This collection of essays takes an in-depth and analytical look at India and its neighbourhood against a brief historical backdrop of each country and addresses the vital question of whether these political developments served as markers of substantial political change regarding constitutionalism, democracy, secularism, human rights, and human development in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. It explores whether such political events of great magnitude had changed only political dispensations in these countries or have they actually inspired new political discourse and created a new vision among the political class. How had the people responded to these changes and the new situations triggered by them? This volume will provide a holistic view of the region while focusing on politics and political culture of each neighbouring country.

This book examines constitutional law and practice in five South Asian countries: India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bangladesh.

Title first published in 2003. Chowdhury looks at the problems of democratization and development as it relates to building democratic institutions in the newly democratizing countries such as Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.

"This report seeks to shift the locus of discourse on democracy away from the global North to 'most of the world'. It does so by examining democratic experience in South Asia - a region marked by poverty, illiteracy, complex diversities, and multiple and overlapping structures of social hierarchy-and by daring to ask not just what democracy has done to South Asia but also what South Asia has done to democracy. Based on the first - ever social scientific survey of political opinions and attitudes across the five countries in the region-Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka-the report offers a fresh analysis of the promise of democracy for the ordinary people, its institutional slippages, obstacles in its functioning, and its mixed outcomes. The report combines public opinion data with expert assessment, case studies, and dialogue with democracy activists."--BOOK JACKET.

This volume addresses the idea of origins, how things are formed, and how they relate to their present and future in terms of 'constitution-making' which is a continuous process in South Asian states. It examines the drafting, nature, core values and roles of the first modern constitutions during the founding of the eight modern nation-states in South Asia. The book looks at the constitutions of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. It provides an explanatory description of the process and substantive inputs in the making of the first constitutions of these nations; it sets out to analyse the internal and external (including intra-regional) forces surrounding the making of these constitutions; and it sets out theoretical constructions of models to conceptualise the nature and role of the first constitutions (including constituent documents) in the founding of the modern nation-states and their subsequent impact on state-building in the region.

In recent years the constitutional landscape of Southeast Asia has changed tremendously. Against a worldwide background of liberalization, globalization, and democratization, states in the region have begun to alter their constitutions, reinforcing human rights provisions, and putting in place institutional safeguards, such as constitutional courts and human rights commissions. On closer examination, however, the picture is very complex, with constitutional developments differing greatly between states. This book explores a range of current constitutional developments in the different states of Southeast Asia through a distinct political lens. Drawing on comparative and single case studies, it considers various constitutional areas, including constitution drafting, human rights, legal safeguards and the continuing role of the military, sets constitutional developments in the wider political and historical context of each country, and makes comparisons both with Western democracies and with other developing regions. The book concludes by assessing overall how far constitutional practices and trajectories are converging towards a liberal Western model or towards a distinctly Southeast Asian model.

This text discusses the principal political and constitutional questions that have arisen in the states of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka following fifty years of independence. In Sri Lanka the pressing problems have been around the inter-ethnic civil war, experiments with constitutional designs, widespread prevalence of corruption and the recrudescence of Buddhist militancy. In India it has been corruption, Hindu nationalism and general political instability. In Bangladesh and Pakistan it has been the role of the military, the state and religion. A general theme is an analysis of the malaise that is prevalent and how and why this was inherited, despite the colonial legacy of parliamentary democracy, the steel framework of a trained bureaucracy, the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law.