i­tics co-sponsored by the Brown-India Initiative at the Wat­son Insti­tute at Brown Uni­ver­sity, the Weath­er­head Cen­ter for Inter­na­tional Affairs and South Asia Institute at Har­vard Uni­ver­sity, and the MIT Cen­ter for Inter­na­tional Studies

The eco­nomic and strate­gic rel­e­vance of South Asia has enor­mously grown in recent years. While India’s eco­nomic story and South Asia’s strug­gle with ter­ror are often noted, there is a great deal more to the region, which is of intel­lec­tual relevance.

Con­sider some of the “big” ques­tions of pol­i­tics, polit­i­cal econ­omy and secu­rity, on which the South Asian region in gen­eral, and India in par­tic­u­lar, offer engag­ing perspectives:

(1) His­tor­i­cally speak­ing, uni­ver­sal fran­chise democ­racy came to the West after the indus­trial rev­o­lu­tion had been com­pleted. In India, uni­ver­sal fran­chise was born at a time when the coun­try was over­whelm­ingly agrar­ian and man­u­fac­tur­ing con­sti­tuted a mere 2–3% of GDP. What can we sur­mise about the simul­ta­ne­ous pur­suit of eco­nomic trans­for­ma­tion and demo­c­ra­tic deep­en­ing from India’s expe­ri­ence? India-China com­par­isons are directly rel­e­vant here. More gen­er­ally, as Africa and other Asian coun­tries con­tem­plate eco­nomic future, is democ­racy to be viewed as a polit­i­cal frame­work within which eco­nomic devel­op­ment ought to be pursued?

(2) His­tor­i­cally, man­u­fac­tur­ing has always led an eco­nomic rev­o­lu­tion. It is as true of Europe and the US as of East Asia. In India, high-tech ser­vices, pri­mar­ily export-based, have led the boom, and are now wrestling with an inter­na­tional eco­nomic down­turn. What are the larger lessons of a services-led eco­nomic transformation?

(3) India’s democ­racy has func­tioned amidst one of the most hier­ar­chi­cal social orders the world has wit­nessed: viz., caste sys­tem. Has the equal­ity prin­ci­ple of democ­racy under­mined the caste sys­tem, or have caste inequal­i­ties changed the script of Indian democ­racy, forc­ing it to dif­fer sig­nif­i­cantly from the West­ern demo­c­ra­tic experience?

(4) Seri­ous regional dis­par­i­ties mark vir­tu­ally the entire region. In India, com­pared to the north­ern and east­ern states, the south­ern and west­ern states have not only boomed eco­nom­i­cally, but their human devel­op­ment per­for­mance has been markedly supe­rior. In Pak­istan, Pun­jab con­tin­ues to be far ahead of the other regions. How does one explain such vari­a­tions? Are there larger social sci­ence the­o­ries at stake? Can newer the­o­ries be developed?

(5) The shadow of secu­rity over pol­i­tics and eco­nom­ics is now dark and deep. Why has ter­ror­ism taken such roots in Pak­istan? What is it about the polity or soci­ety of Pak­istan that has pro­vided a home to ter­ror­ism? Given how ter­ror­ism works, can it spread to India in a sig­nif­i­cant way?

(6) The secu­rity sit­u­a­tion in Afghanistan is now the cen­ter of inter­na­tional atten­tion. How does one under­stand the secu­rity prob­lems of Afghanistan? Why is estab­lish­ing order such a mon­u­men­tal task in Afghanistan and also a tall task in Pakistan?

(7) Secu­rity has a so-called softer side. Human rights of some minor­ity groups have been com­pro­mised for the sake of “nation-building” all over the region. This is true even in India, which has func­tioned as a democ­racy for over six decades. With far greater inten­sity, the same issues crop up in Sri Lanka, once the most vig­or­ous democ­racy in the devel­op­ing world. Why have South Asian democ­ra­cies found it hard to develop more robust human rights regimes? Is it a South Asian prob­lem, or a more generic prob­lem of democ­ra­cies faced with insurgencies?

(8) In a related vein, rag­ing debates over the rule of law have taken place all over South Asia. In India, the debate has also cov­ered the role of pub­lic inter­est lit­i­ga­tion. Why have South Asian soci­eties strug­gled so hard to estab­lish a reli­able legal regime? Is it sim­ply a func­tion of low incomes and unsta­ble secu­rity envi­ron­ments? Or, do cul­tural and soci­o­log­i­cal norms seri­ously clash with the rule of law? Do we have the­o­ries that tell us how rule of law got insti­tu­tion­al­ized in the richer coun­tries? Can those the­o­ries be used for under­stand­ing South Asia?

(9) South Asia as a region has been one of the orig­i­nal homes of the NGO move­ment in the world. Some of the world’s most respected non-governmental orga­ni­za­tions have been work­ing in Bangladesh, Pak­istan, Sri Lanka and India. What can we learn about what kinds of NGOs suc­ceed and what types fail? Is the learn­ing region-specific, or is it portable?

(10) India’s demo­c­ra­tic longevity has coex­isted with sub­stan­tial party frac­tion­al­iza­tion. Over the last twenty years, Delhi has been ruled by coali­tion gov­ern­ments. Such coali­tions have nor­mally marked poli­ties that have pro­por­tional rep­re­sen­ta­tion, not first-past-the-post sys­tems, which tend to pro­duce fewer par­ties in power. How do we under­stand India’s party fractionalization?

The list above is not exhaus­tive, but these are some of the issues that this annual sem­i­nar series, con­cen­trat­ing on con­tem­po­rary South Asian pol­i­tics and polit­i­cal econ­omy, will inves­ti­gate. Some ses­sions of the sem­i­nar will be entirely aca­d­e­mic, but other ses­sions will con­cep­tu­al­ized as a Haber­masian pub­lic sphere, where aca­d­e­mics alone do not monop­o­lize dis­course. Rather, pub­lic fig­ures — from pol­i­tics, busi­ness, jour­nal­ism, secu­rity and NGO sec­tor– and aca­d­e­mic researchers and stu­dents will engage in a sus­tained con­ver­sa­tion. Knowl­edge, inevitably, has many facets.

This sem­i­nar is a joint effort of, and is funded by, four insti­tu­tions of the Boston-Providence area: the Brown-India Initiative at the Wat­son Insti­tute at Brown, the Weath­er­head Cen­ter for Inter­na­tional Affairs and the South Asia Institute both at Har­vard and the MIT Cen­ter for Inter­na­tional Stud­ies. It will be co-directed by fac­ulty work­ing on dif­fer­ent aspects of South Asian pol­i­tics and polit­i­cal econ­omy in each of these uni­ver­si­ties. The loca­tion of the sem­i­nar will alter­nate between Brown, Har­vard and MIT. A detailed pro­gram for the series can be found below.

Orga­niz­ing committee:

Chair:
Ashutosh Varsh­ney (Brown)

Co-Directors:
Patrick Heller (Brown)
Pre­rna Singh (Brown)
Akshay Mangla (Har­vard)
Vipin Narang (MIT)

Sem­i­nar series:
Fall 2015
Spring 2015
Fall 2014
Spring 2014
Fall 2013
Spring 2012
Fall 2011
Spring 2011
Fall 2010
Spring 2010
Fall 2009

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  1. Jennifer Bussell (University of Texas, Austin) Explaining Corruption: Electoral Competition and Varieties of Rent-Seeking in India
    Mar 2, Friday, 2:00 - 4:00 PM, Watson Institute, Brown
    • bussellHomepage

      This talk will be given at the Watson Institute at Brown University

      111 Thayer Street Providence, RI
      Joukowsky Forum, Room 155

      Click here for a map and directions.

      Dr. Jennifer Bussell is an Assistant Professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin. Her research focuses on the comparative politics and political economy of development and governance, with an emphasis on understanding the effects of formal and informal institutions—such as federalism, coalition politics, and corruption—on policy outcomes. She has conducted detailed research on information technology and governance, based on fieldwork in 17 Indian states, as well as in South Africa and Brazil. Her book, Corruption and Reform in India: Public Services in the Digital Age, is forthcoming from Cambridge University Press. Prior to joining the LBJ School, Dr. Bussell received her PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley and was a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Asian Democracy at the University of Louisville.

  2. Devesh Kapur & Lant Pritchett (University of Pennsylvania / Harvard University) Tentative title: Markets, Politics and Social Institutions: India’s Dalits in the post-economic liberalization era
    Apr 6, Friday, 2:00 - 4:00 PM, Weatherhead Center, Harvard
    • deveshlant-pritchettHomepage Kapur
      Homepage Pritchett

      This talk will be given at the Weatherhead Center at Harvard University

      CGIS Knafel Building
      1737 Cambridge St. Cambridge, MA
      Room K354

      Click here for a map and directions.

      Devesh Kapur is Director CASI and Madan Lal Sobti Associate Professor for the Study of Contemporary India. His research examines local-global linkages in political and economic change in developing countries, particularly India, focusing on the role of domestic and international institutions and international migration. He is the coauthor of The World Bank: Its First Half Century (with John Lewis and Richard Webb, Brookings); Give Us Your Best and Brightest: The Global Hunt for Talent and Its Impact on the Developing World (with John McHale, Center for Global Development) and Public Institutions in India: Performance and Design (coedited with Pratap Mehta, Oxford University Press). He has a B. Tech and M.S. in chemical engineering and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from Princeton University. He received the Joseph R. Levenson Teaching Prize, Harvard College, in 2005.

      Lant Pritchett is Professor of the Practice of International Development at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (as of July 1, 2007).

      In addition he works as a consultant to Google.org, is a non-resident fellow of the Center for Global Development, and is a senior fellow of BREAD. He is also co-editor of the Journal of Development Economics.

      He graduated from Brigham Young University in 1983 with a B.S. in Economics and in 1988 from MIT with a PhD in Economics.

      After finishing at MIT Lant joined the World Bank, where he held a number of positions in the Bank’s research complex between 1988 and 1998, including as an adviser to Lawrence Summers when he was Vice President 1991-1993. From 1998 to 2000 he worked in Indonesia. From 2000 to 2004 Lant was on leave from the World Bank as a Lecturer in Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. In 2004 he returned to the World Bank and moved to India where he worked until May 2007.

      He has been part of the team producing many World Bank reports, including: World Development Report 1994: Infrastructure for Development, Assessing Aid: What Works, What Doesn’t and Why (1998), Better Health Systems for Indias Poor: Findings, Analysis, and Options (2003), World Development Report 2004: Making Services Work for the Poor, Economic Growth in the 1990s: Learning from a Decade of Reforms (2005).

      In addition he has authored (alone or with one of his 22 co-authors) over 50 papers published in refereed journals, chapters in books, or as articles, as least some of which are sometimes cited. In addition to economics journals his work has appeared in specialized journals in demography, education, and health. In 2006 he published his first solo authored book Let Their People Come.

  3. Adam Ziegfeld (University of Oxford) Explaining the Presence and Absence of Regional Parties across Indian States
    Apr 20, Friday, 2:00 - 4:00 PM, Weatherhead Center, Harvard
    • ziegfield-Homepage

      This talk will be given at the Weatherhead Center at Harvard University

      CGIS Knafel Building
      1737 Cambridge St. Cambridge, MA
      Room K354

      Click here for a map and directions.

      Adam Ziegfeld is a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. He received a Ph.D. in political science in 2009 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and, before that, an A.B. from Dartmouth College. His research examines various aspects of electoral politics, especially in democracies where clientelism is pervasive. Adam’s current book project explores party system formation in India, with a particular focus on regional political parties. Other on-going research looks at corruption perceptions, dominant party systems, electoral rules, and party nomination strategies. Adam’s research has appeared in Comparative Politics and been supported by the British Academy, the National Security Education Program, Oxford’s John Fell OUP Research Fund, and MIT’s Center for International Studies.

  4. Srinath Raghavan (Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi) The Bangladesh Crisis of 1971: Revisiting its Causes and Course
    Apr 27, Friday, 2:00 - 4:00 PM, MIT Center for International Studies
    • SrinathRaghavan_0Homepage

      This talk will be given at the MIT Center for International Studies

      1 Amherst Street
      Cambridge, MA
      Lucian Pye Conference Room E40-496

      Click here and here for a map and directions.

      Srinath Raghavan is Senior Fellow at Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.

      He is also Lecturer in Defence Studies at King’s College London. Previously, he was Associate Fellow at National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore. He has been associated with King’s College’s e-learning programme, War in the Modern World, and was a Visiting Lecturer at Royal Air Force College, Cranwell. He took his MA and PhD in War Studies from King’s College London. Prior to joining academia, he spent six years as an infantry officer in the Indian army.

      Srinath’s research interests are in the international politics of South Asia, India’s foreign and defence policies since 1947, civil-military relations, Indian military history, and strategic theory. His book War and Peace in Modern India: A Strategic History of the Nehru Years was published in early 2010. He is now writing an international history of the India-Pakistan war of 1971 and the creation of Bangladesh.

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