In the mid-1990s, experts predicted that India would face the world's biggest AIDS epidemic by 2000. Though a crisis at this scale never fully materialized, global public health institutions, donors, and the Indian state initiated a massive effort to prevent it. HIV prevention programs channeled billions of dollars toward those groups designated as at-risk—sex workers and men who have sex with men. At Risk captures this unique moment in which these criminalized and marginalized groups reinvented their "at-risk" categorization and became central players in the crisis response. The AIDS crisis created a contradictory, conditional, and temporary opening for sex-worker and LGBTIQ activists to renegotiate citizenship and to make demands on the state. Working across India and Kenya, Gowri Vijayakumar provides a fine-grained account of the political struggles at the heart of the Indian AIDS response. These range from everyday articulations of sexual identity in activist organizations in Bangalore to new approaches to HIV prevention in Nairobi, where prevention strategies first introduced in India are adapted and circulate, as in the global AIDS field more broadly. Vijayakumar illuminates how the politics of gender, sexuality, and nationalism shape global crisis response. In so doing, she considers the precarious potential for social change in and after a crisis.

This book provides an analytical discussion of the status of disaster risk reduction and governance in an Indian context, drawing examples and lessons from the output of the national and regional level programs and projects and from other relevant experiences in the country. Different types of disasters faced by Indian states are covered, including geophysical and hydrometeorological hazards. The book incorporates and draws upon some of the key lessons from the pre-disaster phase through the disaster phase and finally to the post-disaster phase, thus establishing an effective framework in the form of key lessons learned. The rich content of the book is based on contributions from various stakeholders, from academicians and practitioners to decision makers and nongovernment organizations related to disaster risk management systems in an Indian context. Special emphasis is given to analyzing field experiences from academic perspectives and pointing out key issues along with the relevance of risk governance of disaster risk reduction. The book works as a comprehensive reference in disaster risk governance for disaster managers in India and other countries. The book has 19 chapters organized into four parts. Part I provides the outline and basics of disaster risk governance perspectives at the national level with supporting examples from a global point of view. Part II specifically emphasizes the detailed perspectives on risk governance at the regional and local levels. Part III is devoted to approaches and issues of disaster risk governance and development at various levels, stressing the practices and clear examples of disaster risk governance, policy options, institutional organization, risk-reduction strategies, and key lessons learned. Finally, Part IV highlights risk reduction and cross-cutting issues, focusing on risk mitigation and scientific intervention for disaster risk reduction.

India’s economy has slowed substantially before and after the global financial crisis. The economy is in a weaker position than before the crisis. With investment particularly hard-hit, potential GDP is likely to be lower than estimated. Inflation is constraining the room for monetary policy easing. Banks’ capital ratios have fallen slightly, but asset quality is deteriorating considerably. The current account deficit registered a record high in 2011–12. Delivering on structural reforms, fiscal consolidation, and low inflation are critical for a sustained recovery.

We see the stories in the newspaper nearly every day: a drug hailed as a breakthrough treatment turns out to cause harmful side effects; controls implemented to reduce air pollution are shown to generate hazardous solid waste; bans on dangerous chemicals result in the introduction of even more risky substitutes. Could our efforts to protect our health and the environment actually be making things worse? In Risk versus Risk, John D. Graham, Jonathan Baert Wiener, and their colleagues at the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis marshal an impressive set of case studies which demonstrate that all too often our nation's campaign to reduce risks to our health and the environment is at war with itself.

Revised version of papers presented at an international conference held at Indian Institute of Management Bangalore in February 2011.

Using historical and ethnographic analyses, this book shows how Indian markets are embedded in society and politically contested.