Thursday, March 27th, 2014 Security, Foreign Policy and Political Economy in South Asia

Description

This mini conference brings together three leading scholars on South Asia to discuss issues of current relevance to South Asia in particular, and also to the region’s links with the larger world. It focuses on issues of security, political economy, as well as international relations of South Asia.

Zach Mampilly discusses the role of India in UN peacekeeping operations in Africa. This directly addresses questions of the rise of India as a regional power and its increasing prominence on the global stage. Given India’s importance as one of the leaders of the NAM during the Cold War era, this paper allows us to understand its role in international interventions in civil conflicts in the post Cold War period, in Africa. Sumit Ganguly talks about the Hindu Muslim riots that broke out following the divisions of the sub continent when the British left, and the continuing legacies that event has on the politics of the sub continent. Aseema Sinha uses her expertise on issues of political economy to argue that the ‘success’ of the developmental model in the state of Gujarat, which is today touted as one of the prime reason’s for Narendra Modi to be proclaimed as the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, actually has deeper structural roots than usually perceived. These papers talk about the external and internal dimensions of both historical and current issues affecting politics of the world’s largest democracy, and is relevant to current issues of power, economics and representation in the sub continent.

Zachariah Mampilly
Title: India’s Rise and the Performance of UN Peacekeepers in Africa

Does India’s rise on to the global stage have implications for the performance of United Nations Peacekeeping missions in Africa? India has long ranked among the most important contributors of troops to UN missions in Africa and beyond. Yet, few studies have sought to understand how India’s shifting position affects the performance of peacekeepers in Africa. This paper traces India’s involvement in African peacekeeping to the cold war and the rise of Third Worldism during which the country was content to provide troops without influencing the nature of their mandate on the ground. As India has risen in global standing, it appears less comfortable in contributing troops for UN peacekeeping without a say in designing the mandate of the missions. By examining the performance of Indian peacekeepers in the Democratic Republic of Congo before and after India’s ascension to a seat on the United Nations Security Council, this talk will address how a rising India has sought to reconfigure the relationship between troop contributing countries and those that pay for the missions, often with negative effects on peacekeeping performance. Drawing on interviews in DRC and India, I argue that the 2011 Security Council debate over intervening in Libya set the stage for India to register its disagreement with the current arrangement, leading to the reduced performance of the UN mission in DRC.

Zachariah Mampilly is the Director of Africana Studies and an Associate Professor of Political Science and International Studies at Vassar College. In 2012/2013, he was a Fulbright Visiting Professor at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He is the author of Rebel Rulers: Insurgent Governance and Civilian Life during War (Cornell U. Press 2011). Co-written with Adam Branch, Africa Uprising! Popular Politics and Unarmed Resistance is forthcoming from Zed Press.

Sumit Ganguly
Title: Explaining the Violence of the Partition of India?

The partition of British India resulted in the deaths of at least a million individuals and the displacement of upwards of ten million. Though there are any number of descriptive accounts of the violence of partition explanations for the violence that erupted are limited, this presentation will provide a three part argument for the onset of the violence. It will show how a commitment problem precipitated fear leading to an ethnic security dilemma and then the collapse of British authority created conducive conditions for ethnic scapegoating. These mechanisms contributed to a combustible mix resulting in mass violence.

Sumit Ganguly is a professor of Political Science, holds the Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations and is the Director of the Center on American and Global Security at Indiana University, Bloomington. A specialist on the international and comparative politics of South Asia he is currently completing a manuscript, Deadly Impasse: India and Pakistan at the Dawn of a New Century for Cambridge University Press. His most recent book with Bill Thompson and Karen Rasler, is How Rivalries End (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013) Professor Ganguly is a member of the Council on Foreign relations (New York) and the International Institute of Strategic Studies (london). He serves on the editorial boards of the American Political Science Review, Asian Survey, Asian Security, Current History, The India Review, International Security, the Journal of Democracy, and Security Studies.

Aseema Sinha
Title: Does Gujarat have a Distinctive Developmental Model?: Historical legacies, Institutions and Strong Leadership in Gujarat

Where do developmental reforms come from and what combination of contingent and institutional factors ensures their persistence? Gujarat has been quite effective in pursuing economic reforms across many sectors: power reforms, fiscal reforms, some limited but notable education reforms for the enrollment of girls, and private sector participation in infrastructural development, to name a few. Why have reforms succeeded in the state of Gujarat? We also do not know how these reforms began or unfolded in the state. Were reforms and effective public service delivery easier in Gujarat than in other states, given Gujarat’s historical state strengths? This talk analyses Gujarat’s economic reforms to understand the origins and persistence of economic reforms in India.
I argue that Gujarat is blessed with advantageous initial structural conditions: a strong industrial base, private sector interest, and basic state capabilities. While many outcomes are visible now, the foundations of these innovations and outcomes were laid over a decade ago, and originated in fiscal and political crisis. Second, at crucial moments, severe crisis (fiscal) and external factors (international aid, and central government initiatives) played an important yet indirect role that was very important process rather than as a blueprint imposed from the top. Crucial leadership roles were played by chief ministers, heads of agencies, and heads of crucial departments such as industry, finance, and the like. The political leadership supported politically difficult reforms; a chief minister in the mid-1990s, played a crucial and formative role.

Dr. Aseema Sinha is the Wagener Chair of South Asian Politics and George R. Roberts Fellow at Claremont McKenna College. She previously taught at University of Wisconsin-Madison and was a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in DC. Her research interests relate to political economy of India, India-China comparisons, International Organizations, and the rise of India as an emerging power. She teaches courses on South Asia, Social Movements, Globalization and Developing Countries, and on Comparative Politics. She has authored a prize-winning book, The Regional Roots of Developmental Politics in India: A Divided Leviathan (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2005). She is also an author of journal articles on federalism, subnational comparisons in India, India and China, business collective action in India, and public expenditure across Indian states. Her articles have appeared in the British Journal of Political Science, World Development, Polity, Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, Business and Politics, Journal of Democracy, and India Review. She is completing a book titled: When David Meets Goliath: How Global Markets and Rules are Shaping India’s Rise to Power.