PATTRIKA - Bulletin of The French Research Institutes in India

The Ministry of Foreign affairs, the French Embassy in Delhi and the French Institute of Pondicherry, partners of the 2nd International Congress "Cultures of Knowledge", presided by Umberto Eco

The French Institute of Pondicherry (IFP), the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) of Mumbai, and the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) of Delhi, in partnership with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the French Embassy in Delhi, the Goethe Institute of New Delhi and the European Commission, hosted the Conference Cultures of Knowledge organized by the Transcultura association from 17th to 24th October 2005.

The Transcultura association, created by Umberto Eco and Alain Le Pichon, aspires to be an "international transcultural think-tank". Founded on the principles of "reciprocal knowledge", respect and mutual enrichment, it develops methodologies of transcultural analysis applicable to different situations and intercultural contexts. The association aims to provide Europe with an instrument of observation and reflection concerning the major trends manifested in the framework of the cultural, scientific and economic relations that it maintains with its partners in other cultural areas of the world. Its initiative is backed by the European Commission.

The association organized its first conference in 2001 at the European Parliament in Brussels under the patronage of Romano Prodi. This second, itinerant, conference, which theme was the place of culture in the production of knowledge, took place in three stages: Goa/Bombay (17th-18th October.), Pondicherry (20th-22nd October) and Delhi (23rd-24th October).

The session in Goa (IIT), enabled to lay the conceptual foundations of the notion of "reciprocal knowledge". During the session in Pondicherry (IFP), which was the longest, named « Knowledge and scientific knowledge in an epistemological approach », different forms of knowledge, in fields such as Esthetics, Ethics or still Anthropology, were examined. This session started with a conference held by Umberto Eco, on the concept of knowledge in esthetics. A report on the conference and the operational perspectives were listed during the third session (JNU, Delhi).

This conference brought together some 40 contributors from the European, Asian and African continents, as well as representatives of the European Commission. A large public was present during the first two sessions, and two roundtables were organised during the third session, one of them public, organised by the Centre de Sciences Humaines and the Alliance Française de Delhi, and introduced by the Ambassador of France, and the other one, reserved for the professorial corps and students of JNU.

This second conference permitted to lay the foundations of a "Transcultural Observatory" dedicated to the transcultural analysis of key questions resulting of the encounter and confrontation of European and Asian cultures. The Indian partners of the Transcultura network pointed out at that time, their wish for the FIP to play a role of interface between Europe and India, and to initiate conjoint research projects. For more information, please visit the Transcultura and IFP websites:
http://www.transcultura.in http://www.ifpindia.org/-Seminars-.html

Contact : Jean-Pierre Muller, ifpdir@ifpindia.org

PUBLICATIONS
	CSH
	Beyond the Transition Phase of the WTO: An Indian Perspective on Emerging Issues Dipankar Sengupta, Debashis Chakraborty, Pritam Banerjee (eds.) Academic Foundation, New Delhi, 2006, 683p, Rs 1195 This book is devoted to those issues affecting international trade and domestic development whose international regulatory framework has not yet come up for discussion or whose final contours have not yet been decided upon so far. The various studies of lawyers and economists that go into this edited volume discuss issues ranging from the International Trade in Services including Telecommunications, Transport, Education and E-commerce to questions of compatibility between Obligations towards Environmental Protection and Social Concerns codified in international treaties and protocols and an International Trade Regime that promotes free trade. The volume discusses current problems that affect India’s Agriculture like SPS-TBT, and Agricultural Subsidies as well as the issue of Seed Protection and Genetically Modified Crops. It also looks at problems and prospects of Indian industry in the face of the MFA phaseout and TRIPS. The volume projects about future problems that will rise as India enters into an increasing number of Regional Trading Arrangements as well as her experiences where Dispute Resolution at the WTO is concerned. The Volume concludes with a discussion on the Singapore Issues like Trade Facilitation, Government Procurement and Competition Policy. The volume not only discusses the importance of these issues to India as well as the current ‘state of play’ but suggests the appropriate positions for India to take on all these issues at the WTO negotiations and other fora if a Global Agreement on an issue is not probable.
	Reconfiguring Identities and Building Territories in India and South Africa Philippe Gervais-Lambony, Frédéric Landy & Sophie Oldfield (eds.) Manohar-CSH, 2005, 346p, Rs 745 Questions of territory, space and identity are critically important in the international geopolitical context as well as central to contemporary research in the social sciences. Processes connected with globalization have reconfigured identities and territories at multiple scales, connecting and disconnecting places in complex ways and re-enforcing old while producing new forms of segregation and polarization. Global processes meet the complex and locally specific South African and Indian geographies of inequality, expressed at national, regional and local scale. In the South African case, a political imperative to transform the legacies of racial inequality from colonial and apartheid rule underscores the centrality of racial identities. However, racial discourse and differentiation embodies and at times masks a complex mix of place-based, gender, class and cultural identities, expressed in a multi-scalar politics of territory. More than 50 years into independent rule, Indian identity politics continues to build to a large extent on caste and the intricate ways in which caste-affiliation merges with religious, socio-economic, political and place-based identities. In both contexts, the politics of identity and territory simultaneously unify and divide. The spaces, territories and identities (re)produced in the complex contexts in which the global, national, regional and local meet lie at the heart of the research from which the papers in this book have been generated. The research investigated the reconfiguration of Indian and South African identities and territories through dialogue primarily between geographers, but also other social scientists, from India, South Africa and France.
	Democratization in Progress: Women and Local Politics in Urban India Archana Ghosh & Stéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal Tulika Books, 2005, 158p, Rs 375 This book presents the findings of an empirical study of the implementation of women’s reservations in four Indian megacities: Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai. It offers a detailed and lively account of what it means to be a woman Councillor in an Indian mega-city today, and a critical view of the functioning of Municipal Corporations, with specific emphasis on women’s roles and opportunities to participate and perform in their new environment. By choosing to consider the decentralization policy in general and women’s reservations in particular as an experiment in democratization, the authors provideCSH useful and useable insights into a range of issues at stake. To what extent, in what ways and under which conditions can increased political representation of women at the local level empower women? Is the functioning of urban local bodies truly participatory and inclusive? What are the (other) reforms needed to make women elected to urban local bodies more effective agents of urban development? The first part of the book presents the theoretical, legal, material and institutional contexts in which the implementation of reservations for women must be situated. The second part analyses the empirical findings of the study and reflects on the relevance of gender in urban local self-government. The book thus provides new, concrete data on the question of women’s political representation. It also contributes to the ongoing global debate about the relationships between democracy, inclusive urban governance, social justice and development.
	Ensuring the Conformity of Domestic Law with World Trade Organisation Law. India as a Case Study Julien Chaisse, CSH Occasional Paper 13, New Delhi, 2005, 189p The World Trade Organisation (WTO), established in 1995, provides a contractual framework within which Member States undertake to implement law and regulations regarding foreign trade in a wide range of sectors. The purpose of this study is to examine why and how WTO rules are actually implemented and to what extent they have changed Indian law. The conformity of Indian law to WTO regulations is compulsory for two reasons. Firstly, by declaring that, "each Member shall ensure the conformity of its law, regulations and administrative procedures with its obligations as provided in the annexed Agreements", the Agreement establishing WTO affirms the obligation for all the Members to ensure such compliance. The legal consequences of this obligation are discussed with regard to the effective adaptation of Indian domestic law. Secondly, WTO has set up a new dispute settlement mechanism to monitor the compliance of domestic law with WTO regulations. The contribution of this mechanism in ensuring conformity to WTO rules has been assessed with reference to India’s involvement in disputes. On the theoretical side, this study identifies the characteristics peculiar to WTO that ensure the implementation of its regulations and oblige India as well as other Members to comply with international norms. On the practical side, it gives an overview of the recent innovations or changes in Indian law that are presently applicable and simultaneously assesses India’s integration in international trade governance.
	EFEO
	Tamil Ilakkanam Perakarati (An Encyclopaedia of Tamil Grammar and poetics). Acirriyar Ti. Vi. Kopalaiyar (Editor T.V. Gopal Iyer), Tamilmanpatippakam/EFEO, 2005, 17 vol.; Rs 4000 Language: Tamil, preface in English (Distributed by Tamilmanpatippakam, Chennai, and EFEO) The Tamil Ilakkanam Perakati is an enormous encyclopaedia of Tamil grammar and poetics, one of the most fruitful disciplines in Tamil thinking and writing. It compiles the information given in the erudite texts of 2 millennia – treatises in verse and a huge number of prose commentaries – ordered into 17 volumes containing key words in alphabetical order, split along the lines of traditional sub-disciplines. The three main sections are Ezuttu (phonetics), Col (morphology and syntax) and Porul (poetics), where two volumes fall on Ezuttu, 4 on Col, and 11 on the various sub-disciplines subsumed under poetics: 2 for Yappu (metrics), 2 for Ani (figures of speech), 4 for Akam (love topics), 1 for Puram (heroic topics), 1 for Pattiyal (literary genres), Payiram (prefaces) and Marapiyal (word usage), and at last 1 for Meyppatu (physical manifestation), Natakam (drama), Alavai (valid means of knowledge), Anantakkurram (collocations to be avoided), Niyayam (logic) and Vazuvamaiti (poetic licence). The last of these volumes contains an extensive bibliography. The information provided gives the terminological key words, their alternatives in various texts, the definitions pertaining to them as to be found in different treatises, the explanations and discussions connected with them in the commentaries, the examples from literature (i.e. quotations from the poetry), along with the author’s own explanations.


	January 2006, No. 20