Since the publication of the 2005 Human Security Report, scholars and policy-makers have debated the causes, interpretation and implications of what the report described as a global decline in armed conflict since the end of the Cold War. Focusing on the Asia-Pacific region, this book analyses the causes and patterns of this decline. In few regions has the apparent decline in conflict been as dramatic as in the Asia-Pacific, with annual recorded battle deaths falling in the range of 50 to 75 percent between 1994 and 2004. Drawing on a wide range of case studies, this book looks at internal conflicts based on the mobilization of ethnic and nationalist grievances, which have been the most costly in human lives over the last decade. The book identifies structures, norms, practices and techniques that have either fuelled or moderated conflicts. As such, it is an essential read for students and scholars of international relations, peace and conflict studies and Asian studies.

Since the publication of the 2005 Human Security Report, scholars and policy-makers have debated the causes, interpretation and implications of what the report described as a global decline in armed conflict since the end of the Cold War. The Human Security Project argues that 'the world is becoming less war-prone. In few regions has the apparent decline in conflict been as dramatic as in the Asia-Pacific, with annual recorded battle deaths falling in the range of 50 to 75 percent between 1994 and 2004. Drawing on such a wide range of case studies, this volume analyses the causes and patterns of this decline in armed conflict by focusing on that sub-set of conflicts that in the Asia-Pacific have been most costly in human lives over the last decade: internal conflicts based on the mobilization of ethnic and nationalist grievances. Diminishing Conflicts in Asia and the Pacific identifies structures, norms, practices and techniques that have either fuelled or moderated conflicts. As such, it is an essential read for students and scholars of international relations, peace and conflict studies and Asian studies.

In India, you can still find the kabaadiwala, the rag-and-bone man. He wanders from house to house buying old newspapers, broken utensils, plastic bottles-anything for which he can get a little cash. This custom persists and recreates itself alongside the new economies and ecologies of consumer capitalism. Waste of a Nation offers an anthropological and historical account of India's complex relationship with garbage. Countries around the world struggle to achieve sustainable futures. Assa Doron and Robin Jeffrey argue that in India the removal of waste and efforts to reuse it also lay waste to the lives of human beings. At the bottom of the pyramid, people who work with waste are injured and stigmatized as they deal with sewage, toxic chemicals, and rotting garbage. Terrifying events, such as atmospheric pollution and childhood stunting, that touch even the wealthy and powerful may lead to substantial changes in practices and attitudes toward sanitation. And innovative technology along with more effective local government may bring about limited improvements. But if a clean new India is to emerge as a model for other parts of the world, a "binding morality" that reaches beyond the current environmental crisis will be required. Empathy for marginalized underclasses-Dalits, poor Muslims, landless migrants-who live, almost invisibly, amid waste produced predominantly for the comfort of the better-off will be the critical element in India's relationship with waste. Solutions will arise at the intersection of the traditional and the cutting edge, policy and practice, science and spirituality.

The cheap mobile phone is arguably the most significant personal communications device in history. In India, where caste hierarchy has reinforced power for generations, the disruptive potential of the mobile phone is even more striking than elsewhere. In 2001, India had 35 million telephones, only four million of them mobiles. Ten years later, it had more than 800 million phone subscribers; more than 95 per cent were mobile phones. In a decade, communications in India have been transformed by a device that can be shared by fisherfolk in Kerala, boatmen in Banaras, great capitalists in Mumbai and power-wielding politicians and bureaucrats in New Delhi. Village councils banned unmarried girls from having mobile phones. Families debated whether new brides should surrender them. Cheap mobile phones became photo albums, music machines and radios. Religious images and uplifting messages flooded tens of millions of phones each day. Pornographers and criminals found a tantalising new tool. In politics, organisations with cadres of true believers exploited a resource infinitely more effective than telegrams, postcards and the printing press for carrying messages to workers, followers and voters. Jeffrey and Doron focus on three groups - controllers: the bureaucrats, politicians and capitalists who wrestle over control of radio frequency spectrum; servants: the marketers, agents, technicians, tower-builders, repairers and second-hand dealers who carry mobile phones to the masses; and users: the politicians, activists, businesses and households that adapt the mobile phone to their needs. The book probes the whole universe of the mobile phone - from the contests of great capitalists and governments to control radio frequency spectrum, to the ways ordinary people build the troublesome and addictive device into their daily lives.

Updated to cover events between 1986 and 1992, including the destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya in December 1992, the book analyses the secessionist crisis in Punjab which led to Indira Gandhi's murder and examines larger themes of ethnic conflict and threats to Indian unity. The Punjab example sheds light on processes at work in the rest of India, as the introduction to the new edition of the book points out. It also considers the domestic implications for India of a world in which 'socialism' and 'non-alignment' have lost much of their meaning.

In 1990 approximately ten per cent of Indian babies died in their first year - but in Kerala state on the southwestern coast, infant mortality was less than three per cent. Kerala also boasted India's longest life expectancy and highest female literacy in India. Yet Kerala's per capita income was less than the lowly national average. The so-called Kerala Model has teased scholars and policy-makers since the 1970s. Is it possible to achieve a tolerable standard of living without the immense costs of industrial or political revolutions? This book argues that the disintegration of matrilineal social structure and a rigid system of caste generated widespread politicization. In this process, though women both lost and gained, they have retained a position of autonomy unique in India. This book explains how this combination of politics and women has produced the supposed "well-being" associated with the Kerala Model. For people interested in comparative politics, development policy and the position of women in society, this book examines key issues. Historians of South Asia will also find a social history that pushes beyond the conventional stopping date of 1947 - into the 1990s and the

Updated to cover events between 1986 and 1992, including the destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya in December 1992, the book analyses the secessionist crisis in Punjab which led to Indira Gandhi's murder and examines larger themes of ethnic conflict and threats to Indian unity. The Punjab example sheds light on processes at work in the rest of India, as the introduction to the new edition of the book points out. It also considers the domestic implications for India of a world in which 'socialism' and 'non-alignment' have lost much of their meaning.