Global climate change has emerged a new environmental issue affecting developing countries particularly after the signing of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in June 1992. This dissertation focuses on the factors which motivate Indian responses to global climate change at the international level. The study evaluates the relative impacts of two policy frames in the formulation of India's national climate change policy stance. The concept of "policy frames" refers to the idea that the definition of, and responses to a particular problem are constructed in terms of another more pressing and salient policy concern. A "policy frame" is an analytically constructed policy filter comprised of key, identifiable, policy features and existing resource constraints in a sector. The study traces the evolution of national energy (coal power and renewable energy) and environment sector policies under centralized planning based on a survey of a series of Five Year Plans (1970-1997). Characteristic sectoral policies are identified as constituting an "energy-related development policy frame" and an "environment-related development policy frame" under two distinct phases of national economic development--a managed economy and a liberalized economy. The study demonstrates that the 1991 shift towards phased economic liberalization resulted not only in a new set of energy (coal, power and renewable energy) policies and consequently an altered energy policy frame, but also in a largely unchanged set of environmental sector policies and consequently only a marginally altered environmental policy frame. The study demonstrates that the post-1991 energy policy changes together with existing energy resource constraints, constitute the dominant policy frame driving both the formulation of Indian policy stances at international climate change negotiations and also Indian responsiveness to coal, power, renewable energy, and climate change projects funded by the World Bank and GEF. The study also demonstrates that key features of the energy policy frame functions as a shared cognitive reference for a select group of national policy actors (comprising both policy makers and policy experts), responsible for formulating climate change policy responses. The study highlights the influential role played by very small set of national policy experts who construct national climate change options on the basis of features of the energy policy frame.

This dissertation project examines the role of identity, the politics of identity contestation and domestic political structures as part of the mechanisms and processes that may be involved in the decisions that states make regarding disengagement from their colonial and territorial possessions. Specifically, it focuses on the following questions: Why do intransigent states back down on previously entrenched territorial policies? And why, even when states decide to disengage from their territories, are some of these processes peaceful while others are scenes of prolonged, bloody and violent struggles? Focusing on Britain and its reaction to Indian calls for independence from 1929-1935, and Indonesia's withdrawal from East Timor in 1999, this project argues that the processes and mechanisms involved in identity construction, maintenance and change can play an important role in how states approach the issue of territorial disengagement. At the same time, it also argues that the structure of a state's domestic political system may also affect the way in which disengagement takes places. Based on its empirical findings, this dissertation also argues that identities are constructed at both the domestic as well as the international levels, and against an Other, and through narratives. Further, identities do not acquire 'substance' once they have been constructed. Rather they are continually constituted by processes, relations and practices as identities are defined, recognized and validated in an actor's interaction with and in relationship to others. Finally, identity does not only influence human actions through enabling or constraining actions but also through the need to perform who we are or who we say we want to be.

In this dissertation, I try to understand processes of dispossession and exclusion within a class-focused Marxian framework grounded in the epistemological position of overdetermination. The Marxian concept of primitive accumulation has become increasingly prominent in contemporary discussions on these issues. The dominant reading of “primitive accumulation” in the Marxian tradition is historicist, and consequently the notion itself remains outside the field of Marxian political economy. The contemporary literature has de-historicized the concept, but at the same time missed Marx’s unique class-perspective. Based on a non-historicist reading of Marx, I argue that primitive accumulation—i.e. separation of direct producers from means of production in non-capitalist class processes—is constitutive of capitalism and not a historical process confined to the period of transition from pre-capitalism to capitalism. I understand primitive accumulation as one aspect of a more complex (contradictory) relation between capitalist and non-capitalist class structure which is subject to uneven development and which admit no teleological universalization of any one class structure. Thus, this dissertation claims to present a notion of primitive accumulation theoretically grounded in the Marxian political economy. In particular, the dissertation problematizes the dominance of capital over a heterogeneous social formation and understands primitive accumulation as a process which simultaneously supports and undermines such dominance. At a more concrete level, I apply this new understanding of primitive accumulation to a social formation—consisting of “ancient” and capitalist enterprises—and consider a particular conjuncture where capitalist accumulation is accompanied by emergence and even expansion of a “surplus population” primarily located in the “ancient” economy. Using these theoretical arguments, I offer an account of postcolonial capitalism in India, distinguishing between two different regimes—(1) the dirigiste planning regime and (2) the laissez-faire regime. I argue that both regimes had to grapple with the problem of surplus population, as the capitalist expansion under both regimes involved primitive accumulation. I show how small peasant agriculture, traditional non-capitalist industry and informal “ancient” enterprises (both rural and urban) have acted as “sinks” for surplus population throughout the period of postcolonial capitalist development in India. Keywords: primitive accumulation, surplus population, postcolonial capitalism

In this dissertation, an ethnography of transnational commercial surrogacy in India, I argue that existing Eurocentric and ethics-oriented frames for studying surrogacy make invisible the labor and resistances of women within this process. By framing commercial surrogacy as ‘labor’ instead, I ask: How do commercial surrogate mothers in India, as participants in a new kind of labor, challenge and/or re-affirm ideologies, discourses and practices surrounding not just surrogacy, but women’s role as producers and reproducers? Through participant observation and open ended interviews, I reveal the “labor” of women that often remains invisible and underpaid: whether in the form of “dirty” labor, “embodied labor” (labor that requires intensive use of their physical selves) or “kinship labor” (the labor of forming and maintaining kinship ties). Instead of romanticizing the everyday resistances of the surrogates, I highlight the inherent paradox of their resistances to domination by the family, the community, the clinic and the state. The multiple sites of domination imply that resistance to one set of forces often involves reification of other forms of domination. At one level, the significance of my research is that it is the only existing work on this stunning example of international division of (reproductive) labor where poor women of the global south have babies for richer women, often from the global north. This study aims to move beyond the Euro-American setting and get a broader view of the cultural response to new reproductive technologies. By calling for the recognition of commercial surrogacy as “labor”, I challenge the gendered dichotomies of natural and biology versus social and labor. Simultaneously, I deconstruct the image of the “victim” inevitably evoked whenever bodies of “Third World” women are in focus. It’s likely that the everyday resistances by the surrogates in India pose very little threat to the fundamentally exploitative structure of transnational surrogacy. What they do represent, however, is a constant process of negotiation and strategizing at the local level. They provoke a reappraisal of existing assumptions surrounding not just surrogacy but our understanding of new forms of women’s labor and local resistances, new bases for forming kinship ties and novel responses to new reproductive technologies and biomedicalization.

From 2001–2007, students from India have consistently comprised the largest ethnic group of international students on college campuses across the United States (Open Doors: Report on International Educational Exchange, 2007). Despite a number of studies that have researched the mental health of international students in the U.S., none have done so primarily with Indian graduate students. Theoretical and empirical literature regarding the psychological changes and acculturation patterns that international students undergo after their transition do not explore the possibility of multiple pathways of change. The current study identified four separate mental health trajectories for Indian international graduate students during their first year in the U.S. It also found three distinct patterns of acculturation for the Indian culture and four acculturation trajectories for the European American culture. The size of one’s adjustment, feelings about transition, gender role attitudes, and availability of out-group support were all significant contributors to the variability among empirically derived mental health trajectories.

This dissertation looks into different aspects of women's lives in the aftermath of Nepal's ten-year long (1996–2006) Maoist insurgency. It consists of four essays, each focusing on the experience of Nepali women in a particular aspect of post-conflict development and reconstruction activity. The first essay undertakes an examination of the survival and coping strategies of widow-headed households (WHHs) in Nepal in the aftermath of the Maoist conflict. Using qualitative data from in-depth interviews, the chapter analyzes the material consequences of the conflict on such households, the strategies such households have adopted in the aftermath to cope with economic uncertainty and insecurity of livelihoods, and the role of social and cultural processes in determining these strategies. Social and cultural norms pertaining to widowhood emerge as salient determinants of the level of kin and non-kin support widow heads of household can muster, of their workday structure, of their choice of employment and of their children's welfare. Contradictory outcomes prevail in determining WHHs' actual outcomes, which are also dependent upon class, caste, location and ethnic background. The second essay is a case study of peacebuilding and reconstruction activities undertaken by women's savings and credit cooperatives in Nepal in the post-conflict period. Using secondary data from a peacebuilding project called the Developing Democracy in Nepal (DDN) carried out by the Canadian Cooperatives Association (CCA) and the Center for Microfinance (CMF) in Nepal in the cease-fire period (in 2009), the chapter examines "bottom-up" peacebuilding and the role of women's cooperatives in reducing violence, promoting reconciliation and building peace in their local communities. The case of the DDN becomes a starting point to scrutinize the nature of peacebuilding and reconstruction—including its gendered elements—undertaken by cooperatives, and the dilemmas and challenges that appear herein. Lessons from the Nepal case are distilled for future development and peacebuilding practice. The third essay draws examples from qualitative (interview) data on Nepal's Maoist conflict to illustrate the ways in which attention to women's lived experiences of violent conflict can be used to inform policies and programs of post-conflict reconstruction and development in war-torn societies. Using women's narratives from in-depth interviews, it is argued that such a feminist perspective complicates conventional understandings of the processes and effects of violent conflict and encourages a closer look at the definitions, concepts and assumptions employed in exercises of post-conflict reconstruction or peacebuilding. The crucial insights gained from women survivors' narratives suggest a reflexive approach to policy-making and program design in war-torn contexts. The final essay is a quantitative exploration of the hypothesis that the incidence of female headship increases after periods of violent conflict. Using district level data from the Nepal Livings Standards Surveys and conflict intensity data from a human rights organization in Nepal, the chapter uses regression analysis to trace the relationship between conflict intensity and female headship. While the hypothesis is not borne out in the case of Nepal, the role of migration and geographical terrain emerges as relevant for female headship in the case of Nepal. The findings of the dissertation support its initial premise that it is essential to view material life and economic phenomena through a gendered lens in order to uncover the social, cultural and institutional constraints that are in operation for particular groups, especially women. In looking at how these constraints are exacerbated, or may provide opportunities for agency and action, important insights can be afforded into social processes and development outcomes.

No description available.

I examine the impact of policies toward agricultural globalization on growth patterns, distribution patterns, commercialization, and the supply response of peasant farmers by analyzing agriculture in the Telangana region of South India between 1985 and 2000. I perform growth computations between 1970 and 2000 for agriculture in this region, track distributional changes based on the National Sample Survey (NSS) data between 1985 and 2000 using non-parametric regression techniques, and estimate an econometric model of supply response for Telangana farmers. This empirical investigation leads to two puzzles—one in the supply response arena and the other in the distributional arena. First, even as the prices of market-oriented crops have declined between 1991 and 2000 (during the phase of globalization), the planted area and the output of these crops have been rising rapidly. Second, between 1985 and 2000, the annual exponential growth rate of real agricultural output in the Telangana region of South India has been more than 4%, higher than much of the developing world during the same period, even as a majority of the farming population has undergone significant income/consumption losses, tragically manifested in the suicides of more than a thousand farmers. I explain these puzzles first by studying the historical antecedents (1925–1985) of agrarian change in the region, then through a theoretical peasant economy model with a lien constraint that is similar to the model that Ransom and Sutch employed in the context of the post-bellum US South, and finally by analyzing village-level institutional mechanisms based on field research (2000–01) in the region. The main conclusion of the dissertation is that the globalization-induced decline in the prices of non-food output in conjunction with local informal lending practices that require these very non-food crops as collateral help explain the tragic puzzles. The policy implications are also analyzed in the dissertation.

Community-based natural resource management has become immensely popular among some policy makers on the assumption that involvement of local communities can achieve conservation goals with greater efficiency and equity. However, the community is quite often conceived of as an undifferentiated whole. Given that diverse groups may exist within a community, with heterogeneous interests, abilities, incentives, and social affiliations, such a conception is problematic. This dissertation empirically investigates the effects of heterogeneity on use and management of common forests. This dissertation conducts a meso-level study of heterogeneity using the 'community' as the unit of analysis. The data are derived from fieldwork conducted in the middle Himalayan ranges of Himachal Pradesh, India in 2004. During this fieldwork, survey data were collected in 54 forest communities. This method contrasts with the usual practice of examining individual motivations or conducting a cross-section country-level study. There are two key findings. First, three dimensions of heterogeneity affect collective management of forests: heterogeneity in wealth, social groups and incentives. However, these effects are complex and non-linear. The empirical results suggest that both social and wealth heterogeneity have a non-monotonic relationship with cooperation. In addition, heterogeneity in incentives decreases cooperation conditional on the presence of wealth heterogeneity. These results imply that cooperation does not depend on social parochialism, very high levels of wealth heterogeneity reduce cooperation, and a divergence between wealth and incentive to cooperate decreases the level of collective management. Second, forest use is affected by heterogeneity as well. The sampled communities have access to forests that are common property, in that rights of use are vested with the community and not the individual. This means that all individuals in the community should be able to use the forest to the same degree. However, on investigating the effect of heterogeneity in forest use, the dissertation finds that wealth heterogeneity increases whereas social heterogeneity decreases the extent of forest use even after controlling for market related factors. The results therefore, suggest that the social structure of the community plays an important role in determining both the degree of cooperation and extent of forest use at the community level.

The main argument in this dissertation is that changes in male nuptiality in rural India between 1921 and 1981 was a form of household adaptation to wage dependency and proletarianization in the countryside. The male nuptiality in rural India in 1921 was characterized by extremely early marriage throughout the country. Under conditions of high mortality of that period, early marrying men had an advantage in forming joint households (with both parents present). Male nuptiality in rural India grew more diverse in 1981, and came to be characterized by at least two distinctive nuptiality regimes: One which strongly resembled peasant nuptiality of the early 20th century and the second represented an emergent adult pattern of nuptiality among males in rural India. The variation in marriage age of males in rural India was significantly related to the level agricultural proletarianization in 1981. Regions characterized by early male nuptiality were generally dominated by household-based or peasant production, while regions of later marriage among males were more likely to have a substantial wage labor sector. Due to declines in mortality, the possibility of young men living in a joint household with both parents rose between 1921 and 1981, regardless of age at marriage. But within each level of mortality, early marrying men still had better chances of being able to form a joint household (with both parents). Marriage postponement among males in some parts of rural India may have modified many aspects of the household development process. More important, it may have allowed greater flexibility with respect to the timing of household formation, and also ensured that men were financially able to support a family when they married.