For decades, large dam projects have been undertaken by both nations and international agencies with the aim of doing good: preventing floods, bringing electricity to rural populations, producing revenues for poor countries, and more. But time after time, the social, economic, and environmental costs have outweighed the benefits of the dams, sometimes to a disastrous degree. In this volume, a diverse group of experts-involved for years with the Nam Theun 2 dam in Laos-issue an urgent call for critical reassessment of the approach to, and rationale for, these kinds of large infrastructure projects in developing countries. In the 2000s, as the World Bank was reeling from revelations of past hydropower failures, it nonetheless promoted the enormous Nam Theun 2 project. NT2, the Bank believed, offered a new, wiser model of dam development that would alleviate poverty, protect the environment, engage locally affected people in a transparent fashion, and stimulate political transformation. This was a tall order. For the first time, this book shows in detail why, despite assertions of success from the World Bank and other agencies involved in the project, the dam's true story has been one of substantial loss for affected villagers and the regional environment. Nam Theun 2 is an important case study that illustrates much broader problems of global development policy.

Imagining Pakistan argues that the creation of Pakistan is a result of Muslim modernism in the Subcontinent, as it defined the struggle for identity, nationalism, and empowerment of Muslim communities. This modernist movement represented the ideals of inclusivity, equal rights, a liberal constitutional framework, and a shared sense of political community among diverse ethnic and regional groups. However, while this modernity was the ideal of Pakistan's founders, it faced resistance from Islamists obsessed with recovering a past legacy of lost Muslim glory. A major threat to political modernism also came from the military that wanted to create a strong and secure Pakistan through 'controlled' democracy. Multiple interventions by the military and deviations from the foundational republican ideas left Pakistan in the rough sea of power struggles, causing institutional decay and creating space for the rise of radical Islam. Imagining Pakistan analyzes the institutional imbalance between the military and the civilian groups, the idea of the security state, and the Islamist social forces and movements that have been engaged in the politics of Islamic revival. It argues that Pakistan's stability, security and progress will depend on pursuing the path of political modernity. Although the restoration of parliamentary democracy and the resilience of the Pakistani society are hopeful signs, resolving the critical issues that Pakistan faces today will require consolidation of democracy, better leadership, and a moderate and modernist vision of both, the state and the society.

The collection contains materials of archival documents and memoirs concerning the famine of 1931-1933 in Central Kazakhstan. Various documents from the archives reveal to the reader the most difficult period of the Soviet history of Kazakhstan, associated with the dispossession of the kulaks and debaiization of the Kazakh village and aul, Stalinist forced collectivization, forced sedentarization of nomadic Kazakh farms, large-scale cattle, meat and grain procurements, famine and epidemics in the republic. The publication introduces previously unpublished archival materials from the Central and regional archives of Kazakhstan into scientific circulation. In addition, the collection includes the memories of famine witnesses preserved by their descendants. The collection is addressed to researchers, students, as well as a wide range of readers interested in the history of Kazakhstan.