Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Marriage Or License To Rape? A Socio-Legal Analysis Of Marital Rape In India, Vidhik Kumar

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

Rape exposes the failure of society’s institutions which were established to provide better security to an individual in a society. These institutions sometimes not only failed to protect an individual from such grave assaults on their autonomy and privacy, but also sanctioned them by either providing them legitimacy by law or not illegitimating them. States often have either provided legal sanctity to rapes within marriage or have refrained from declaring it a crime, on account of it being a private sphere not open to interference. Rape within marriage or marital rape is a global problem, and it is argued that …

Female Infertility In The United States And India: An Analysis Of Treatment Barriers And Coping Strategies, Devneet Singh

Honors Theses

This research studies barriers to accessing fertility treatment in the United States (U.S.) and India, as well as the coping strategies infertile women use. Barriers include reproductive health knowledge, cost, and politics, while coping is affected by cultural stigma, family, and religion. These two countries were chosen for their different cultural contexts, healthcare systems, and political infrastructure. Ten fertility specialists across both countries were interviewed as expert informants. Reproductive health knowledge was the most important barrier to accessing care in both countries, with similar gaps in understanding when and what type of care to utilize, though social media can educate …

Entitled To Property: Inheritance Laws, Female Bargaining Power, And Child Health In India, Plamen Nikolov, Shahadath Hossain

Economics Faculty Scholarship

Child height is a significant predictor of human capital and economic status throughout adulthood. Moreover, non-unitary household models of family behavior posit that an increase in women’s bargaining power can influence child health. We study the effects of an inheritance policy change, the Hindu Succession Act (HSA), which conferred enhanced inheritance rights to unmarried women in rural India, on child height. We find robust evidence that the HSA improved the height and weight of children. In addition, we find evidence consistent with a channel that the policy improved the women’s intrahousehold bargaining power within the household, leading to improved parental …

The Dancing Between Two Worlds Project: Background, Methodology And Learning To Approach Community In Place, Anindita Banerjee, Shaun Mcleod, Gretel Taylor, Patrick L. West

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

This article recounts the history to date of the Dancing Between Two Worlds (DBTW) project, which was initiated by a team of artist-scholars at Deakin University in 2018. DBTW’s brief was to engage the Indian community living in the western fringes of Melbourne in a project on civic belonging, cross-cultural artistic identity, and the performance of outer-suburban Indian diaspora. Working with the creative and community energies that are activated at the intersection of the creative arts and demographically inflected place, the Deakin researchers collaborated with local artists with an Indian background on a major performance in late 2019: …

Deference, Displacement, And Due Diligence In Aiib And World Bank Lending In India: The Amaravati Capital City And Mumbai Urban Transport Projects, Jason A. Kirk

Rosenberg Institute Scholars

The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) has invested almost one-third of its entire pan-Asian portfolio in India, which has quietly become the Chinese-led bank’s top borrower despite rising China-India tensions. Over the first half-decade of the AIIB, most of its projects were co-financed with other multilaterals, led by the World Bank, and applied their environmental and social policies, accountability mechanisms, and grievance processes. This empirical research paper traces the development of two projects in India involving AIIB and the World Bank: the ill-fated Amaravati Capital City Project in Andhra Pradesh, a cancelled co-financed project, and the ongoing Mumbai Urban Transport …

The Sri Lanka-China-India Triangle: A Regional Power Transition, Nandeeni Patel

CMC Senior Theses

In 2016, China became the largest importer of Sri Lanka goods and services, surpassing India. Since then, the Chinese government has signed significant trade, development, and security deals with the island nation. This thesis argues that Sri Lanka's domestic politics, centered around its decades-long civil war and consequent human rights concerns, have served as the crux of its triangular relations with two regional powers: India and China. The human rights issue, in tandem with Sri Lanka's agency as a small state, has drawn Sri Lanka to China. The China-Sri Lanka relationship and has now expanded to developing security and development …

Acid Attacks In India: A Socio-Legal Report, Vidhik Kumar

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

India has the highest number of acid attacks globally every year, and despite the actions taken by the Indian Government and the Supreme Court of India, the crime is on the rise. This increase can be attributed to the patriarchal ideology that is prevalent in India and to India’s inadequate legal system, which does not deliver efficient remedies to the victims. This article will discuss the prevalence of acid attacks in India, motives behind the attacks, consequences on victims, and shortcomings in measures adopted to prevent the crime and provide justice to victims.

Against Nature: Imperial Law And Homosexuality In India, Juliano Estrada Donatelli

Outstanding Student Work in Asian Studies

In this essay, I will explore India’s Section 377, as a case study, to analyze the effect and legacy imperialism has had within former colonial territories, such as India. In order to do so, I will draw from literary sources to first characterize male homosexual relationships within India during pre-imperial rule. Then I will transition into the second part of the essay, in which I will discuss the motivation and inception of Section 377 under British ruling; to this section, I will also be contrasting the more official imperial mandates with the histories of European writers and travelers who, upon …

Survivor: An Analysis Of The Term From India, Pravin Patkar

Dignity: A Journal of Analysis of Exploitation and Violence

This article discusses the need for greater conceptual clarity of the term survivor. It raises questions about the propriety of the term to refer to the victims of sex trafficking. It points out that in the Indian context, the term victim is legally and operationally defined. It cautions against the hasty incorporation of the term survivor into public policies addressing the trafficked victims' problems. Different social platforms use the term survivor differently, and the difference is not nominal. The use of the term survivor is both casual as well as intentional. The term survivor trivializes the exploitation and makes invisible …

India’S Nuclear Energy Conundrum: An Assessment Of The Country’S Energy Futures, Sneha Thomas

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis will assess the practicality of implementing nuclear energy into India’s power system by considering different security risks, political factors, and COVID-19 complications. Access to energy is essential to modern survival because it contributes to the safety, success, and overall well-being of individuals; allowing for a better acquisition of food, education, and industry necessities. A big concern for India has been the inability to give energy access to millions of citizens that live in no proximity to a power grid, and this has shown to correlate with a lower quality of life. Another concern for India is the search …

Gender And Parliamentary Representation In India: The Case Of Violence Against Women And Children, Sadhvi Kalra, Devin K. Joshi

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

To better understand how gender impacts parliamentary representation, we analysed representative claims made by parliamentarians in India, the world's largest democracy. Applying critical frame analysis to plenary debates in the Indian Rajya Sabha, we examined four parliamentary bills addressing violence against women and children under four successive governments between 1999 and 2019. Testing six hypotheses concerning who represents and how, our study found women legislators more active in speaking on behalf of women and children than male legislators. Women parliamentarians focused more on rehabilitating victims and expanding the scope of rights and rights-holders. Women were also more vocal in contesting …

Digital Payments And Consumption: Evidence From The 2016 Demonetization In India, Sumit Agarwal, Pulak Ghosh, Jing Li, Tianyue Ruan

Research Collection School Of Economics

We study how consumer spending responds to digital payments, using the differential switch to digital payments across consumers induced by the sudden 2016 Indian Demonetization for identification. Usage of digital payments rose by 3.38 percentage points and monthly spending increased by 3% for an additional 10 percentage points in prior cash dependence. Spending remained elevated even when cash availability recovered. Robustness analyses show that the spending response is not driven by income shocks, credit supply, price changes, or consumers' moving to the formal market. We provide evidence that digital payments increase consumer spending due to subdued salience.

The Case Of Kashmir: Ethnic Mobilization And Insurgency, Kayla Hofmann

Politics Honors Papers

This paper analyzes ethnic identity and potential reasons for conflict through a constructivist lens. Using the case study of Kashmir, I explore the past and present events in the state and the salience of ethnicity, specifically Kashmiri Muslims and Indian Hindus.

Climate Migration: Evaluating The Conditions That Breed Conflict, Avery Dillon

Honors Thesis

The prediction that climate change will cause conflict is at its core based on the assumption that climate change will trigger resource scarcity, resulting in displaced peoples and potentially violent conflict. However, the empirical evidence supporting this phenomenon is highly uncertain and at times directly contradictory. In recent decades, some have claimed that climate change’s exacerbation of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, floods, and droughts have already played major roles in conflicts such as the Syrian Civil War (Selby 2019). Others directly dispute this direct effect, arguing instead that climate change has played only a minor role in influencing …

Tracing Biometric Assemblages In India’S Surveillance State: Reproducing Colonial Logics, Reifying Caste Purity, And Quelling Dissent Through Aadhaar, Priya Prabhakar

Scripps Senior Theses

Tracing Biometric Assemblages in India’s Surveillance State seeks to understand the historical conditions that rendered the nation-state of India as having the world’s largest biometric surveillance system: Aadhaar. Surveillance practices used by the British Raj mirrors the current social order of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as they use surveillance to similar ends in today’s political economy, through the intersecting forces of neoliberalism and ethnonationalism. This thesis is an exploration into how India’s current surveillance regimes cultivate biometric surveillant assemblages through Aadhaar. Contrary to claims that Aadhaar was created to empower the poor, I argue that these surveillance regimes …

Painting A Modern India: F.N. Souza, M.F. Husain, & Artistic Identity After Independence, Shay Afsheen Kothari

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

India’S Military And Its Impact On The Formation Of A Nation, Nikki Sway

History - Master of Arts in Teaching

I. Synthesis Essay……………………………….2

II. Primary Documents and Headnotes………..25

III. Textbook Critique……………………………..35

IV. New Textbook Entry………………………….39

V. Bibliography…………………………………....50

Chai And Conversation: Crafting Field Identities And Archaeological Practice In South Asia, Teresa Raczek, Namita S. Sugandhi

Faculty and Research Publications

In this article, we present examples from four research projects in India that were influenced by the values and ethics of decolonized and participatory research, and shaped by engendered perspectives. Each project built on earlier experiences that forced us to critically examine the ways we engaged with participants, crafted our field identities, and formed relationships. Using insights from linguistic anthropology and attending to intersectional inequalities and the construction of epistemic authority, we showcase how conducting an ethnography of communication and employing tactics of intersubjectivity influenced archaeological outcomes. We argue that close attention to context of communication, identity expression, and intersectional …

“Daughter” As A Positionality And The Gendered Politics Of Taking Parents Into The Field, Menusha De Silva, Kanchan Gandhi

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Research on gendered politics of the field has delved into the practices of accompaniment and its implications on research and knowledge production, particularly through the case of researchers’ children and partners. In comparison, the tendency to seek assistance from parents is neglected within the scholarship. Drawing on the PhD fieldwork experiences of two researchers in their “native” country, specifically a Sri Lankan researcher conducting fieldwork in Sri Lanka and a North Indian scholar researching in South India, the paper reveals parents’ contribution to the research process, in terms of enhancing researcher credibility, facilitating contact‐making and access, and providing emotional and …

An Examination Of Corporate Performance And Altman Z-Scores Of Indian Manufacturing Firms, See Liang Foo, Shaakalya Pathak

Research Collection School Of Accountancy

India is a key leading economy in the Asia Pacific region. This study examines the relationship between the financial health, as measured by the Altman Z-Score, and corporate performance, as measured by the Return on Equity (ROE), of listed manufacturing companies in this market. A linear regression has been conducted between these variables to determine the magnitude and direction of their relationships. The trends of Z-Scores over a five-year period have also been analysed. The analysis covers the period from 2013 to 2017 (inclusive) and yields a statistically positive correlation between ROE and the Z-Score for the market. India registered …

The Wealth Of Nations And The Advancement Of Collective Security, Kerry Daniel Good

Senior Honors Theses

This thesis will address the economic development of countries from the strategic perspective of the United States, and consider how this development will progress overlaid in the context of the Chinese framework for the projection of national power. Using an inter-disciplinary approach, this research will synthesize sources on national security policy and economics, while seeking a Christian apologetic framework to answer these questions: How can the United States promote the economic development of countries in the Asia-Pacific region using a biblical economic-development model, as a part of its national strategy? This thesis focuses on some of the political and socio-economic …

Demonetization In India: An Analysis Of An Instant Decision, Jaymin Patel

Honors College Theses

This analytical study examines the impact of demonetizing the Rs. 500 and the Rs. 1000 legal tender in India, which occurred on November 8^th, 2016. The study analyzes impacts on the GDP of India, employment rate, stock market volatility, agriculture sector, and the overall economy. The study shows that the demonetization movement had more short-term impacts than long-term and it generally failed to achieve its main objective.

India’S Surgical Strikes: Response To Strategic Imperatives, Karthika Sasikumar

Faculty Publications

In September 2016, militants who were allegedly backed by Pakistan attacked an Indian Army camp in Uri. The government in New Delhi was facing important regional elections. It faced intense public pressure to muster a military response. Such a response, however, ran the risk of triggering a nuclear exchange. Ten days after the Uri attack, India reported that it had carried out ‘surgical strikes’ on terrorist training camps in Pakistan-controlled territory. The paper examines this specific episode in India–Pakistan deterrence dynamics, focusing on the nomenclature ‘surgical strikes’. The paper argues that the choice of the term itself is new and …

Public Interest Litigation & Women’S Rights: Cases From Nepal & India, Jordan E. Stevenson

2019 Symposium

As a complex, diverse and dynamic region with diverging, constantly changing constitutional and jurisprudential contexts as well as lasting legacies of patriarchy, South Asia’s traditions of public interest litigation are one of the most well-studied institutions by Western audiences due to their contradictory progressive and innovative nature. Particularly in India, where public interest litigation gives ordinary citizens extraordinary access to the highest courts of justice, questions have been raised as to the effectiveness of public interest litigation as a tool to address gender disparities across the region. Although Supreme Court justices have been a key ally in eliminating legal barriers …

Hostile Takeover Regimes In Asia: A Comparative Approach, Umakanth Varottil, Wai Yee Wan

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

The market for corporate control is animportant corporate governance mechanism for the discipline of corporatemanagers. However, the process and substance of the regulation of hostiletakeovers differs remarkably among various jurisdictions. Existing andinfluential scholarship has focused on the differences in regulation between UnitedStates (US) and the United Kingdom (UK), with the explanations being founded ininterest group politics. Influential as it is, the question is whether thetheory can be extended outside of the US and the UK, particularly to theirlegal transplants in Asia? In the last few decades, many of the Asianjurisdictions have drawn heavily from the US and the UK when …

"We Get Nothing" : An Ethnography Of Participatory Development And Gender Mainstreaming In A Water Project For The Bhil Of Central India, Indrakshi Tandon

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Through the close examination of a state-sponsored watershed project being implemented by Association for Integrated Social Development (AISD) in the district of Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh, this dissertation project explores how current development approaches in water projects impact its intended targets, in this case the Bhil tribal community. A key aspect of this research is to analyze in detail how development narratives such as participatory or bottom-up approaches and gender mainstreaming often result in unintended consequences. With a focus on the gendered nature of participatory policies, I argue that popular development practices in India often lead to governing and managing target …

Globalization And Cultural Flows: A Three-Article Dissertation Exploring Implications For Education And Culture In India, Dwight Edward Boucher

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation follows a three-article format to examine ways in which distinct manifestations of globalization have engaged and manipulated education in India as colonizing initiatives. The articles are interrelated and examine historical, societal, and individual stories related to colonial and global impositions of Western epistemological, economic, and educational forms in India. The introductory chapter outlines the broad implications of globalization and globalizing narratives, and it is intended to demonstrate that while globalization has the capacity to improve the quality and equitability of lives around the world, it also has the potential to serve as a hegemonic conduit for the continuation …

Searching For A Brighter Tomorrow: An Internship Working Toward The Alleviation Of Energy Poverty Through Solar Power And Search-Engine Crowdfunding, Meaghan Mcelroy

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Auroville Consulting is an environmental consulting firm, founded in 2010, that works to create an environmentally-friendly and socially responsible world. One of Auroville Consulting’s projects, the Solar Village Initiative, works to address the effects of energy poverty by installing on-grid solar panels and solar generation systems in rural villages throughout rural Tamil Nadu., with the Solar Village Search Engine as a crowdfunding tool for the project. By performing dayto- day tasks pertaining to communications, journalism, social media, and promotions for the Solar Village Search Engine at Auroville Consulting; participating in in-office discussion; and living and working in Auroville, I was …

"When We Demand Our Share Of This World”: Struggles For Space, New Possibilities Of Planning, And Municipalist Politics In Mumbai, Malav J. Kanuga

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation presents an urban history of Bombay/Mumbai from the perspective of a politics of plurality, arguing that while the city has emerged from governmental control and planning, its development has also been shaped by myriad popular productive forces of urban society. The dissertation traces the uneven development of the city through significant planning policies, popular movements, and lived experiences of various struggles against regimes of developmentalism—the governing ideologies of development, techniques, policies, and rules of law through which the city has been planned and governed. These ideologies and practices have shifted over time, but since the earliest days of …

Mumbai Macbeth: Gender And Identity In Bollywood Adaptations, Rashmila Maiti

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project analyzes adaptation in the Hindi film industry and how the concepts of gender and identity have changed from the original text to the contemporary adaptation. The original texts include religious epics, Shakespeare’s plays, Bengali novels which were written pre-independence, and Hollywood films. This venture uses adaptation theory as well as postmodernist and postcolonial theories to examine how women and men are represented in the adaptations as well as how contemporary audience expectations help to create the identity of the characters in the films. Ultimately, this project hopes to fulfil the gap in scholarship on adaptations in Bollywood.