International Relations and Governance Studies

Shiv Nadar University is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, research-focused, and student-centric University offering a full range of academic programs at the undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral level. With state-of-the-art infrastructure, the University comprises of academic wings, sophisticated labs, international standard sports facilities, amphitheaters, auditorium, conference rooms and smart classrooms. The University&rsquo;s goal is to become internationally recognized for the quality of its research and creative endeavors and their applicability to improving quality of life, generating new insights and expanding the boundaries of human knowledge creativity. Committed to excellence in teaching, research and service, the University aims to serve the higher education needs of India and the world beyond.

Shiv Nadar University

There is increasing demand for institutional reform in the agricultural sciences. This paper presents lessons from the content and directions in soil science research in India, to make a case for institutional reform in the agricultural sciences. It demonstrates how existing institutional and organizational contexts shape the research content of the soil sciences and its sub-disciplines. These contexts also shape the capacity of the soil sciences to understand and partner with other components of the wider natural resource management (NRM) innovation systems. The professional association has received little attention in the innovation systems literature, even within the nuanced, context specific and historically sensitive accounts of innovation. As a professional association, the Indian Society of Soil Sciences (ISSS) plays a limited role currently, with little engagement with the key professional and social issues that confront the soil sciences. The ISSS is presented here as a potential actor in the NRM innovation systems. The paper argues that with the involvement of the ISSS, the existing discipline-based, commodity oriented, linear and instrumentalist problem solving approach in the soil sciences can be reformed to a learning and partnership based innovation systems approach, enabling professional excellence, field level technology utilization, along with substantial policy and donor support. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

(SoHSS) School of Humanities and Social Sciences

World University root node

Research Policy

The soil sciences in India: Policy lessons for agricultural innovation

This paper locates impact assessment research within the disciplinary constructs of agricultural economics, the institutions (rules of the game) and organizations (structures governed by these rules/norms) of agricultural innovation. The paper analyses the disciplinary limitations in impact assessment research. In the hard science culture of agricultural research the social sciences, closer to the reality of complex technological contexts, are less prestigious. Agricultural economics, the disciplinary root of impact assessment, imposes a major constraint by making institutional contexts and variations intractable and analysed at best as disturbances. Sophisticated econometric methodologies substitute for information on institutions, systems components and relationships. The paper presents an analytical framework to distinguish between the institutional and organizational variables in the agricultural innovation system. The case study of institutional and organizational change in Indian agricultural research and extension is used to demonstrate the role of institutions in determining the impact of agricultural science and technology. Impact assessment research is institutionally conditioned to look for end point consequences of research, such as yield increase, cost reduction, or farm income. This body of knowledge ignores crucial requirements such as the institutional framework (hierarchy for instance) and actors that facilitate these end point impacts. Mainstream impact assessment literature is not concerned about the important relationships among these institutions and actors, or about the impact of knowledge on these institutions and organizations. In the quest for end point consequences, estimated often as rates of return to investment, impact assessment has overlooked important requirements and relationships within agricultural innovation systems. An analysis of institutional learning using the key elements of an evaluation culture as proposed by program evaluators is used to demonstrate the need for impact assessment to engage with institutional questions and build the capacity for institutional learning. There is a felt need to move from impact assessment to a larger evaluation culture. Agricultural research evaluation has much to learn from regular program evaluation. This calls for more social science research besides neoclassical agricultural economics, and active interaction among the natural and social scientists, extensionists, farming communities, policy makers and other actors. Effective evaluation in general and impact assessment in particular depends on the institutional learning capacity of the actors, especially scientists and policy makers. © 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Agricultural Systems

Disciplines, institutions and organizations: Impact assessments in context

Modern agrobiotechnology is developing at a crucial phase in the history of agricultural science. The conventional green revolution paradigm is being forced to shift to a more ecologically just and politically sound paradigm of sustainable agriculture. Within agricultural innovation systems, the decisions in agrobiotechnology, be they on research directions, allocations or release of research products, will now depend on a judicious mix of public opinion, regulatory and political safeguards, new partnerships and organizational formats, social contracts and scientific judgements. This entails changes both in the expectations from science and in the existing policy processes and instruments. Agricultural biotechnology is now marked by new research and development partnerships demanding new capabilities in the social sciences to analyse relationships between science, technology and society.

Biotechnology and Development Monitor

Innovation capability for agrobiotechnology: Policy issues

This article examines the crucial role of scientific expertise and authority, in evaluation as well as in research decision-making. The case of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) is used to demonstrate how the bureaucratic imperatives in a public research system can thwart the cause of scientific authority and accountability. Research decision-making is a function delegated to different points, or "nodes", vested with scientific expertise and the power to make decisions. Scientific expertise is the basic asset used by the nodes, which may be individual scientists and/or groups, boards or organizations. Patronage or decision-making in the ICAR is, for the most part, vested in bureaucratic nodes, marking the dichotomy in the organization between scientific and administrative or financial decision-making. The concluding section of this article highlights the social reproduction of bureaucratic nodes, which perpetuates the marginalization of evaluation. The nodes in the ICAR rely on bureaucratic decision-making not validated by evaluations or assessments using scientific expertise. It is argued that stringent evaluation can replace bureaucratic authority with scientific expertise and authority, thereby bringing more accountability to the system of patronage of science.

Fulltext

Evaluation

Patronage and evaluation in the Indian council of agricultural research

‘Why Octavio Paz matters’ in Jenny Edkins ed. Routledge Handbook of Critical International Relations (London and New York: Routledge, 2019), pp.214-228

‘The Sociology of International Relations in India: Competing Conceptions of Political Order’ in Gunther Hellmann ed. Theorizing Global Order (Frankfurt/New York: Campus Verlag, 2018), pp.142-171

‘The Exclusion Problem and the Need for Legitimacy’ (with me as second author and Konstanze Jüngling as first author) in Harald Müller and Carsten Rauch ed. Great Power Multilateralism and The Prevention of War (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2018), pp.160-174

This chapter examines the relationship between ideological stridency and national security in the context of India. Conceptualizing national security as encompassing both the state and individuals and human groups, the chapter argues that the more ideological India’s political mainstream becomes, the less secure become the state as well as society. The goal of securing India necessitates the inclusion of all its social groups within the political mainstream, an immensely difficult task given the country’s multiple fault lines. Since ideologies exclude some social groups and privilege others, they either widen existing fault lines or create new fissures even as they close pre-existing ones. These fissures produce insecurity. The chapter draws upon elements of modern Indian history to substantiate this argument. It shows how ideological minimalism emerged as one of the central features of the polity. It also discusses the principal ideological forces of postcolonial India and concludes with an analysis of the impact of an ideological domestic and regional policy on India’s internal and external (regional) security in the contemporary period.

Facets of India's Security

Perils of ideological maximalism

Seminar

‘Informal Waste Work in Delhi’ in a Special Issue of Seminar, Streetscapes, August 2012, pp. 43-46.

Our Reality versus Your Reality. Book Review for Felix Padel, Ajay Dandekar, and Jeemol Unni’s Ecology, Economy: Quest for a Socially Informed Connection in Biblio, January-February 2014 Issue