Understanding Governance in South Asia

The concept of good governance in South Asia poses a challenge at the implementation level, mainly due to ethnocentricity, regional disparities, division between poor and rich, and rural and urban division among the people. Concepts such as decentralization, citizen engagement, lean public service, privatization, autonomy, public-private partnership may work well in developed countries but may not produce the same results in the region where the majority of poor people expect their government to fulfill their basic needs.
Governance in South Asia needs to be reformed to ensure that poverty can be reduced, if not completely eradicated. Poor governance and the various means by which governance has fallen short, has led to lack of development and continuance of poverty in South Asian societies.
South Asian countries have more or less similar objectives, structures, value systems, cultures, and standards of governance despite different forms of government. The colonial legacy of British administrative system had its impact on centralization. Secrecy, elitism, rigidity, and social isolation is common to all South Asian countries. The post-colonial administrative system is built upon pre-colonial administrative traditions throughout the region. These countries can learn from each other?s experiences. They need to develop an indigenous model to find pragmatic solutions to the challenges of good governance. This book argues that countries in South Asian can achieve good results through good governance if they develop and adopt an indigenous model rather than simply borrowing models and ideas from the West.
Please note: This title is co-published with Manohar Publishers, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Part 1: Governance in South Asia: Background 1. Governance in South Asia: A Conceptual Analysis Part 2: Governance and Globalization 2. Macroeconomics of Governance in South Asia 3. Governance in Contemporary South Asia: Regional and Global Dimensions 4. Role of Good Governance on Growth of Per Capita Income in South Asia: A Debate on Means and Ends 5. Changing Global Power Constellation: China’s Rise and Its Implications for South Asia Part 3: Governance, Politics and Violence in South Asia 6. Governance and Conflict in South Asia 7. Uneasy Partnership: Political Parties and Governance in South Asia 8. Securitization of Nation-building: Scope and Limits of State Coercion against Insurgent Violence Part 4: Governance in South Asia: Case Studies 9. Statecraft in Jammu & Kashmir: Collapse of Governance 10. Representative Democracy, Identity Politics, and Participatory Governance: The Indian Experiment 11. Politics of Performance: A Comparative Study of Governance Models in India 12. Wildlife and Governance in India 13. Revisiting Indus Water Treaty 14. Governance and Geopolitics in South Asia 15. The Impact of Political Instability in Governance in Nepal

Adluri Subramanyam Raju is Professor and former Head, UNESCO Madanjeet Singh Institute of South Asia Regional Cooperation (UMISARC) and Centre for South Asian Studies, and Coordinator of the UGC Centre for Maritime Studies, Pondicherry University, Puducherry.