(SoHSS) School of Humanities and Social Sciences

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

Rural India finds mention in every document on poverty, inequality, malnutrition, unemployment and disguised employment, agriculture and artisanal livelihoods and gender relationships. Almost all these refer to limited capacities for economic growth and development. Thereby, technologies and investments in people and infrastructure for these have become the bedrock of rural development efforts in the country. This theme presents an overview of S and T strategies for rural development in India. The focus is on understanding S and T capacities that exist and how knowledge and technologies are accessed and used for rural development. India is rural (2000–01 to 2004–05) • Rural population of 830 million–in 1100 million • Cultivators + main and marginal workers–430 million • Urban literacy rate (81 per cent); rural (61 per cent) • Female literacy 45 per cent in rural areas (70 per cent in urban areas) • Malnourished–49 per cent of children and 39 per cent of women in rural India (36 per cent and 20 per cent in urban areas) • Rural infant mortality rate–61 (37 in urban areas) in 1000 Overall rural development efforts in India focus on: • Provision of basic infrastructure facilities in the rural areas, for example, schools, health facilities, roads, drinking water, electrification etc. • Improving agricultural productivity in the rural areas. • Provision of social services like health and education for socio-economic development. © National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies.

International Relations and Governance Studies

World University root node

India: Science and Technology

Rural development - science and technology (S and T) strategies and capacities

The chapter explores the possibility of establishing a regional human rights regime in South Asia. Commencing with an examination of the literature on regimes from the vantage points of Structural Realists, Neoliberal Institutionalists and Critical Constructivists, Mallavarapu demonstrates that each of these accounts result in distinct pictures and assessments of the guiding motivations of a universal human rights regime. However, more crucially premised on field work in Sri Lanka, Mallavarapu details the texture of human rights discourse in the island state and its ambivalence vis-à-vis the universal human rights framing. From the perspective of critical Sri Lankan commentators, there remains general scepticism about the possibility of a regional human rights regime in South Asia on account of concerns about political timing, reconciliation of diverse cultural repertoires in the region, anxieties about the overall Indian footprint and trepidation about a further watering down of existing international legal obligations as pertains to human rights as an issue-area. © Oxford University Press 2011. All rights reserved.

International Relations Theory and South Asia

The Normative Politics of Regime Formation: Human Rights in the South Asian Context

The intention of watershed development (WD) programs in India is to improve the livelihoods of people and preserve the natural resource base, particularly in areas where water scarcity limits the development potential of rural communities. In practice, there are many complications to implementing WD programs in an effective and equitable way for all people within and between villages in a catchment. Our understanding of the potential implications of a program is often limited by the way in which we investigate the biophysical-social-economic system. Two common failings are (a) not properly considering the importance of the place, scope and scale of a problem and (b) using a disciplinary approach to make conclusions about the system as a whole. This paper discusses how we are addressing these issues as part of an integrated assessment project looking at WD in the state of Andhra Pradesh, India. The multi-disciplinary project team includes agronomists, economists, environmental modellers, groundwater and surface water hydrologists, and social scientists who together are aiming to develop a holistic understanding of the impacts of WD on biophysical, social and economic systems. Key to the project philosophy is the inclusion of government representatives, communities, and non-government organisations (NGOs) in developing the researchers' understanding of the issues and complexities associated with WD and the critical questions that need addressing by the project. An integrated model is being developed that will incorporate crop production water use and hydrological (surface water and groundwater) models in addition to knowledge gained from extensive household surveys in villages in two case study catchments. The household surveys were developed based on discussions with NGOs working with the rural communities in Andhra Pradesh and are being used to examine economic and social outcomes (positive and negative) of WD for households. Measures of equity and resilience are being developed to measure differences in outcomes between villages (e.g. upstream, downstream) and within villages (e.g. income groups, gender, land ownership, etc).

Economics

MODSIM 2011 - 19th International Congress on Modelling and Simulation - Sustaining Our Future: Understanding and Living with Uncertainty

Integrated modelling for understanding watershed development impacts on social and biophysical systems

Social Science Teaching in Hindi : An Inventory and Analysis of Current Curricular Materials at Six North Indian Universities A small grant pilot project supported by the Sir Ratan Tata Trust, Mumbai, through the Higher Education Cell, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bengaluru, and hosted by the Institute for Socio-Economic Research in Democracy and Development, Delhi.

Sociology

Social Science Teaching in Hindi : An Inventory and Analysis of Current Curricular Materials at Six North Indian Universities

History

Indian Historical Review

Reading Archaeological Evidence: Ceramic and Terracotta Production at Indor Khera, Uttar Pradesh (200 BCE - 500 CE)

Economic and Political Weekly

Statement on Ayodhya verdict [1]

Evaluation of value of irrigation water is essential for supporting policy decision making relating to investments in the irrigation sector, efficient allocation of irrigation water and water pricing and for crafting policies to compare the variable impacts of water reform within and across sectors of the economy. This paper asks the question of how much an established irrigator would pay for water and at what price farmers planning to expand the area they have under irrigation would consider paying for the right to access water. An analytical framework is developed to estimate the net present value of both annual and perennial agricultural activities in the Murrumbidgee catchment. Using these estimates the total value of water used in Murrumbidgee catchment is estimated. An aggregate water supply curve is derived for the catchment from where water may be acquired from irrigators for environmental flows. © 2010 The Author. Journal compilation © 2010 Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society Inc. and Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd.

Fulltext

Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics

An empirical assessment of the value of irrigation water: The case study of Murrumbidgee catchment

This article examines how and why India, the world's largest democracy, remains sceptical about the idea of promoting its own political order abroad. It first lays down the historical background of India's long abstinence from promoting democracy and describes the country's more recent shift in foreign policies towards greater (though still cautious and selective) support for international democracy promotion. On a conceptual level and as a thought experiment, the article then compares in what ways three prominent schools of thought in international relations (neo-realism, neo-institutionalist liberalism, and social constructivism) are capable of contributing to an explanation of Indian reticence in democracy promotion. While they emphasize different aspects and dimensions of India's hesitance to engage in democracy promotion, all three contribute analytically to such an explanation. © 2010 Taylor & Francis.