Suchergebnisse

Climate change and environmental degradation are the two most pressing concerns faced by the world today for which regional cooperation is necessary. For regional cooperation, governments at the regional level must work together to coordinate activities, unify regulations and create risk-reduction plans. In South-east Asia, multiple initiatives have been taken for a shared framework for carrying out coordinated policy implementation. However, political and technical barriers have stymied efforts to suit the needs and benefits of partnering states. This article will analyse these problems and approaches in a few chosen South-east Asian nations and examine comprehensive action plans built on cooperative partnerships. It will offer a critical assessment of the environmental and climate-related issues South-east Asia faces and also offer recommendations on how to use policy tools to regulate and solve issues of regional environmental governance. It also looks at ways to counteract institutional and regulatory obstacles to reaching desired outcomes emphasising regulatory frameworks and policy.

Contemporary democracies have recognised that the traditional top-down administrative machinery needs to be reviewed in favour of a citizen-centric administration. The Second Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) had produced a number of significant reports in this regard. In this context, this article looks at an alternative document, Gandhian Constitution for Free India, to draw lessons in decentralisation and citizen-centric administration. Through a comparative reading of The Gandhian Constitution in light of Gandhi's life and ideas, and the extant administrative system in India, this article highlights the importance of Gandhi's ideas of decentralisation for citizen-centric administration in contemporary times. From a Gandhian vantage point, this article provides a doctrinal defence of decentralisation as a characteristic of a perfect democracy. The article also revisits the extant constitutional and administrative scheme for decentralisation—political, administrative and judicial—and provides suggestions that could help upscale and appraise the process of citizen-centric administration through proper decentralisation.

Stubble burning has emerged as an important environmental policy issue in India in recent times. This article contends that in addition to the apparent, practical reasons for burning stubble by farmers, there are also historical, policy-based reasons associated with the Green Revolution of India that has led to the perpetuation of the practice. It then provides an assessment of the extant policy responses toward the practice in India, and comments on their efficacies. Having done so, the article maintains that it would be more prudent to approach stubble burning by contextualising it within other environmental issues (and consequent policies) and not as an isolated issue in itself so that environmental sustainability and ecological holism are realised.