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1 |
ID:
077582
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Publication |
2007.
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Summary/Abstract |
Who is stealing electricity' at Tis Hazari?-the principal magistrate's court for the city of Delhi. The mystery, it turned out, had a simple solution. It implicated a large proportion of the 1500 lawyers' chambers in the court buildings. According to the Vice-President of the Delhi Bar Association (Criminal), the problem arose because the Delhi Vidyut Board 'had installed electricity junction boxes in the premises and has not given any regular connection to individual chambers. Hence, most lawyers had to make their own arrangements'. By this, he meant that the lawyers resorted to tapping electricity from the board's supply lines to run their lights and fans, their refrigerators, air-conditioners and computers. Speaking on behalf of the criminal lawyers, and lending a certain adjectival force to their professional description, their Vice President admitted that it was true that 'earlier, we were stealing electricity. … But now we have taken up the matter with the DVB and have shown our eagerness in seeking regularised connections'. It was almost as if he expected that their eagerness could be entered as a plea in mitigation.
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2 |
ID:
077583
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Publication |
2007.
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Summary/Abstract |
Karachi is a city of migrants and an important commercial hub, which provides Pakistan with a window on the world. But Karachi is also a deeply fragmented city, plagued by an acute urban crisis that takes roots in the failure of the development plans that successive Pakistani governments have delegated to foreign experts. The transnationalisation of the Afghan jihad, in the 1980s, also fuelled social and ethnic antagonisms in the city and contributed to the proliferation of violent entrepreneurs and ethnic parties. Both criminal elements and ethnic activists contributed to the ever-increasing fragmentation of urban space in the city, and to the multiplication of ethnic enclaves controlled by private militias. This extreme fragmentation of the city has benefited local jihadis and foreign terrorists who have taken shelter here since the fall of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. However, Karachi will never be a "sanctuary" for jihadi militants, due to the hostility of local ethnic parties, whose activists see themselves as enlightened secularists at war with the most retrograde elements of their society and their foreign allies
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3 |
ID:
077584
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Publication |
2007.
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Summary/Abstract |
Several powerful constructions of Dalit social and political identity are now circulating in very influential ways within the public sphere in North India, as various groups including both the Bahujan Samaj Party as well as Hindutva organisations compete to assert their influence over how these identities are defined, who they include, and what they mean. In this context, the rise of Hindi Dalit autobiographies as a source of Dalit cultural identity becomes especially important in North India, as they contest traditional conceptions of the Dalit community as 'untouchables' and attempt to re-inscribe Dalit identity in positive, self-assertive terms. However, Dalit autobiographies retain certain ambivalences, as the authors struggle to reconcile their low-caste identity with their current urban middle-class status, and more recently, as their claims to represent all members of the Dalit community are challenged by Dalits of the younger generation
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