At the beginning of the second decade of the new millennium, South Asia has emerged as a key regional variable in the contemporary global order. The last decade saw the region experiencing a robust phase of economic growth and development. Over time, South Asia's economic progress is expected to accelerate, given its favourable demography and strategic location. The prospects of faster economic growth and development, however, will materialize depending upon the region's success in handling various challenges including security, climate change, political instability and ethnic strife. It is in this context that the Sixth International Conference on South Asia brought together academics and policy specialists to provide insights and contribute to an understanding of the challenges and prospects facing the region in the new decade. This volume is a collection of the papers presented at the Conference and assembles a large and diverse set of viewpoints and perceptions on the region.

Political violence has remained an integral part of South Asian society for decades. The region has witnessed and continued to encounter violence for achieving political objectives from above and from below. Violence is perpetrated by the state, by non-state actors, and used by the citizens as a form of resistance. Ethnic insurgency, religion-inspired extremism, and ideology-driven hostility are examples of violent acts that have emerged as challenges to the states which have responded with violence in the form of civil war and through violations of human rights disregarding international norms. This book explores various dimensions of political violence in South Asia, namely in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. Each chapter either speaks to an important aspect of the political violence or provides an overall picture of the nature and scope of political violence in the respective country. Political violence is understood in the larger sense of political, that is, above and beyond institutions, and also as an integral part of social relationships where social norms and the role of individual agency play seminal roles. The contributions in this book incorporate both institutional and non-institutional dimensions of political violence. Exploring how everyday life in South Asian states and societies is transformed by the engagement with violence through direct and indirect methods, this book adopts an interdisciplinary framework; diverse methods are employed – from ethnographic readings to more macro level analyses. The phenomenon is explored from historical, sociological, and political perspectives. This book will be useful as a supplementary text in courses on South Asian Studies in general and South Asian Politics in particular.

The book introduces central themes that have preoccupied the field of South Asian politics over the last few decades and identifies new, emerging areas of research. Presenting both general political theory and context-specific case studies, the collection draws attention to the methodological challenges of working on an area-specific theme and the importance of generating generalizable insights linked to theory. Hence it will be of interest for political scientists working on South Asian politics as well as on other non-Western societies. The collection represents an unusually broad survey of scholarship emerging from a range of leading academic centres in the field.

The modern states of Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore, Cambodia, Laos, Brunei, and East Timor were once a tapestry of kingdoms, colonies, and smaller polities linked by sporadic trade and occasional war. By the end of the nineteenth century, however, the United States and several European powers had come to control almost the entire region - only to depart dramatically in the decades following World War II. perspective on this complex region. Although it does not neglect nation-building (the central theme of its popular and long-lived predecessor, In Search of Southeast Asia), the present work focuses on economic and social history, gender, and ecology. It describes the long-term impact of global forces on the region and traces the spread and interplay of capitalism, nationalism, and socialism. It acknowledges that modernization has produced substantial gains in such areas as life expectancy and education but has also spread dislocation and misery. Organizationally, the book shifts between thematic chapters that describe social, economic, and cultural change, and country chapters emphasizing developments within specific areas. will establish a new standard for the history of this dynamic and radically transformed region of the world.

South Asia's developing nations have been enjoying moderate to high growth over the past decade before the global recession began. This new edition provides an up-to-date guide to the growing markets in South Asia. It offers an analysis of the changes and consequences of high sustainable growth, investigating what has been achieved in the region during the last ten years from a macroeconomic viewpoint, identifying new challenges and clearly defining what has driven the boom. The first part of the textbook presents an analysis of how South Asia is rated against Southeast and East Asia in recent decades in economic and social terms. The second part of the text focuses on South Asia's economic development over 1990s and mid-2000s, and the third and final part identifies those major governance issues, which were responsible for South Asia's underperformance both socially and economically. It is widely recognised that globalisation enhanced global trade, and that trade further increased the region’s prosperity. Embracing the view that economists can no longer regard themselves as technocratic guardians of neutral policy advice, the book advocates for a shift in focus from policy reform per se to the more challenging task of implementing institutional reform that will invigorate the capability of the political leadership to bring about rapid, sustained and poverty-reducing growth in South Asia. The central task would be to re-direct the focus of governments in South Asia in order to ensure that the core functions of the state stable, non-distortionary policy climate, a secure foundation of law, investment in basic education, health and infrastructure, protection of the vulnerable and adapting with the climate change are efficiently provided. At the same time, the reform agenda must be sensitive to the goal of ensuring that durable democratic institutions, traditions and values are preserved. This is a fundamental challenge, but one that must be met in order to secure the emergence of a prosperous South Asia in the early part of the twenty-first century. This textbook will be useful for students and researchers in Development Economics, Business Economics, Development Studies and Asian Studies.

The South Asian subcontinent is home to nearly a billion people and has been the site of fierce historical contestation. It is a panoply of languages and religions with a rich and complex history and culture. Drawing on the newest and most sophisticated historical research and scholarship in the field, Modern South Asia is written in an accessible style for all those with an intellectual curiosity about the region. After sketching the pre-modern history of the subcontinent, the book concentrates on the last three centuries from c.1700 to the present. Jointly written by two leading Indian and Pakistani historians, it offers a rare depth of historical understanding of the politics, cultures and economies that shape the lives of more than a fifth of humanity. In this comprehensive study, the authors debate and challenge the striking developments in contemporary South Asian history and historical writing. The book provides new insights into the structure and ideology of the British raj, the meaning of subaltern resistance, the refashioning of social relations along lines of caste, class, community and gender, the different strands of anti-colonial nationalism and the dynamics of decolonization. This book is a work of synthesis and interpretation covering the entire spectrum of modern South Asian history - social, economic and political. The authors offer an understanding of this startegically and economically vital part of the world.