Editorial Preface: Special Issue on Contemporary Problems in India

The last time the Journal of Developing Societies (JDS) published a special issue on India was in December 2010 (volume 26, issue 4). The title and focus of that issue was “Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Indian Society.” This time JDS has decided to publish a special issue on India that is focused on a series of important contemporary problems, which the authors categorize as unfree labor in rural south India, illness-induced poverty in the urban areas, the relationship between tourism and the sex trade and HIV/AIDS in Goa, the largely unregulated recycling of electronic waste in many of India’s cities, the rise of environmental movements in India, and the popular struggle against a bottling plant owned by the transnational Coca-Cola Company in Kerala. These are neither micro nor macro level problems, but mid-range problems of contemporary Indian society, and the authors of the articles in this issue reveal the historical and contemporary economic, social, political, and environmental causes and effects of these problems in India today.

The first article by Wendy Olsen of the University of Manchester and Jamie Morgan of Leeds Metropolitan University focuses on the entrapment of unfree labor in rural South India. It draws upon the findings of 130 case studies and the author’s extensive field research. They argue in this article that the conditions of unfree labor are variable and subject to change but that the basic vulnerabilities of unfree laborers are contingent on a few factors: (a) the entrapment of these laborers, (b) their immiseration within their bondage, and (c) the barriers that prevent their exit from their labor contracts. The theoretical framework and findings reported in this article provide a basis for further empirical research on unfree labor in a variety of global settings beyond India.

The next article by Samik Chowdhury of the University of Delhi is a study of illness induced impoverishment in urban India. As Chowdhury reveals health care is expensive for the un-insured and often constitutes a potential poverty trap. Urban India is particularly vulnerable in this regard given the widespread demand for health, the absence of a structured health care system, overburdened public institutions, the largely unregulated private health care market, and the generic paucity of public funds. Using nationally representative household data, this article examines both the degree and depth of impoverishment resulting from out of pocket medical expenses, and the variation of this illness induced poverty across India’s states and selected socio-economic strata. Chowdhury reveals that approximately 6 percent of the urban population or about 18 million people in India face impoverishment entirely due to out of pocket medical expenses. The findings are of great relevance as India prepares to embark on its journey toward universal health coverage.

Savio Falleiro’s case study of the adverse environmental, social, and health effects of tourism in Goa reveals the linkages between international tourism, the sex trade, and HIV/AIDS in India. Goa is (inter)nationally known as a world class tourist destination. But Falleiro, who is the head of the department of economics at the Rosary College of Commerce and Arts in Goa, shows us the connections between what he calls “haphazard tourism” and HIV/AIDS as well as adult, and child prostitution. This article reveals the vicious connection between haphazard, unethical or volume-focused tourism and HIV/AIDS as well as other sexually transmitted diseases. The author makes a convincing case for ethical, responsible, and community-based tourism in Goa and for how this type of tourism can contribute to the prevention of HIV/AIDS, the sex trade, and environmental degradation.

The next article in this special issue focuses on the generation and recycling of electronic waste in India. The author Anwesha Borthakur, who is a doctoral fellow at the Centre for Studies in Science Policy at Jawaharlal Nehru University focuses on the stakeholders involved in the production, consumption, recycling, and disposal of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) or what is more commonly referred to as E-waste. This article reveals that the evolving dependence on electrical and electronic equipments (EEEs) in almost every walk of life and the amount of E-waste generated worldwide is increasing at an alarming rate. Unfortunately, in India, this article reveals that the current methods of storage, processing, recycling, and disposal of E-waste have immense potential to harm human health and the natural environment. The author identifies and evaluates the involvement of the various stakeholders in the generation and recycling of E-waste in India. She reveals that the informal E-waste recycling sector dominates the recycling of E-waste in India. The findings and conclusions of her research lead her to call for an integrated approach to E-waste management in India, which must include all the various stakeholders.

The article by Arun Kumar Nayak, who is in the Department of Political Science at the Government Degree College in Santir Bazar, focuses on the historical development of environmental movements in India. This article investigates the factors that appear to have determined the success and failure of environmental movements in India. It is based on a comparative analysis of the environmental movements during the colonial regime, post-independence regime and the more recent era of economic liberalization. The author recounts how the environmental movements during the British colonial period and after independence in the 1960s and 1970s were suppressed by the state. And he argues the factors that were responsible for the relative success of the environmental movements in the late 1970s and 1980s have not produced as much success in the more recent era of liberalization. According to the author, this can be explained by the increasing collaboration between the state and multinational corporations, which have led to the suppression of the more recent environmental movements, except for those which manage to gain strong support from opposition political parties.

The final article in this issue is a very interesting case study of the successful popular struggle that has been carried out against the transnational Coca-Cola Company in Plachimada, Kerala. This article is based upon the research of Henrik Berglund, who is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Stockholm University and Sofia Helander, who is a doctoral candidate in the same department at Stockholm University. Their research reveals that the popular struggle developed as a reaction to the environmental damages and water depletion caused by the company’s bottling plant in Plachimada. Their case study is based on interviews and surveys of the villagers in Plachimada and they apply theories on social movements and political participation to this case. Their findings reveal the importance of having a local, core group in charge of this kind of popular struggle, while simultaneously making use of support groups at the regional, national, and international levels. This case study reveals that after reaching the struggle’s goal, this popular struggle has contributed to a general increase in the political participation of many of those who were involved in the struggle.

This special issue on India which is based largely on articles written by Indian scholars provides a good example of an important set of issues which international journals such as JDS have to face to an increasing degree. The global spread of English (Crystal, 2003) and its increasing use in international academic publications, conferences, and international communications has made it an international lingua franca while at the same time the acculturation and nativization of English in various parts of the world has produced many nativized or derivative Englishes, including Australian English, Hong Kong English, Indian English, Nigerian English, Philippine English, Samoan English, Singapore English, Euro English, etc. (For more information on this subject see the History of English website listed in the references.)

The well-known linguist Braj Kachru (1990 and 1992) has devised a schema with concentric circles to facilitate understanding the varieties of World Englishes (Bhatt, 2001) in the world today and how they differ from one another. This model of World Englishes consists of three main categories/circles as follows:

The inner circle is where English is the first language of the majority of people: Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, the USA, etc.

As Shi (2013) has pointed out in her JDS article on the glocalization of English in China, this model presents a simplified illustration of the number and diversity of World Englishes, but it also unintentionally suggests that the inner circle Englishes – particularly British and North American Englishes – are the source of correct standards of pronunciation, syntax, etc.

Some scholars contend the global spread of English contributes to the economic, political, and cultural domination of the US and the UK and represents a form of linguistic imperialism (Pennycook, 1994, 1998; Phillipson, 1992, 2013), while most of the literature on World Englishes and to some extent the literature on second-language acquisition suggests that native speaker pedagogical models that use so-called native speaker standards of English are by their very nature disempowering and inappropriate in the expanding circle of countries where English is being learned and used by hundreds of millions of people. Since there are now a much larger number of people using English in the outer and expanding circles than the total number of all native speakers of English, it is reasonable to question why native-speaker standards of English should be held up as the “correct” standards of pronunciation, syntax and “the best” English-language literature, songs, and other types of English language goods and services (Graddol, 1997, p. 10). There is also a genuine concern that the so-called native speakers or first language speakers of this international language may have an unfair advantage in many circumstance over those who use English as their second or even third language.

Some scholars of World Englishes such as Kirkpatrick (2010, pp. 169–190) argue that rather than following the traditional native speaker standards and pedagogical models of English, a more inclusive, contextual, and multilingual perspective of the English language should be adopted in terms of pronunciation, grammatical standards, vocabulary, and the teaching of English in the many multilingual areas of the world such as Asia and Africa. The major goal of this multilingual approach, Kirkpatrick says, should be the ability to use English successfully as a lingua franca without favoring one group of English speakers over another. Should international academic journals such as JDS follow this path? Should we try to neutralize the cultural and political identity of English, should we do our very best to adapt to the reality that English has become an international lingua franca spoken by people around the world, should we try to level the academic publishing playing field by adopting more flexible linguistic standards and perhaps publish manuscripts written in the numerous derivative varieties of World Englishes?

The editors of JDS are challenged by these questions on a regular basis since we receive and review manuscripts written by scholars from all of Kachru’s circles of World Englishes. This special issue on India, for example, contains manuscripts written by scholars from the “inner circle” of countries where English is the first language, the “outer circle” where English is an official language in a multilingual setting (in this case India) and the “expanding circle” where English is being taught to large numbers of people as an international language and used frequently as an international lingua franca. In reviewing and editing the manuscripts for this issue (and all our issues) we try to walk a delicate line between insisting on “native-speaker” standards of English and taking the more inclusive, contextual, and multilingual perspective of English which scholars such as Kirkpatrick and Kachru recommend. We hope that our authors and readers will appreciate how we face and deal with this challenge.