Rethinking the curriculum of comparative politics

Most Indian universities require the students of Political Science to do a compulsory course on "Comparative Politics". When I was a student of BA, it was called "Comparative Constitutions". Later it changed in most places to "Comparative Government". The course revolved around some key political institutions in select countries -- usually the UK, USA, the then USSR ,Switzerland etc. I am not quite updated on the current scenario, but my sense is that this course does not have any standard format. Some universities still continue to teach comparative governments and focus on formal institutional structures. Some others have modified it to include political processes and to refer to some countries of the global south as well. In some cases the course has been made thematic and it focuses on key institutions and processes, without any specific reference to select countries.

Notwithstanding these variations, the end product is not very different, nor encouraging.  Even the best of our students do not profit from this very powerful method for making sense of politics. When the course is taught around a few countries, they do not have a familiarity with the history and culture of these countries and end up picking only a few formal facts about political institutions. Besides, the tendency to present some democracies of the global north as the model contributes to the tendency on the part of our students to see our own context as abnormal or a distortion of the real model of politics. When it is taught thematically, surely a better way of handling the subject, once again lack of familiarity with a large number of cases means that the teaching and learning is confined to some abstractions. The best students may pick up some generalisation, but they do not develop a capacity to generalise by comparing, which is the whole point of the comparative method. We cannot blame the university system, for our school education and media simply does not offer much information about countries other than India

Most of our universities now have another course called state politics. In most universities that I know, this is an optional course for MA students in the Indian politics stream. The course used to occupy a rather low status in the departments of Political Science. Its course content varies. Mostly, it either takes the shape of a course on the politics of the state where the university is located. Or it is a thematic course that picks up some main trends cutting across several Indian states. This course suffers both from a shortage of material and lack of attention. This is indeed a pity, for we have reached a stage in our democratic evolution where the real action has shifted to the states. Professor Palshikar and I have argued that states are the principal arena of political contestation. We have also put forward some prelimiary hypotheses to begin a discussion about theorising state politics in India. We now need to take the next step forward.

In this context I have a suggestion. We should make a study of "Comparative State Politics" a compulsory field for the students of Political Science. Such a course could draw its theoretical orientation and general insights from the study of comparative politics as it is understood in the rest of the world. This would mean organising the course around arenas, such as political institutions, political behaviour, political culture and political economy. But it would draw its empirical material and cases from the Indian states. Such a course would require our students to develop deep familiarity with states other than the one they are from. And it would ask them to compare across states and draw some comparative conclusions. Given that our students do have some idea of Indian states and can develop a lot more with some effort, they may actually be able to get something out of this comparative exercise. This would also allow teaching and learning of the discipline to the cutting edge research and would also shape doctoral research in the departments of Political Science.

This is just an initial suggestion. May I invite all the Lokniti newsletter readers to react to this proposal?

Yogendra Yadav

State of the Nation Survey August 2010

Lokniti, CSDS in collaboration with the CNN-IBN and The Week Magazine conducted an exclusive State of the Nations Survey (August, 2010) in 36 Naxal affected districts in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Orissa and West Bengal. The districts were selected based on the list of Naxal affected districts identified by the Planning Commission of India but slightly revised to take into account the current level of Naxalite activities in Bankura, Purulia, East Medinapur and West Medinapur districts in West Bengal, Kaimur in Bihar and Giridih in Jharkhand.

A total of 276 locations were randomly selected (8 each in 33 districts and 4 each in other 3 districts).

A total of 7728 randomly selected names from the updated electoral rolls were approached for interview of whom, 3990 interviews were successfully completed. The sample comprised of 46 percent women, 19 percent Dalits, 23 percent Adivasis (ST) and 90 percent rural which broadly reflects the population profile of these districts. Read More

For details on the findings of the survey click Main Findings

Readership Survey for Khabar Lahariya

Sanjay Kumar along with Rahul Verma and Dhananjay Singh designed the research instruments for a readership survey for Khabar Lahariya, a very innovative newspaper written in the local language, Bundeli.

Research Instruments included Questionnaire design, Sampling etc. Data checking, Data Entry and Data analysis was also done at Lokniti, CSDS. A day long Field Investigators training Workshop was conducted by Rahul Verma at Chitakoot in Bundelkhand on August 13th..The survey was conducted between 14^th August to 22^nd August… A little more about Khabar Lahariya

Research Group on Educational Inequalities

We are pleased to announce the creation of a new group comprised of researchers interested in the broad area of education inequalities in India. Various axes of social inequalities (caste, class, gender) are known to determine access to education, and unequal educational opportunities in turn reinforce social hierarchies. Education is one of the primary means for the inter-generational transfer of social inequalities, and an important facilitator of social mobility. The newly enacted Right to Education Act (RTE) forms the context to the research agenda of this group. Read More

Publications

Ashutosh Kumar
Exploring the Demand for New States
EPW, VOL 45 No. 33, August 14 - August 20, 2010

The increasing demand for new states raises a number of questions with regard to the well-being of India’s federal democratic polity. There are four measures that must be considered while devising any framework to address the issue of federal reorganisation. These are: the constitution of a permanent State Reorganisation Commission, amendment of the Constitution to ensure that the demand for a new state emanates from the state legislature and not at the centre, examination of economic and social viability rather than political considerations and clear-cut safeguards to encourage democratic concerns like development and governance rather than religion, caste and language as valid grounds for a new state….. Read full article

Mohd Sanjeer Alam
On Matching Census Tracts and Electoral Boundaries: The Bottom-up Aggregation Approach
EPW, Vol XLV No. 34 , August 21, 2010

Generating socio-economic profiles of electoral constituencies in India has been a long-standing problem. Although efforts have been made in the past by scholars and research agencies, the difficulty is far from being resolved. More often than not, the data on certain socio-economic parameters generated for electoral constituencies have been contested and debunked because of the difficulties and methodological problems facing the exercise of generating such data. A methodology that ensures greater accuracy of estimates of constituency level socio-economic data is attempted here….. Read full article

Sanjay Kumar
Regional Parties, Coalition Government and Functioning of Indian Parliament: The Changing Patterns,
Journal of Parliamentary Studies, Institute of Parliamentary Affairs, Government of Kerala, Vol. 1, Issue 1, June 2010

One of the studies indicates 28 percent of Indian people have great deal of trust in Indian Parliament, but at the same time the study also indicates nearly one third of Indian people hardly have any trust in Indian Parliament. Looking at these figures can we conclude that an average Indian has lost trust in Indian Parliament and at the same time the Indian Parliament has lost its relevance as an agency for bringing about social change in Indian Society?....... Read full article

Yogendra Yadav with Alfred Stepan, Juan J. Linz,
The rise of “State-nations”
Journal of Democracy July 2010, Volume 21, Number 3

One of the most urgent conceptual, normative, and political tasks of our day is to think anew about how polities that aspire to be democracies can accommodate great sociocultural and even multinational diversity within one state. The need to think anew arises from a mismatch between the political realities of the world we live in and an old political wisdom that we have inherited. The old wisdom holds that the territorial boundaries of a state must coincide with the perceived cultural boundaries of a nation. Thus, this understanding requires that every state must contain within itself one and not more than one culturally homogenous nation, that every state should be a nation, and that every nation should be a state. Given the reality of sociocultural diversity in many of the world’s polities, this widespread belief seems to us to be misguided and indeed dangerous since, as we shall argue, many successful democratic states in the world today do not conform to this expectation........ Read full article

Mangi Singh
Ethnic Conflict and Inter-Community Relations: The Manipur Experience
Indian Economy Review, Vol. VII, Quarterly Issue: 31 May 2010, Hyderabad.

The existence of numerous militant ethnic outfits in Manipur as protagonists of different exclusive claims and counterclaims; extortion of homeland taxes; quit notices served by one group to another; fight for control over resources; disagreements on sharing of the development opportunities; inefficient administration; lack of effective policing; poor governance; etc. have contributed to the outbreak of unprecedented ethnic violence from time to time in all the five hill districts of the state. Read full article

G.GOPAKUMAR
Edited and published a book on "Nehru and Modern India: Anatomy of Nation Building" New Century Publications, 2010. Read Introduction

Seminar Presentations

Dr. G.Gopa Kumar particiapted in the Interntional Seminar on "Environment and Sustainable Use" and presented a Paper on 'The Non-Timber Forest Produce and the Exploitation of Tribes in Kerala" held at Phuket, Thailand during July 9-13, 2010. The Seminar was jointly organised by the Prince of Songkla University, Thailand and the University of New South Wales, Australia.

Intern at Lokniti

Suvaid Yaseen a second year MA in the Department of Political Science at Delhi University is interning with Lokniti for August-September 2010 Here is Suvaid’s contribution to the Lokniti Newsletter

Witness - Shahid

You saw Kashmir, Shahid! You remembered it. You wrote it in your poems. I’m not a poet, Shahid. But I also remember it. Often. All the time. You saw Kashmir from Delhi at Midnight, Shahid. I’m also in Delhi. I have been here for quite long. And I remember it every night, midnight. Read through