(SoHSS) School of Humanities and Social Sciences

<p>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.</p>

Shiv Nadar University

As witnesses to a major part of the excavations carried out by the Archaeological Survey of India at the Ram janmabhoomi-Babri masjid site in Ayodhya in 2003, the authors detail the many irregularities and outdated methods they observed. They also refer to the objections they filed regarding some of the procedures followed by the asi, as well as the objections to its Final Report on the excavations. In several ways, it was obvious that the asi was operating with a preconceived notion of discovering the remains of a temple beneath the demolished mosque, even selectively altering the evidence to suit its hypothesis. The authors stress that there is little doubt that the kind of archaeology practised by the statist asi, where archaeologists see themselves primarily as bureaucrats, suffers from a serious absence of academic engagement and training.

World University root node

History

Economic and Political Weekly

Was there a temple under the Babri Masjid? Reading the Archaeological 'evidence'

In this paper, using a stylized mathematical simulation model, the participation of farmers in spot and options markets is analyzed in a two-period setting. Farmers assess the benefits from entering one of the two markets based upon anticipated water supplies in a subsequent period and relative expected profits in water and agricultural markets. The supply of water for urban use is a function of uncertain weather conditions and water demands for agricultural uses. The analysis offers insights on water market participation by deriving conditions that favor spot or options market participation. The findings highlight the importance of market size, agricultural profitability, and other parameters in predicting the potential success of spot and options market formation. © 2010 ASCE.

Economics

Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management

Factors affecting participation in spot and options markets for water

International Relations and Governance Studies

Fulltext

Contemporary Politics

Erratum to Democracy promotion circa 2010: An Indian perspective: (Contemporary Politics, (2010), 16, 1, (49-61), 10.1080/13569771003602895)

The 2008 food crisis sets the stage for this paper, which explores the processes involved in the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development. The insights drawn are situated in an historical recognition of the interface between agricultural crises and agricultural knowledge. The paper offers a window on both ongoing debates in agricultural science and the experiences of other recent international assessments of energy, the environment, and climate change. It is concerned with analysing how the iaastd was designed and written, for what it can tell us about the conclusions drawn and controversies raised. The democratic practices underpinning the set of iaastd reports and the integrated approach to agricultural knowledge, science, and technology, commodity production, and environmental and social goals, are central for understanding contemporary debates about agricultural knowledge.

A messy confrontation of a crisis in agricultural science

This paper explores how an individual's participation in higher education is dependent on her religious affiliations, socio-economic status and demographic characteristics. It argues that an appropriate measure of "deficits" in participation should inform the nature and scope of affirmative action. The study emphasises the relevance, both for analytical examination and in policy formulation, of distinguishing between stock and flow measures of participation and of recognising the differences (or imbalances) in the eligibility for higher education across groups. On isolating the effect of socio-religious affiliation from other factors that may influence participation in higher education, what emerges is a suggestion that the deficits faced by some marginalised groups are not substantial. If reservation policy for these groups is to be justified only on the basis of low participation, it may require a review.

Who participates in higher education in India? Rethinking the role of affirmative action

This paper develops a conceptual model to link social norms and social capital with key socio-ecological characteristics of small scale economies in order to derive implications for the sustainability of natural resources and survival of these economies. Specifically, the extent of punishment required to deter defection is derived as a function of group size, rewards from defection, resource stock, and the risk of groundwater loss. Social norms which ordain collective participation and punishments can be endogenous, dynamic, and exhibit resilience. The implication of these possibilities on the sustainability of small scale economies is also evaluated. © 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Journal of Natural Resources Policy Research

Social norms, social capital, and the sustainability of small scale economies

The article seeks to do an audit of the state of International Relations theory (IRT) in India. It examines three facets of IRT in this connection. The first relates to the possibility of a tradition of thinking on issues of universal theoretical significance. The second pertains to an exploration of scholarly reflection on an important principle of Indian foreign policy, namely, non-alignment and the limits of theorizing it. The final facet examines the concerns that inform theorization by Indian scholars since the 1990s. In regard to the first facet, the article argues that there exists an Indian tradition of thinking on issues of order, justice and cosmopolitanism, even though it may not have been expressed in the language of IRT. With regard to non-alignment, the article argues that while it did not result in broader theoretical formulations, it raised a number of first order issues for further theorizing. Finally, it suggests that recent IRT invocations by Indian scholars reflect a more receptive conjuncture for such work, both in terms of Indias own changing stature in the world system as well as an acknowledgement of more eclectic methods and possibilities in the broader world of the social sciences.

International Studies

Development of international relations theory in India: Traditions, contemporary perspectives and trajectories

Sustained droughts coupled with increasing pressure from urbanization severely test the ability of farmers to continue in agriculture. Understanding farmers' resilience to such pressures is increasingly becoming a significant policy concern. In this paper, a new measure of resilience to severe and sustained droughts in agriculture is derived as the ability to continue farming by saving and carrying forward water through the adoption of water efficient technology. In addition, the role of behavioral factors-such as subjective risk perception over the probability of droughts, of the probability of land getting urbanized, and of resistance to revising beliefs over water scarcity situation-in determining farmers' resilience to droughts is explored. Findings highlight the key role played by behavioral factors in influencing the decision to adopt when the economic factors, such as the price of water, do not capture the true opportunity costs of water. The range of available technological options is found to be crucial too, as marginal improvements in technology do not encourage adoption. An empirical application to the case of lettuce farming in Western Australia reveals that in the presence of speculative benefits from land rezoning, technological adoption is done only for enhancing profits in agriculture and not for improving resilience to droughts. Land rezoning possibilities may further distort technology adoption decisions, thereby, reducing resilience to droughts. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Natural Resource Modeling

Drought resilience in agriculture: The role of technological options, land use dynamics, and risk perception

The article reviews the book "The Twilight of the Nation State: Globalisation, Chaos and War," by Prem Shankar Jha.

India Quarterly

The Twilight of the Nation State: Globalisation, Chaos and War.

Strategic Analysis

{Contested World Orders: Fareed Zakaria, The Post-American World (Penguin, New Delhi, 2008), pp. 292 Parag Khanna, The Second World: Empires and Influence in the New Global {\ldots}}