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This paper is about transnational cancer care in Asia. People with terminal diseases such as cancer increasingly escape devastating prognosis of their local regimes of clinical diagnostic truth by traveling to destinations where medicine is more advanced, yet affordable for them, and hence offers a broader scope for hope. The paper suggests that transnational cancer care provides an instructive case of the enormous geographical disparities in the availability of therapies and how this, combined with economies of hope and the marketization of health care, affects patients and their family caregivers. The primary contribution of the paper is the introduction of the concept of relational subjectivities to the health mobilities literature. The findings presented proof that the concept provides a fruitful analytical lens, yielding not only fresh empirical insights but prompting re-conceptualizations of medical travel itself as hopeful, yet risky transnational acts of family care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The widespread notion that the city is secular and that therefore society’s future is secular is in need of serious reconsideration. This paper argues that religion does not melt away but rather morphs into modern forms of aspiration, speculation, and contention. Religion is therefore crucial to social inquiry into the nature of the urban. The paper argues that in Asia the Christian modern is close to the secular modern with fragments of rational planning and calculation in constant interplay with fragments of the magic of speculative modernity. Both communism and market capitalism are ideological cousins of Christian millenarianism. In a comparison of India, China, and Singapore it argues that the Christian form of modernity has been much better able to penetrate and coalesce with Sinic civilizational traditions than with Indic civilizational traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper attempts to explore the connections between expanding female education and the participation of women in paid employment in Japan, China and India, three of Asia's largest economies. Analysis based on existing data and literature shows that despite the large expansion in educational access in these countries in the last half century, women have lacked egalitarian labour market opportunities. A combination of social discouragement and individual choice largely explains the withdrawal, non-participation or intermittent female presence in the labour force, notwithstanding increased educational access. In taking stock of these issues and debates across these countries, it is argued that the parallel experiences of women in these countries can be traced back to persistent gender norms which, amongst other things, imply the centrality of marriage and non-market unpaid labour for women. The paper argues that there is a need for gender-sensitive public policy in order for increased education to translate to labour market gains for women, leading to sustainable development outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Reports in the British media over the last 4 years have highlighted the schisms and contestations that have accompanied the reports of gender selective abortions amongst British Asian families. The position that sex-selection may be within the terms of the 1967 Abortion Act has particularly sparked controversy amongst abortion campaigners and politicians but equally among medical practitioners and the British Pregnancy Advisory Service who have hitherto tended to stay clear of such debates. In what ways has the controversy around gender-based abortion led to new framings of the entitlement to service provision and new ways of thinking about evidence in the context of reproductive rights? We reflect on these issues drawing on critiques of what constitutes best evidence, contested notions of reproductive rights and reproductive governance, comparative work in India and China as well as our involvement with different groups of campaigners including British South Asian NGOs. The aim of the paper is to situate the medical and legal provision of abortion services in Britain within current discursive practices around gender equality, ethnicity, reproductive autonomy, probable and plausible evidence, and policies of health reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aggregates the state of India–China economic relations with a specific focus on trade at the borders. It explicates the potential for economic activity at the border regions to generate self-sustaining and/or externally linked local development for both countries. By an examination of the existing trade and investment policies and practices, it shows how geographical contiguity is yet to be transformed into opportunity along the India–China border, a practice consistent both with the history of these regions as well as with the blueprints being drawn up for the future of these regions. Informed by the Liberal school of IR theory, the paper studies border trade through the paradigmatic optic of being an important, yet underutilized, avenue of dyadic interaction, and makes a case for upgrading the status of border trade in the overall schema of bilateral trade relations between India and China. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the century following their conquest of the province, the British in Punjab erected an administrative apparatus that, like those of precolonial regimes, relied heavily upon the support of the province's landed class. The relationship between the landed class and the colonial state was one of mutual benefit, with the latter using the former to ensure the maintenance of order and collection of revenue in exchange for state patronage. In this paper, it is argued that this administrative framework gave rise to a path-dependent process of institutional development in Punjab, allowing for the different fractions of the province's landowning class to increasingly entrench themselves within the political order in the postcolonial epoch. This paper outlines the mechanisms underlying this process of institutional development, focusing, in particular, on the strategies adopted by the landowning class to reproduce its power. This paper also considers the potentialities for institutional change in Punjab, allowing for the creation of a more democratic and participatory politics in the province. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of ethnic minority peoples in Asia have long focussed on the relations between ethnic minority communities and the modern state and on the role of development in shaping these relations. This paper is concerned with how ethnic minorities respond to the state-led development. While there are numerous studies focussing on the collective agency of ethnic minorities opposing development projects, few studies consider the agency of pro-development actors. Pro-development actors are usually dismissed as co-opted, manipulated, inauthentic, or elite-driven, yet they can offer crucial insights into understanding state-ethnic minority relations and particularly intra-ethnic minority relations. This paper concentrates on pro-dam actors from the Lepcha minority in the Indian state of Sikkim to make four interlinked arguments. First, examining pro-development actors breaks the homogenous view of state-ethnic minority relations and shifts the focus to intra-ethnic relationships. Second, collective agency of ethnic minorities is not fixed in a particular relationship with the state nor does it have a particular position on development. Third, the long-term experience of development is vital in understanding how ethnic minorities manoeuvre and alter their position on contentious projects. Lastly, analysis of pro-development actors creates major dilemmas for researchers which are not easily overcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The trade in health services for foreign patients, often termed 'medical tourism' or medical travel, is a growing industry being aggressively marketed across Asia. This paper explores the industry development in four countries: Thailand, India, Malaysia, and Singapore, providing a preliminary review of the political economy of the industry, marketing strategies, and linkages. As yet, there has been neither academic work considering the implications of this trade for public health, nor studies on the medical travellers themselves and their experiences. The final part of this paper contemplates some of the implications for public health in the region, and the ethical issues this globalized trade presents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Setting up water users' associations (WUAs) and involving them in the management of delivery systems is an important innovation in improving the performance of public irrigation systems. Most Indian states are in a great hurry to turn over management of “below-the outlet” systems to WUAs. Yet the crucial link between the work done by the institutional organizers who set up these WUAs, the efficacy of the WUAs and the eventual performance of the irrigation systems remains unexplored. This paper attempts to explore this link. It shows that overdrive in the formation of WUAs may reduce their institutional sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the relationship between the Indian state and society for promoting economic growth and development in India. It argues that the shift to private sector and trade promotion, which was essential for growth, required technocratic conviction and economic crises, for accelerating the pace of change. While growth has resulted in social development, serious challenges to growth and human development remain. Poor physical and human infrastructure in many areas, and the politics of subsidies for the well-to-do at the cost of more inclusive public investment, pose major challenges for making the growth story a more inclusive one. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Eastern Karakoram is a remote and under studied region of Ladakh in the northwestern Himalaya. The geology of the area provides insight into the evolution of the south Asian margin since the Paleozoic and is dominated structurally by the Karakoram fault, an ∼800 km long dextral strike-slip fault that bounds western Tibet. In this paper, a 1:250,000 geological map is presented based upon fieldwork and interpretation of satellite imagery. An overview of the geology of the Eastern Karakoram is also presented and includes a discussion of the architecture and kinematics of the central segment of the Karakoram fault. The construction of the map has aided our understanding of the initiation and evolution of the Karakoram fault and of the geology of the south Asian margin in this region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]