Today, India’s education sector remains a victim of poor policies, restrictive regulations and orthodoxy. Despite being enrolled in schools, children are not learning adequately. Increasingly, parents are seeking alternatives through private inputs in school and tuition. Students are dropping out from secondary school in spite of high financial returns of secondary education, and those who do complete it have inferior conceptual knowledge. Higher education is over-regulated and under-governed, keeping away serious private providers and reputed global institutes. Graduates from high schools, colleges and universities are not readily employable, and few are willing to pay for skill development. Ironically, the Right to Education Act, if strictly enforced, will result in closure of thousands of non-state schools, and millions of poor children will be left without access to education. Eleventh in the series, India Infrastructure Report 2012 discusses challenges in the education sector — elementary, secondary, higher, and vocational — and explores strategies for constructive change and opportunities for the private sector. It suggests that immediate steps are required to reform the sector to reap the benefits from India’s ‘demographic dividend’ due to a rise in the working age population. Result of a collective effort led by the IDFC Foundation, this Report brings together a range of perspectives from academics, researchers and practitioners committed to enhancing educational practices. It will be an invaluable resource for policymakers, researchers and corporates.

This volume is a collection of articles dealing with various dimensions of the Global Financial Crisis and its economic and social impact in terms of governance, emigration, remittances, return migration and re-integration. The crisis, which had its origin in the United States in 2008, spread its economic effects on developed as well as developing countries. Some of these countries were able to recover in the short run while some are in the process of recovery, with continuous efforts by both national governments and international agencies. In this backdrop, is there any impact on the outflow of emigrants from the countries of origin and inflow of remittances to the countries of destination? The third volume in the annual series ‘India Migration Report’ answers the question through rigorous quantitative and qualitative analyses and fieldwork both in the Gulf region and South Asia, and concludes that both emigration and remittances are more resilient than expected. This report: contains findings based on an extensive survey conducted in Kerala; has additional evaluations based on other surveys and case studies conducted in different parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka to reflect on the consequences of the global crisis on the countries of origin, as well as a quick assessment and site visits to the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar and Malaysia; includes essays that examine the linkages between emigration and remittances based on international data from the World Bank, the International Labour Organization, the International Organization of Migration, the United Nations and other organizations that closely deal with international migration. It will be of interest to students and scholars of migration studies, sociology, law, economics, gender studies, diaspora studies, international relations and demography, apart from non-governmental organizations, policy-makers and government institutions working in the field of migration.

Indian diplomacy, a veteran told Shashi Tharoor many years ago, is like the love- making of an elephant: it is conducted at a very high level, accompanied by much bellowing, and the results are not known for two years. In this lively, informative and insightful work, the award-winning author and parliamentarian brilliantly demonstrates how Indian diplomacy has become sprightlier since then and where it needs to focus in the 21st century. Explaining why foreign policy matters to an India focused on its own domestic transformation, Tharoor surveys the country's major international relationships, evokes its soft power and global responsibilities, analyses the workings of the Ministry of External Affairs and parliament and assesses the impact of public opinion on government policy. Indeed, Tharoor presents his ideas about a contemporary new grand strategy for the nation, arguing that India must move beyond non-alignment to multi-alignment. This book sets out a clear vision of an India now ready to assume global responsibility in the contemporary world. Pax Indica is another substantial achievement from one of our finest Indian authors.

The 22nd annual World Report summarizes human rights conditions in more than ninety countries and territories worldwide, reflecting extensive investigative work undertaken in 2011 by Human Rights Watch staff, usually in close partnership with domestic human rights activists. World Report 2012 gives particular focus on the roles—positive or negative—played in each country by key domestic and international figures, and includes contributions from Joseph Saunders, Danielle Haas, and Iain Levine, and an introduction by Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth assessing the year’s most pressing human rights issue.

Historians of British colonial rule in India have noted both the place of military might and the imposition of new cultural categories in the making of Empire, but Bhavani Raman, in Document Raj, uncovers a lesser-known story of power: the power of bureaucracy. Drawing on extensive archival research in the files of the East India Company’s administrative offices in Madras, she tells the story of a bureaucracy gone awry in a fever of documentation practices that grew ever more abstract—and the power, both economic and cultural, this created. In order to assert its legitimacy and value within the British Empire, the East India Company was diligent about record keeping. Raman shows, however, that the sheer volume of their document production allowed colonial managers to subtly but substantively manipulate records for their own ends, increasingly drawing the real and the recorded further apart. While this administrative sleight of hand increased the company’s reach and power within the Empire, it also bolstered profoundly new orientations to language, writing, memory, and pedagogy for the officers and Indian subordinates involved. Immersed in a subterranean world of delinquent scribes, translators, village accountants, and entrepreneurial fixers, Document Raj maps the shifting boundaries of the legible and illegible, the legal and illegitimate, that would usher India into the modern world.

India's development pattern during 1950-80 was characterised by strong centralised planning, Government ownership of basic and key industries, excessive regulation and control of private enterprise, trade protectionism -- through tariff and non-tariff barriers -- and a cautious and selective approach towards foreign capital. It was a quota, permit and license regime guided and controlled by a bureaucracy trained in colonial style. This so-called inward-looking, import substitution strategy of economic development began to be widely questioned with the beginning of 1980s. Policy makers started realising the drawbacks of this strategy which inhibited competitiveness and efficiency and produced a much lower rate of growth than expected. Tilt towards economic liberalisation started in 1985 when Government announced a series of measures aimed at deregulation and liberalisation of industry. These measures, described as New Economic Policy, were followed by drastic changes introduced by the 1991 Industrial Policy Statement of the Government. As a result of economic reforms of the last 20 years, India is presently one of worlds fastest growing economies. In the last few years, it has emerged as a global economic power, the leading outsourcing destination and a favourite of international investors. Indian industry has upgraded technology and product quality to a significant degree and met the challenge of openness after being protected for so long. The Approach Paper to the Twelfth Five Year Plan (2012-13 to 2016-17) released by the Planning Commission, Government of India in October 2011 expressed concern at the slow growth of the manufacturing sector and emphasised "the need to sharply change the growth trajectory of Indias manufacturing sector" by adopting a holistic appraisal of what needs to be done to improve its competitiveness. This book contains 15 chapters which trace developments in different aspects of industrialisation during the post-Independence period, explain the key reform measures undertaken for making Indian industry internationally competitive and examine current issues pertaining to this vital sector of the Indian economy. The book also contains the following 5 appendices: Appendix 1: Industrial Policy Resolution, 1956. Appendix 2: Statement on Industrial Policy, July 24, 1991. Appendix 3: Year-wise Review of Industrial Developments in India: 1947-48 to 2011-12. Appendix 4: Edited Extracts from Indias Five Year Plans on Industry (I to XII Plan). Appendix 5: Glossary of Industrial Terms.

This book presents the first comprehensive review of all major government-supported health insurance schemes in India and their potential for contributing to the achievement of universal coverage in India are discussed.

This is a rare view of Gandhi as a hard-hitting political thinker willing to countenance the greatest violence in pursuit of a global vision that went beyond a nationalist agenda. Guided by his idea of ethical duty as the source of the self’s sovereignty, he understood how life’s quotidian reality could be revolutionized to extraordinary effect.

Global power is shifting to Asia. The U.S. military is embarking on an American "pivot" to the Indo-Pacific region, and the bulk of global arms spending is directed toward Asian theaters. India and Pakistan are thought to be building up their nuclear arsenals while questions persist about China's potential to "sprint to parity." China remains by far the world's largest market for new nuclear energy production, and India aspires to be on a similar trajectory. Despite these trends, The China-India Nuclear Crossroads is the first serious book by leading Chinese and Indian experts to examine the political, military, and technical factors that affect Sino-Indian nuclear relations. In this book, editor and translator Lora Saalman presents a comprehensive framework through which China and India can pursue enhanced cooperation and minimize the unintended consequences of their security dilemmas.

A New Republic Editors' and Writers' Pick 2012 A New Yorker Contributors' Pick 2012 A Newsweek "Must Read on Modern India" “For people who savored Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers.”—Evan Osnos, newyorker.com From the author of Better To Have Gone, a portrait of the incredible change and economic development of modern India, and of social and national transformation there told through individual lives Raised in India, and educated in the U.S., Akash Kapur returned to India in 2003 to raise a family. What he found was an ancient country in transition. In search of the life that he and his wife want to lead, he meets an array of Indians who teach him much about the realities of this changed country: an old landowner sees his rural village destroyed by real estate developments, and crime and corruption breaking down the feudal authority; a 21-year-old single woman and a 35-year-old divorcee exploring the new cultural allowances for women; and a young gay man coming to terms with his sexual identity – something never allowed him a generation ago. As Akash and his wife struggle to find the right balance between growth and modernity and the simplicity and purity they had known from the Indian countryside a decade ago, they ultimately find a country that “has begun to dream.” But also one that may be moving away too quickly from the valuable ways in which it is different.