Project Name
“Effects and Potential of Decentralized Development: A Search for Democratic Stability through Comparative Researches of India’s 29 States”
Our Accomplishments and Future Goals
Our research group has committed to a comparative research of various State Politics in India since we got a Grant–in–Aid for Scientific Research in 2012. Our 5 year-long collective research reveals:
- Problems are different from one State to the other, which require a different approach for doing research of each State,
- Every State has a unique history, which requires due consideration of historical aspect in order to analyze the present situations of a State,
- While under certain influence from the Central politics, State has its own unique political functions,
- Therefore, it is worth doing comparative researches of each States’ uniqueness with Central politics as a frame for reference.
Taking these accomplishments into account, our next goal is to study the two points below by assigning each of 29 States and Delhi Capital Area in India to each research member as his/her research area(s):
[1] How each State has developed its uniqueness in the overall federal framework,
[2] And how that uniqueness has been able to contain the elements of potential disputes, and how those States have used the framework of ‘India’ or what Influences they have received from it.
Aims of the Research
This research project is to analyze India in the politics of its composite States rather than as a nation but rather as an assembly of each states which is in order to search for the process and the mechanism of how India has today become a significant actor in terms of economy and international politics as a Regional Power by overcoming succeeding crises and establishing democratic stability despite its diversity in languages, religions, castes and so on, which have potentials for crises of conflicts, disputes and secessionism. This will open a new sphere of ‘comparative study of different and uniquely developing state politics which is developing independently even under the control of the sovereign authority and find a factor of coexistence and development by competitions between different and rival entities in a sovereign state, which can be a suggestion for the regional disputes in the post-Cold War global society.
Research Plans in 2017 Academic Year (April 2017 to March 2018)
- Field works will be done in accordance with the individual plan of each member. (-> Field Work Reports)
- Two Research Seminars will be held in a year. (-> Research Seminars)
- In addition to research presentations, field work results will also be presented in those research seminars. (->Field Work Reports, ->Research Seminars)
- Through this website, research information will be shared among research members and be open to the public to the possible extent.