Madhushree Sekher - Böcker

Food security is one of the twenty-first century’s key global challenges, and lessons learned from India have particular significance worldwide. Not only does India account for approximately one quarter of the world’s under-nourished persons, it also provides a worrying case of how rapid economic growth may not provide an assumed panacea to food security. This book takes on this challenge. It explains how India’s chronic food security problem is a function of a distinctive interaction of economic, political and environmental processes. It contends that under-nutrition and hunger are lagging components of human development in India precisely because the interfaces between these aspects of the food security problem have not been adequately understood in policy-making communities. Only through an integrative approach spanning the social and environmental sciences, are the fuller dimensions of this problem revealed. A well-rounded appreciation of the problem is required, informed by the FAO’s conception of food security as encompassing availability (production), access (distribution) and utilisation (nutritional content), as well as by Amartya Sen’s notions of entitlements and capabilities.

Food security is one of the twenty-first century’s key global challenges, and lessons learned from India have particular significance worldwide. Not only does India account for approximately one quarter of the world’s under-nourished persons, it also provides a worrying case of how rapid economic growth may not provide an assumed panacea to food security. This book takes on this challenge. It explains how India’s chronic food security problem is a function of a distinctive interaction of economic, political and environmental processes. It contends that under-nutrition and hunger are lagging components of human development in India precisely because the interfaces between these aspects of the food security problem have not been adequately understood in policy-making communities. Only through an integrative approach spanning the social and environmental sciences, are the fuller dimensions of this problem revealed. A well-rounded appreciation of the problem is required, informed by the FAO’s conception of food security as encompassing availability (production), access (distribution) and utilisation (nutritional content), as well as by Amartya Sen’s notions of entitlements and capabilities.

Building, largely, on insights from India, and case studies in Brazil, China, and South Africa, this book provides insights into the contested topic of ‘governance and governed’ from a state–society inter-relationship perspective. It argues that the centrality of an understanding of state-governance today is rooted in concerns regarding diversities and contingencies of concrete political reality to address inequalities, exclusion and vulnerabilities. These countries are part of the BRICSs consortium, and have been recognised for their growth potential in the world economy. But their economic progress alone may not necessarily translate into a better quality of life. The approach here is not to focus on a particular understanding of governance, but to utilise a wider lens to understand the nature and extent of incremental processes in the different case-study contexts in order to offer a broader framework for procedural and substantive understanding of governance, rather than a prescription of a government and its activity of governing. The focus is on deriving practical lessons about governance process that are of interest to the wider development community.

Building, largely, on insights from India, and case studies in Brazil, China, and South Africa, this book provides insights into the contested topic of ‘governance and governed’ from a state–society inter-relationship perspective. It argues that the centrality of an understanding of state-governance today is rooted in concerns regarding diversities and contingencies of concrete political reality to address inequalities, exclusion and vulnerabilities. These countries are part of the BRICSs consortium, and have been recognised for their growth potential in the world economy. But their economic progress alone may not necessarily translate into a better quality of life. The approach here is not to focus on a particular understanding of governance, but to utilise a wider lens to understand the nature and extent of incremental processes in the different case-study contexts in order to offer a broader framework for procedural and substantive understanding of governance, rather than a prescription of a government and its activity of governing. The focus is on deriving practical lessons about governance process that are of interest to the wider development community.

This book analyses and discusses the multiple dimensions of social exclusion/inclusion seen in South Asia. It not only captures how ‘social exclusion’ is intrinsic to deprivation or deprivation in itself, but also the processes of political engagement and social interactions that the socially excluded develop as strategies and networks for their advancement. Consequently, the book goes beyond structures or agency, and examines the question of a more dynamic approach to provide spaces for the ‘socially excluded’ to self-manage exclusion, thereby raising discussions around the contested positions that underlie development discourse on social inequality.While social exclusion linked to identities is studied, the book argues that hierarchies and inequalities based on social identities cut across and affect various groups of excluded. Consequently, these phenomena create or lead to various processes of exclusion. The book illustrates that social exclusion should not be limited to privileging the differences that characterize the exclusionary processes, but should also comprise underpinning strategies of ‘inclusion’, emphasizing the need to focus on imperatives ‘to include’. As a result, the book acknowledges that social exclusion is not limited to analyzing the different identities that face exclusion, but also understanding the systems and processes that create social exclusion, or create opportunities for inclusion of the excluded.The book addresses readership across academic disciplines (including in the growing field of state capacity and governance), and practitioners (administrators and policy-making communities). Conclusively, the book, provides a platform to intensively exchange the multifaceted and critical issue of social exclusion/inclusion, and thus contributes to inclusive sustainable development discourse.