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| September 2005, No. 19 |
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Historical
Atlas in South India A three-year project for making a Historical Atlas of South India (from prehistoric times to 1600 CE) has just been launched by the IFP in collaboration with the Tamil University of Thanjavur (Dept of Epigraphy and Archaeology), Mahatma Gandhi University of Kottayam (School of Social Sciences), Mangalore University (Dept of History), and University of Hyderabad (Dept of History). The atlas will be prepared in digital format through a combination of maps, photographs, illustrations, texts and Geographical Information System (GIS) functionalities. The project is a culmination of joint efforts undertaken by the Institute and the Tamil University since late 2000. The Dept of Epigraphy and Archaeology of Tamil University had been building up in a computerized historical database since 1990 comprising geographical information from a large corpus of Tamil inscriptions and archaeological data collected through a series of village-to-village surveys by its staff and students in addition to the data collected by the staff of other premier institutions. First the Indian Council of Historical Research and subsequently the University Grants Commission too supported financially the data collection. The academic contacts established between the Tamil University staff and the GIS experts of the IFP, thanks particularly to the ardent efforts of Prof. François Gros of Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris, laid the foundation for the initial collaborative work during 2001-2004. The first phase, which was basically of an exploratory nature, was completed in 2004 and a prototype version of the atlas has been developed for the Pudukkottai (Central Tamil Nadu) region, which works both from a CD-Rom and on the Internet. This work has provided the collaborators the opportunity to explore multidisciplinary approaches in research by using History and Archaeology on one hand and GIS and Informatics on the other hand. For testing purposes, the content of the CD-Rom has been put on IFP's website (http://www.ifpindia.org/histatlas/). It has now become clear that the digital atlas could provide a novel and dynamic way of presenting historical knowledge on a geographical region and provide concrete tools to clarify the current issues relating to several historical aspects. Encouraged by the appreciation of scholars who viewed the pilot version, the present project that is more ambitious in terms of covering the entire South India is launched with a liberal financial grant of Ford Foundation. And in this venture five institutions have agreed to work together, thus making up a big research team. The Laboratory of Geomatics and Applied Informatics of the IFP will contribute towards the technological aspects including GIS and software. Four independent teams will be working in Thanjavur, Kottayam, Hyderabad and Mangalore for covering respectively the geographical limits of the present Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka states and will provide the primary mappable archaeological and historical data. A team of research assistants will undertake field surveys wherever necessary to fill the gaps of the existing data. The data will all along be organized so as to fit into the GIS framework and the progress of the work will be reviewed and evaluated in periodical workshops cum review meetings, by a panel of specialists and historians. The final product will be a computer-application, based on a CD (or DVD), giving access to a spatially referenced historical/archaeological database through navigation by time periods, space and themes. The database ,containing text, visual and, wherever necessary, audio material, will also be made accessible on the Internet to users worldwide. Contact: Prof. Y. Subbarayalu, ysray@ifpindia.org.
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FOCUS | |
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The Shaiva Manuscripts in Pondicherry registered in UNESCO's “Memory of the World” List The “Shaiva Manuscripts in Pondicherry”, the manuscripts housed in the IFP and Pondicherry Centre of the EFEO are to be inscribed on UNESCO’s “Memory of the World” register. An Indo-French nomination was jointly submitted in June 2004 by the IFP, the EFEO, and the National Mission for Manuscripts of the Indian government. The bulk of the manuscripts, on palm leaves, are preserved by the IFP in an air-conditioned room (renamed the “Jean Filliozat Manuscript Room” on the occasion of the IFP’s 50-year anniversary celebration earlier this year). The majority of the texts they transmit, written for the most part in Sanskrit and in Tamil, concern the theology and worship of the god Shiva: the IFP thus houses the largest collection in the world of manuscripts of the Shaiva Siddhanta, a religious tradition once spread right across the Indian sub-continent and beyond into South-East Asia. The collection was started in 1955 at the instigation of the IFP’s founder-director, Jean Filliozat, who was at the time also director of the EFEO. His starting point was the desire to explain the Hindu temple and what happens in it. He, therefore, initiated a project to collect together all the materials bearing on the Shaiva religious tradition in the South of India, of which the dominant school is the Shaiva Siddhanta. The agamas, the scriptures of the Shaiva Siddhanta, were in the 1950s neglected and virtually unknown to most scholars of Sanskrit in India as well as in the West. The efforts of the French institutions of research in Pondicherry have brought them to the attention of the scholarly world and seen many of them published. The palm-leaf manuscripts were gathered from the private collections of temples, priests and monasteries across South India. The principal collector was Pandit N.R. Bhatt, a scholar of the EFEO who has since become famous for his editions of Shaiva texts published in the IFP series. He regularly toured the Tamil country for years, always searching in particular for Shaiva manuscripts, but often bringing back entire collections, which explains why the library also contains much non-Shaiva material. The cataloguing project’s ultimate aims are to make digital images of these manuscripts, thus preserving their content, and to make these images, integrated with a catalogue, widely accessible over the internet. Contact: |
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TRIBUTE |
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Mme Hélène Brunner-Lachaux, who worked and published at the IFP and was an associate of the EFEO from 1959 to 1985 passed away on 27th March 2005 shortly before what would have been her 85th birthday. She first came to Pondicherry as a teacher of mathematics at the French Lycée. Interested by Shaiva religion, she joined the team of pioneering scholars of the Shaiva Siddhanta then working under the direction of Jean Filliozat. Her published work gained her an international reputation as one of the pillars of French indology in Pondicherry. This included a large number of articles in French and English, but she is well-known particularly for an invaluable four-volume study of ritual that played a crucial role in building the reputation of the French research Institutions for serious scholarship about Shaivism. The work in question is her richly annotated edition and translation of the eleventh-century Somasambhupaddhati, published in Pondicherry (PIFI 25) over a period of four decades (1963, 1968, 1977 and 1998). After the death of her husband, the Swiss philosopher Fernand Brunner, in 1991, she devoted much of her energy to his Nachlass. But she did not give up her plan to revise entirely the first volume of the Somasambhupaddhati, which she had come to see as superseded by her later work; for one of her admirable scholarly qualities was that she always remained ready to challenge and rethink her work. Sadly, her final years were rendered difficult by her illness, which she faced with stoicism. Her loss is regretted by friends and scholars. Contact: Dr Dominic Goodall, dominicgoodall@efeo-pondicherry.org
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RESEARCH |
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CSH Basic Urban Services, Decentralization and Local Development in Mumbai The main purpose of this research project is to examine and analyse the differentiated changes affecting various urban services (water, power, sewerage and solid waste management) in the context of liberalisation, decentralisation and the ongoing reforms of the public sector. Our starting point is the existing diversity of transformations according to sectors as well as the local political context. This project will first examine the diversity of reforms (unbundling of public monopolies, introduction of private sector, participation of civil society et al.), the implementation of new modalities of service delivery (new coordination mechanisms among actors, modes of financing, spatialized policies according to the types of habitat) and their impact on access to services. It will also place this analysis in the context of urban reforms envisaged by the Central government (municipal accounting reforms, city challenge fund, output-based financing of urban local bodies). It finally aims at assessing how these new forms of urban governance, by contributing to the emergence of a hybridmodel of service delivery, participate in the reshaping of the relationships between States and Urban Local Bodies and enable urban local bodies to drive their own economic development. Field work will be carried out in Mumbai, through quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews. This project is part of a collaboration between IRD (French Institute of Research for Development), the CSH and the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai. Contact: Marie–Hélène Zérah, zerah@ird.fr
IFP Irrigation in Tamil Nadu : local practices, public policies and sustainability of the resource availability. The objectives of this project on social water management are to analyse the implications of water policies on farmers' practices and on social vulnerability, and to compare the perception of various stakeholders on the water issue, within the framework of sustainability in the availability of resource. Indeed, as the Indian agricultural development has relied during the last few decades on water-consuming crops and on the use of groundwater without any stock management control, the country is facing a problem of water tables depletion. The water crisis is currently aggravated by increasing needs and overuse of groundwater. So attention has been given recently to a secular irrigation technique that involves "tanks" (or lake reservoirs) harvesting rainwater and surface drainage. Irrigation policies then focus only on surface water, rainwater harvesting techniques and the recharge of the groundwater. Based on field sites located in Villupuram district (Tamil Nadu) and Pondicherry, the program develops into three research streams:
Contact : Olivia Aubriot, olivia.aubriot@ifpindia.org Mangroves An article resulting from the collaboration between European and Sri Lankan researchers with the IFP has made the cover page of the scientific journal Current Biology (reference journal in biology with an impact factor 11.8) in its issue dated 29th March 2005. It deals with work completed in the framework of a project financed by the European Commission on the study of mangroves in India and Sri Lanka, to which IFP has contributed its competence in remote sensing and geomatics. The researchers have highlighted the degradation of mangroves, the fragile coastal ecosystem in the southern part of Sri Lanka. They have been able to link this degradation to an irrigation project that has been there since many decades which has deeply modified the hydrological equilibrium of the zone. This research in particular stands out after the catastrophe that affected the coasts along the Indian ocean, including those of Sri Lanka, as it was carried out in the districts of Matara and Hambantota that were particularly affected by the tsunami. It underlines, with others, the importance of mangroves in the protection of coasts (cultures, villages, et al.) against such natural calamities like tsunamis and cyclones. Dahdouh-Guebas, F., S. Hettiarachchi, D. Lo Seen, O. Batelaan, S. Sooriyarachchi, L.P. Jayatissa & N. Koedam, 2005. Transitions in ancient inland freshwater resource management in Sri Lanka affect biota and human populations in and around coastal lagoons. Current Biology 15(6): 579-586. Contact: Dr. Danny Lo Seen, danny.loseen@ifpindia.org Spatial organisation of trees in tropical forests at a regional scale: methodological and comparison issues between the western ghats in India and French Guyana For the first time, the French Ministry of Ecology and Sustainable Development (MEDD) has launched a proposal on Tropical Ecosystems open to teams working on sites situated outside the territory of France. IFP associated itself with UMR AMAP (botany and bioinformatics of Plant architecture, CNRS-CIRAD-IRD-INRA-University of Montpellier) to respond to this proposal. The project entitled Spatial organisation of trees in tropical forests at a regional scale: methodological and comparison issues between the western Ghats in India and French Guyana aims at two objectives above research as such :
Contact : Dr. Pierre Couteron, pierre.couteron@ifpindia.org Societies and Medicines in South Asia: Internationalizing Research on Health and Healing Issues This regional research programme examines health and healing traditions, giving particular attention to their social and political dynamics and to issues of identity. The general objective of the programme is to understand how contemporary therapeutic spaces are constructed, identified and legitimated in the South Asian region. Based on an international network, this research programme explores the networks of power surrounding health, the market for so-called traditional medicines and the appropriation by the government of the relation to the body. The constitution of therapeutic spaces appears as the product of social and political combinations, of historical conjunctures, of encounters between people and representations, between ideologies and ideals. A number of fundamental questions concerning the political dimensions of health naturally emerge from these observations and constitute the framework of the programme. The axes of research retained for this are the biomedicalization of indigenous medicines, the clinical trials applied to them, intellectual property rights, the professionalization of healers and institutions, and the commoditization of medicines. Embodying the Central recommendations to internationalize research, this programme gathers scientists from Europe (France, England, Austria, Germany, Romania, Belgium et al.), Asia (India, Japan, Vietnam) and America (USA) and has established a number of institutional partnerships with leading universities and research centres from the above-mentioned countries. Over 25 researchers and Ph.D. candidates are working coordinately so as to shed new light on the present state of healing systems and their historicity in South Asia. Contact: Dr. Laurent Pordié, laurent.pordie@ifpindia.org Agroforestry practices in six taluks, abetting the Western Ghats of Karnataka The project was funded by the Karnataka Forest Department under the Japan Bank International Cooperation (JBIC) programme and studied taluks covering three districts of Karnataka. This project, within the framework of the agroforestry project at the IFP, aims at exploring an adopted tree-based system, which constituted a very challenging issue for balancing the natural environment and socioeconomical improvement of the local community in the selected six taluks abetting the Western Ghats of Karnataka, South India. In addition, the inventory has an approach that combines perspectives from the farm trees’ structural and functional groups to understand the natural environment and farm tree diversity as well as farmers’ interest therein. In order to cover varied farms in a taluk, 25 farms per taluk were sampled by adopting a random sampling method. The primary data on farms and related tree species information was collected through a semi-structured questionnaire. In total, 155 tree species have been encountered from 150 farms. Within these, indigenous species are greater in number than those of the exotic species. Among these, there were 10 dominated species from all farms; Areca had highest tree density, followed by Coconut, Teak, et al. An overall observation of farm species diversity concluded that modern farms have low tree species diversity and evenness in contrast with traditional ones. It means that the modern farms are dominated by a few cash species, which yield in quick time; further observation revealed that there is no multistoried structure in these farms as in the traditional system. The introduction of cash crops is important, but this should not lead to the drastic structural and functional changes of the farm. Contact: V.P. Santosh, santosh.vp@ifpindia.org
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EVENTS |
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(For more information on events, please consult our respective websites) LECTURES/SEMINARS/ROUND TABLES/WORKSHOPS... CSH The Journées Louis-André Gérard Varet and the Public Economy Economic Theory (PET) meeting has been merged in 2005 in a unique conference that has taken place in Marseille on 16th-18th June, at the University of the Mediterranean, under the scientific coordination of professors John Conley (Vanderbilt University), Nicolas Gravel (CSH, Delhi), Alain Trannoy (EHESS, Marseille) and Myrna Wooders (Vanderbilt University). The PET Conference is the world’s most important conference in public economics while the journées Louis André Gérard-Varet have been, since their creation in 2002, the yearly meeting of public economics in France. The Marseille conference has hosted more than 200 contributed presentations given by economists from every part of the world. Apart from the papers contributed (selected from a pool of around 400 submissions), the conference programme featured the guest lectures of Prof. John Roemer (Yale University), Prof. Avinash Dixit (Princeton University) and Prof. Mathew O. Jackson (Caltech) devoted, respectively to the modeling of partisan politics, the reason for the inefficiencies of many real world economic policies, and the modeling of networks. The International Population Conference, a major scientific event organised every four years by the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, was held in Tours (France) from 18th-23rd July, with the support (among other sponsors) of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As part of this conference, a session on the “Dynamics of life spaces” was coordinated by Véronique Dupont, Director, CSH. The general objective of this session was to contribute to a better understanding of mobility strategies by associating individuals with a set of significant places. The focus was on three main dimensions that shape the individuals’ life spaces: their residential system, their places of work and study, and their spatial network of familial and other social relations. IFP Lecture Medicinal Plants in Landscape Dynamics of Western Ghats in Kerala: The Combined Issue of Biodiversity Conservation and Participation of Populations in Resource Management by Lucie Dejouhanet, from the University of Paris X–Nanterre and a residential Ph.D. candidate in Geography at the IFP (Dept of Ecology/Dept of Social Sciences, Programmes “Medicines and Societies in South Asia: Comparative Studies” and “Landscape Unit”), at the IFP, 29th April. The outlined the field surveys, which were carried out from January to April in the framework of Lucie Dejouhannet’s doctorate on the harvesting and usage of medicinal plants in Kerala. These surveys were made on a few forest hamlets and settlements, and tried to explain the logic of harvesting of medicinal plants by paying a special attention to the cartography and to spatial analysis. Lecture To provide analytical and explanatory models of debt bondage, based on a global and dynamic approach by G. Venkatasrubramanian, reseacher, Dept of Social Sciences, IFP, at the regional project office of the International Labour organization (ILO), Chennai, 27th May. The lecture consisted in the presentation of the Methodology and results of the study on “Brick kiln workers” along with policy suggestions. The main objective was to pursue the analysis by providing analytical and explanatory models of debt bondage, based on a global and dynamic approach. The research is based on the empirical data collected between July 2003 and September 2004 in brick kiln industry, which aims at providing: an in-depth analysis of informal financial practices (borrowing, lending and saving practices), an analysis of the diversity of employers and moneylenders; a better understanding of the dynamic of indebtedness, over-indebtedness and debt bondage; the whole range of factors which might explain debt bondage, both from the employers’ standpoint and from the workers’ point of view. Lecture Critical Review of Dalit Murasu Journal by M. Kannan, researcher, Dept of Indology, IFP, at the Ambedkar Research Foundation, Chennai, 10th July. The lecture was delivered on the occasion of the 10th Anniversary of the Publication of “Dalit Murasu”, organized by the Ambedkar Research Foundation. Lecture Local Conceptions and Cures of Disability by Nilika Mehrotra, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and organized by the Dept of Social Sciences (IFP), at the IFP, 22nd July. Lecture Implications of Tourism on the Ecosystem of Nagaland, North-East India by S.M. Patnaik, University of Delhi and organized by the Dept of Social Sciences (IFP), at the IFP, 22nd July. Lecture Antiretroviral Treatments for AIDS: An anthropological issue? Case studies and discussions from Africa to India by Prof. Alice Desclaux from the Research Centre “Culture, Health and Societies (CReCSS), Paul Cezanne University (Aix-Marseille 3), France, at the IFP, 5th August. The presentation of case studies in African countries will show how economic, social, institutional and cultural dimensions interact in various Antiretroviral Treatment (ART) programmes to shape trends in patients’ adherence. Then, through the role of India in international access to ART as it is perceived in Africa, we will discuss some issues regarding social and cultural aspects of ART treatment in India, considered at local and international levels. This conference will help define the role that anthropological research on ART may play in an applied perspective for the implementation of ART treatment, and in a theoretical perspective to document the contribution of medical anthropology to the understanding of social change under the globalization of cultural models. Workshop on Urban Dynamics by Prof. Philippe Cadène, University of Paris 7/SEDET, France and Dr. Kamala Marius-Gnanou, University Bordeaux 3/ADES-TEMPOS, France, at the IFP, 4th-5th August. This workshop aims to strengthen a network of South Indian researchers working on urban issues and economic development. This year, the debate will focus firstly on a future publication dedicated to the role of the New Economy in the development of Chennai and secondly on the new Tender Invitations concerning urban development issues. Workshop on Historical Atlas of South India jointly organised by the IFP, Tamil University of Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu, Mahatma Gandhi Univerity of Kottayam, Kerala, Mangalore University, Karnataka and University of Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, at the Jawaharlal Nehru Conference Hall, IFP, 8th-10th August. The aim of the workshop is to develop a comprehensive Historical Atlas of South India (from prehistoric times to 1600 CE) in digital format through a combination of maps, photographs, illustrations, texts, and Geographical Information System (GIS) functionalities. The participants in the workshop will evaluate the pilot version of the Historial Atlas prepared during the first phase (2001-2004) of the project by the Tamil University of Thanjavur and the French Institute and chalk out the modalities and programme for the second phase of the project to be carried during the next three years. |
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WELCOME |
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…at the CSH Julien Anthonioz-BLANC from Ecole Polytechnique de Palaiseau joined as an intern in the Economics Dept from May-July, under the supervision of Prof. Nicolas Gravel. This marks the beginning of a collaboration between the CSH and this reputed institution to provide internships for students. Marie-Hélène ZERAH, a research fellow in Urban Studies at the IRD (French Institute of Research for Development), has joined the CSH on deputation since 26th July for two years. She will conduct a project on Basic Urban Services, Decentralization and Local Development in Mumbai, in collaboration with the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (see Research section). …at the IFP Dept of Indology Anil Kumar ACHARYA, M. Phil student from Pondicherry University joined on 1st July for six months to work for the cataloguing and preservation of manuscripts in the framework of the IFP project under the supervision of Dr. Dominic Goodall. Jennifer Steele CLARE, Ph.D candidate from University of California, Berkeley, USA, joined from 4th July-12th August to work on her research on the history of Tamil commentary under the framework of the IFP project. While here, she studied regularly with T.V. Gopal Iyer (EFEO). Sean KERR, Ph.D candidate from South and Southeast Asian Studies Centre, University of California, Berkeley visited the Dept from 15th May15th June to work on his research Modern Tamil Literature in the framework of the IFP project. M.N. KRISHNAKUMAR, M. Phil student from Kamaraj University, Madurai, joined on 15th June for six months to work on manuscript survey in the framework of the IFP project. E. MANGAIVARATHAL, M.Phil trainee student from Pondicherry University and Annamalai University, joined from 9th June for six months to help in the documentation of contemporary tamil in the Library within the framework of the IFP project. Preetha MANI, Ph.D candidate from South and Southeast Asian Studies Centre, University of California, Berkeley visited the Dept from 15th May 2005-15th June to work on her research Comparative literature, Hindi and Tamil in the framework of the IFP project. V. PRIYA, BA (Tamil), MLIS, trainee student from Pondicherry University, joined from 1st June for six months to help in the documentation of contemporary tamil in the Library within the framework of the IFP project. Animesh RAI, Ph.D candidate from Graduate Centre of the City University of New York, visited the Dept from 16th June-31st August to work on his research Creolization in the former French territories of India (1674-1954) in the framework of the IFP project. Y. SUBBARAYALU, Ph.D, professor from Tamil University, Thanjavur, Tamil Nadu joined from 1st June for three years to work on the IFP project as chief of project and coordinator in collaboration with the Laboratory of Geomatics and Applied Informatics. Dept of Social Sciences Laure BURUS, a Master’s candidate in Political Science from the Institute of Political Sciences, Bordeaux, joined from 30th May-24th September. Philippe CADENE, professor of Geography at the University of Paris 7 and head of the project Urban Dynamics, joined from 12th July-16th August. Kamala Marius-GNANOU, associate professor at the University of Bordeaux 3 and UMR Ades Tempos, France joined from 4th July-4th September to supervise students working on their project Periurbanisation of Chennai. Jessica Leigh HACKETT, M.A. Anthropology from the University Paul Cezanne, Aix-en-Provence, France and Centre for Cooperative Research in Social Sciences (CCRSS), Pune, joined from 11th July-15th August to work on her project Transmission of Tradition, Knowledge & Techniques of Midwives of Rural Maharashtra: a study of the Social Dynamics surrounding Childbirth. M. THANUJA, researcher (Ph.D submitted to University of Madras) joined for six months from 1st May. Olivia AUBRIOT, Agro-ethnologist and research fellow at the CNRS joined the department on deputation since 21st February for a period of three years. Her programme explores the management of irrigation in Tamil Nadu: Access to water and social vulnerability. This programme will be conducted in collaboration with the IFP and the University of Pondicherry. Ashley OUVRIER, a PhD candidate joined the Dept on 19th February from University Paul Cezanne, France to work on the project Anthropology of HIV transmission from mother to child in Tamil Nadu. Laboratory of Geomatics & Applied Informatics Stephane VICTOR, student from ENSEIRB, Bordeaux, France joined from 6th June-15th August to work on his project Development of an application to be run on a Simputer under the IFP project. …at the EFEO Paolo GIUNTA, doctoral student of the University “La Sapienza” of Rome, spent five weeks in June/July pursuing his Sanskrit studies. He worked with the scholars employed at the Centre and consulted the Library. Emilie AUSSANT, doctoral student at the University of Paris III and fellow of the EFEO, studied Sanskrit grammatical texts with Prof. V. Venkataraja Sarma in July. Dr. Csaba DEZSO, assistant lecturer in Sanskrit at Eötvös Lorand University, Budapest, spent five weeks in Pondicherry working with Dominic GOODALL on their critical edition and translation of the Kuttanimata, an eighth-century satirical poem of Damodaragupta. Dr Herman TIEKEN, of the University of Leiden, spent six weeks at the Centre to work on an article dealing with a certain word in Cankam poetry and to collect material on the Pandya dynasty. He also participated at the Tamil Summer School organized by the Pondicherry Institute of Linguistics and Culture (PILC). Raef HODGSON, student at the University of Oxford, spent five weeks at the Centre to participate in the daily Saiva reading sessions.
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PUBLICATIONS |
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CSH |
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India’s North-East: Developmental Issues in a Historical
Perspective This volume provides a comprehensive study of the economic and political history of the north-east region. The main objective of the exercise is to understand the major developmental constraints witnessed by this region over the years and suggest policy prescriptions for future growth strategies. The analysis pertains to the entire north-eastern region, although the focal point is Assam for obvious reasons. First, from the viewpoint of geography, except Manipur and Tripura, all the other states of the northeast region were parts of undivided Assam for a fairly long time even after Independence. Second, there exists a rich corpus of historical research material for Assam but the same is not available for the other states. True, the region varies in terms of culture, ethnicity, geography and history of individual states but nonetheless the basic problems of underdevelopment are the same for all of them. The book attempts to contribute towards an in-depth understanding of the multi-faceted social, political, historical and economic problems that have beset the region over the years. Any analysis of economic development devoid of a historical perspective often ends up in a misadventure. Reputed economic historians and trained modern economists and political scientists thus attempt to put forward their views on developmental problems and their solutions. In doing so the volume adopts a framework in which the region is cast not in isolation, but as a part of the Indian mainstream.
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Against the Current (Volume II): Fixing Tariffs, Finance
and Competition for the Power Sector in India A non-starter for years, reforms of the power sector in India has finally started. In relation to the country’s growth and general economic buoyancy, the power sector has not only been slow with its reforms, but is also impeding the furthering and fostering of general reforms. In that respect, delays in reform not only bear a cost in terms of budgetary and human resource, but also in terms of credibility and opportunity. Every delay worsens the situation and the margin for wider option reduces. Some opportunities that are missed today will remain irremediably so. An articulate vision makes a pivotal difference and this is now the time of understanding (i) the organizational tasks, (ii) the tariff aspects, (iii) the role of the private sector, (iv) the role of technology in the complex, variegated, state-specific, Indian scenario. This new volume in the series, Against the Current deals with tariffs and the effective role of the private sector, and offers analyses by specialists and practitioners of different disciplines. The objective is to give leads for the creation of a diversity suitable to face challenges of a post-developmentalist running of the power sector. This book includes studies and papers presented and discussed at a seminar jointly organized by the Centre de Sciences Humaines and the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in September 2003.
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Contextualizing The Urban Healthcare System: Methodology
for developing a geodatabase of Delhi’s healthcare system This paper introduces the setting up of a Geographical Information System on Delhi for studies in the Social Sciences. Through an explanation of their methodological procedure and demonstration of thematic applications focusing on the healthcare system’s spatial organization, the authors lead us through the inherent difficulties of building a GIS in an emerging country like India. They also attempt to demonstrate that this kind of tool remains, however, a relevant support for research in the Social Sciences as long as it is used with care and knowledge of the dataset frame. From this perspective, Exploratory Data Analysis coupled with the play of scales provide powerful ways to assess socio-spatial dynamics taking place in the Indian capital. In order to help researchers in discovering the spatial database underlying discourse, this Occasional Paper has been published on a digital support (CDROM). This has especially allowed us to incorporate basic interactive mapping tools throughout the text. Moreover, a basic mapping interface is provided in the heading “Resources”, allowing users to build up their own maps. We hope this will give the opportunity to readers to experience by themselves the potential offered by the GIS.
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Assessing Policy Choices For Managing SO2 Emissions
From Indian Power Sector Air quality management has become a focal issue in public policymaking in India since the 1990s. Among the different sources, coal consumption in power plants is a major source of air pollution. 82 power plants, accounting for more than 70% coal-use, contributed to around 54% of all-India SO2 emissions in 2000. The paper analyses policy choices for managing SO2 emissions from power plants in an economically efficient manner. We compare the existing technology-push policy instruments vis-à-vis an alternate instrument like emissions trading. An energy-environment model, Asia-Pacific Integrated/Local Model (AIM/Local), is used to map future SO2 emissions from power plants and analyze implications of alternate instruments. Compared to a technology-push instrument, emissions trading generates an annual average cost-savings of US$ 96 million during 2005-2030 for equivalent emission reductions. This is because emissions trading offers greater flexibility to plants in making an abatement choice. The paper highlights the design elements of an emissions trading system in India. It lays emphasis on the need for stringent local air quality standards to complement an emissions trading system. This is an initial assessment and other large point sources can participate in later phases of the programme.
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IFP |
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The IFP has brought out a new catalogue of its publications. Considerable effort has gone into its preparation, as a complete description of each publication is henceforth being presented: reference, cover picture, summary, key words. The catalogue is now accessible on the website of the IFP at http:// www.ifpindia.org/pubs.html. The catalogue is part of a wider plan of highlighting and showcasing the IFP’s publications (posters, information to the media, announcement of just published books via the internet, tie-ups with distributors et al.).
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EFEO |
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Maran Alankaram. Mulamum palaya uraiyum vilakkankalutan
[Maran Alankaram. Text with old commentary and notes]. The present work is an edition of a sixteenth-century treatise on ornaments of speech in Tamil, a subject that forms the fifth section of traditional Tamil grammar. The treatise consists of 327 rules and 844 illustrative verses divided over five chapters. A number of the example verses are quoted from earlier literature or from other works of the author, Tirukkurukaip Perumal Kavirayar, but several hundred were specially composed for this treatise. The influence of the great medieval commentator Naccinarkiniyar can be discerned in many places. The Maran Alankaram has long been out of print since being published in 1920 by the Madurai Tamil Cankam. The present edition has divided sandhi, for ease of reading, and elucidated many verses that had hitherto received no commentary.
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Viracoliyamum Peruntevanar iyarriya uraiyum vilakkankalutan
This is an annotated edition of the well-known treatise on Tamil poetics composed by Puttamittranar in the 11th century, together with the commentary thereon of his disciple Peruntevanar. The treatise, framed in verses in karikai metre, is not easy to read without commentary. Much of the work is calqued upon Dandin’s hugely influential Sanskrit work the Kavyadarsa, and the author held the view, now generally abandoned, that Tamil, like other Indian languages, derived from Sanskrit. The editor gives a learned introduction to the work and elucidatory annotation.
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GOODBYE |
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... at the EFEO Martine GESTIN, post-doctoral scholar of the EFEO and Valérie GILLET (Paris III), Vincenzo VERGIANI (University of Rome “La Sapienza”), Estella DEL BON (EPHE) and Uthaya VELUPPILLAI (Paris III), scholars of the EFEO left during the months of July and August after staying at Pondicherry for periods between one year and six months during which they studied oral literary tradition of the Muduvar, Pallava narrative art, Sanskrit grammar and philosophy, Kashmiri linguistics and manuscripts, and the temple of Cirkali, respectively. |
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MILESTONES |
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A bookstore success for an IFP researcher The latest book of Laurent Pordié Panser le monde, penser les medicines, published by Karthala in March 2005, has been a bookstore success: best sales shelf for many weeks in several bookshops in France and selected as “book of the month” by specialized websites. This publication is the first of a new series in medical anthropology, entitled Soins d’ici, soins d’ailleurs, conceived and edited by Laurent Pordié. L. Pordié, anthropologist and ethno-pharmacologist, specialist in the socialtransformations of medical systems (especially in Tibetan medicine), heads the Dept of Social Sciences at the IFP and recently launched a project of international stature “Societies and Medicines in South Asia: Comparative Studies”. |
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INSTITUTES |
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CENTRE DE SCIENCES HUMAINES Director Administration Research Divisions ECOLE FRANCAISED’EXTREME-ORIENT Director The Pondicherry Centre The Pune Antenna Pondicherry Administration Pune Head
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INSTITUT FRANÇAIS DEPONDICHÉRY Director Administration Scientific Departments Other services For information on Pattrika & Publications, please
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