Department of Humanities and Social Sciences

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Author: search.filters.author.Nair, Harikrishnan GopinadhanSubject: search.filters.subject.Social Sciences

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 14
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    Identity, indigenous insurrections
    (Shipra, 2009-01) Nair, Harikrishnan Gopinadhan
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    The nature and functioning of democracy
    (Pearson Education, 2009) Nair, Harikrishnan Gopinadhan
    Contemporary India: Economy, Society, Politics, published in 1999, takes an in-depth look into the different types of issues that this country faces. It covers various aspects of contemporary India, and focuses on both nation-state, as well as the civil society. This book is divided into three sections, namely Economy, Society, and Politics. It contains various conceptual and empirical themes. The authors have used democracy as a common thread to bind different topics to each other. The first part, Economy, starts off with the basic features of the Indian economy during the time of Independence. Some other topics are food insecurity, economic policies, human development, regional disparities, and IT and social change. The next portion is titled Society, and its explains the sudden emergence of the Indian middle class. It also speaks of changes in social structures, the challenges and opportunities of social movements, catalysts of social change, and social mobility. The last section, Politics, has eleven chapters. Readers can learn about the parliamentary system, the Panchayati Raj, the nature of coalition politics, the changing nature of public administration, and why secularism is important to this country. Some other chapters are The Nature and Functioning of Democracy, India in the Global Strategic Environment, and Dimensions of Indian Federalism. The contributors of this book are research scholars and teachers of the University of Delhi. The content of each chapter is well-researched, and has been written in a conversational style to make it easy for readers to understand these diverse topics. Contemporary India: Economy, Society, Politics is for the general reading public, undergraduate and postgraduate students, professionals, and journalists. It also contains questions, a glossary, and a reading lists for students who are using this book to study for their Social Science examinations.
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    Where Teachers Learn
    (Economic Political Weekly, 2015-11) Nair, Harikrishnan Gopinadhan
    Rajesh Misra and Supriya Singh (“Continuum of Ignorance in Indian Universities,” EPW, 28 November 2015) rightly highlight a number of deficiencies in Indian universities. But they have focused only on a possible framework of solutions for degeneration of the quality of faculty members interpreted by this author as degeneration of teaching quality; anomalies in teaching methodologies; and obsessive orientation towards exams. The possible framework of solutions is threefold: by incorporating learning outcomes while planning for courses, by working out graduate student attributes for degree programmes, and the institutionalisation of teaching–learning centres (TLCs). This note is thus divided into three parts: first, the “what and why” of learning outcomes; second, the relationship between learning outcomes and graduate student attributes; and third, the rationale and role of TLCs.
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    Reflections on Teaching–Learning in Gandhi Studies
    (Sage, 2020-12) Nair, Harikrishnan Gopinadhan
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    Traditions of Republican Citizenship
    (Pearson Education, 2022) Nair, Harikrishnan Gopinadhan
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    Consentimiento y autonomía política del indio americano en el pensamiento tardío de fray Bartolomé de Las Casas
    (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 2009) Nair, Harikrishnan Gopinadhan
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    Critical Perspectives on the National Policy on Education 2016
    (Sage, 2017-08) Nair, Harikrishnan Gopinadhan; Bhattacharya, Somdatta; Shukla, Tanu; Yadav, Anupam
    This article brings together critical perspectives on a broad range of issues that emerge from a reading of the National Policy on Education 2016. The issues vary from accountability to transdisciplinarity and from the marginalization of transgender people to value education. Such a complex task of critiquing this policy document cannot be accomplished by an individual alone. This task must be borne by a team of scholars with training in diverse fields. Working in a team however generates divergences as well as convergences. Yet no attempt has been made to iron out the creases emanating from differences in opinions, nor persist with the search for an underlying singularity, nor enforce a consensus. Such is the uncertain nature of the task of reforming higher education.
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    Institutionalising Social Audit in Meghalaya
    (Economic Political Weekly, 2018) Nair, Harikrishnan Gopinadhan
    The Meghalaya Community Participation and Public Services Social Audit Act, 2017, is the first state-level legislation explicitly aimed at institutionalising the procedure of auditing public works and programmes by the people residing in villages and urban localities through public hearings. Auditing at public hearings (jan sunwai) was initiated by the Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan in the 1990s in Rajasthan, and the Meghalaya act has elements comparable to the Rajasthan Right to Hearing Act, 2012. Both these acts further the movement for transparency in governance, accountability of public servants to the citizens and redress of people’s grievances.
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    From Jan Sunwai to Rajasthan Right to Hearing Act 2012: Fostering Transparency and Accountability through Citizen Engagement
    (Sage, 2018-09) Nair, Harikrishnan Gopinadhan
    This study examines the evolution of the movement for transparency towards redressing grievances and holding public servants accountable to the people. It explains how three legislations—Right to Information Act (RTI, India, 2005), Rajasthan Guaranteed Delivery of Public Services Act (RGDPS, 2011) and the Right to Hearing Act (RTH, Rajasthan, 2012)—form part of a continuum in the people’s struggle for transparency. The analysis of the three acts as a continuum is significant because together these are gradually changing the administration-centric Indian polity into a citizen-centric one. If the RTI Act ensured an informed citizenry, the RGDPS Act recognized the government’s duty to provide public services and the RTH Act guaranteed that the people were heard by the government. This right to hearing may be traced back to the Jan Sunwai, which was a pivotal forum in the struggle for transparency because it functioned as a dialogical space between the people and the state, as well as a forum for social auditing and civic engagement. Of late however, the Jan Sunwai is being transformed by digital technology. This transformation poses the challenge of converting a participatory polity alive with people’s voices into a transactional state regimented by technology