Since assuming the presidency of the Philippines in June 2016 Rodrigo Duterte has been the focus of considerable international attention because of his brusque personality and two dramatically new policies: 1) a take-no-prisoners war on illegal drugs that has resulted in the deaths of over 6,000 alleged drug pushers and users; and 2) an abrupt distancing of relations with the United States coupled with an enthusiastic embrace of China. But considerably less attention is being paid to the Duterte government’s other policies or to the underlying political dynamics that will determine the efficacy of his government and, perhaps, the future of liberal democracy in the Philippines. The speaker will situate the Duterte government in the context of Philippine’s democratic experience, identify the political dynamics that are likely to determine its future, and assess the multiple threats to liberal democracy in the Philippines.

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India prides itself on being the "world's largest democracy". In some respects it is certifiably democratic; as in the regular conduct of free and fair elections. But in other respects there are deficits. One such area is freedom of expression. While Indian writers, artists and film-makers are certainly freer than their counterparts in totalitarian countries such as China, they are less free when compared to their colleagues in democracies such as Sweden or the United States. This lecture identifies eight distinct threats to freedom of expression in India, the most important of which are the presence of archaic colonial laws and the rise of identity politics.

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Guha’s books include a pioneering environmental history, The Unquiet Woods (University of California Press, 1989), and an award-winning social history of cricket, A Corner of a Foreign Field (Picador, 2002). India after Gandhi (Macmillan/Ecco Press, 2007) was chosen as a book of the year by the Economist, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the San Francisco Chronicle, Time Out, and Outlook, and as a book of the decade in the Times of India, the Times of London, and The Hindu. His most recent book is Gandhi Before India (Knopf, 2014), which was chosen as a notable book of the year by the New York Times.

Apart from his books, Guha also writes a syndicated column, that appears in six languages in newspapers with a combined readership of some twenty mllion. Guha’s books and essays have been translated into more than twenty languages. The New York Times has referred to him as ‘perhaps the best among India’s non fiction writers’; Time Magazine has called him ‘Indian democracy’s pre-eminent chronicler’.

Ramachandra Guha’s awards include the Leopold-Hidy Prize of the American Society of Environmental History, the Daily Telegraph/Cricket Society prize, the Malcolm Adideshiah Award for excellence in social science research, the Ramnath Goenka Prize for excellence in journalism, the Sahitya Akademi Award, and the R. K. Narayan Prize. In 2009, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan, the Republic of India’s third highest civilian honour. In 2008, and again in 2013, Prospect Magazine nominated Guha as one of the world’s most influential intellectuals. In 2014, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in the humanities by Yale University. In 2015, he was awarded the Fukuoka Prize for contributions to Asian studies.

About the colloquia:

In 2014, Indian voters gave Narendra Modi and the BJP a mandate to accelerate India’s economic reforms and revitalize its foreign relations, in particular with the United States and with partners in East Asia. But the pace and depth of reforms and economic transformation have not met the high expectations, despite strong GDP performance. Economic growth remains uneven, job creation sluggish, and massive infrastructural and administrative problems continue to trouble many sectors of the economy. After twenty-five years of economic reforms, India’s potential as a new global industrial hub has still not been realized and its vast resources of labor and talent remain underdeveloped.

During the 2017 winter and spring quarters Shorenstein APARC and the Center for South Asia will host a series of lectures and discussions that explore what makes India democratic and dynamic, and the obstacles that prevent the country from realizing its enormous potential.

Also, in 2017, the next Global Entrepreneur Summit will be in India, sequel to the 2016 Stanford-hosted Summit. This colloquium will help prepare for that event by reaching out to scholars, students, interested stakeholders, business leaders and others in the Bay Area.

This colloquia is co-sponsored with the Stanford Center for South Asia 

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Since its independence, India’s statesmen, policymakers and social scientists all firmly believed that the entrenched hierarchical caste order and the deep divisions between religious communities would become less salient, and perhaps wither away, as the country developed a modern economy and a new division of labor based on skill and merit rather than a ‘traditional’ inherited status. Today, after seven decades of democracy and steady economic growth, it is clear that both caste and religious community are as important as ever. Rather than disappearing, these cultural identities and social networks have evolved along with the economy. A closer look at how the Indian economy is organized reveals that caste and community fundamentally shape how labor is organized, how markets function, how urban development happens, and how industry is owned and organized. Two case studies, one of skilled labor in South India and another of the structure of industrial growth in a city in central India, will illustrate how India actually works.

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As the Director of Stanford’s Center for South Asian Studies, Hansen is charged with building a substantial new program. He has many and broad interests spanning South Asia and Southern Africa, several cities and multiple theoretical and disciplinary interests from political theory and continental philosophy to psychoanalysis, comparative religion and contemporary urbanism..

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Aruna Ranganathan studies questions of work and employment in the context of economic development. By applying novel methods that combine field-experimental and quantitative research designs with ethnography and interviews, Aruna's research investigates how low-income occupations in developing countries are governed, organized, seek meaning through their work and navigate the market. Through her research, Aruna strives to advance our theoretical understanding of work, while informing the design of labor-market institutions and policy for the developing world. In previous projects based in India, Aruna has studied the boom of IT and business process outsourcing, the professionalization of plumbing, price-setting behavior among handcraft artisans and the transition of women into formal employment in garment factories.

About the colloquia:

In 2014, Indian voters gave Narendra Modi and the BJP a mandate to accelerate India’s economic reforms and revitalize its foreign relations, in particular with the United States and with partners in East Asia. But the pace and depth of reforms and economic transformation have not met the high expectations, despite strong GDP performance. Economic growth remains uneven, job creation sluggish, and massive infrastructural and administrative problems continue to trouble many sectors of the economy. After twenty-five years of economic reforms, India’s potential as a new global industrial hub has still not been realized and its vast resources of labor and talent remain underdeveloped.

During the 2017 winter and spring quarters Shorenstein APARC and the Center for South Asia will host a series of lectures and discussions that explore what makes India democratic and dynamic, and the obstacles that prevent the country from realizing its enormous potential.

Also, in 2017, the next Global Entrepreneur Summit will be in India, sequel to the 2016 Stanford-hosted Summit. This colloquium will help prepare for that event by reaching out to scholars, students, interested stakeholders, business leaders and others in the Bay Area.

This colloquia is co-sponsored with the Stanford Center for South Asia 

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Long a laggard on human rights, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is being pressed from within to reconsider its indifference. In 2009 an ASEAN Human Rights Commission (AICHR) was created and tasked with promoting (not protecting) human rights in Southeast Asia. In 2012 its members agreed to issue a first-ever ASEAN Human Rights Declaration. Most observers dismissed these moves as symbolic—an effort mainly to assuage foreign critics and  gain international legitimacy. Prof. Jetschke differs.  She will argue that the AICHR’s formation was prompted in part by the swelling flows of refugees across borders inside Southeast Asia, especially from Myanmar, and the problems thereby created for the region’s states and societies. She will also explore the extent to which these factors have eroded one of ASEAN’s strongest regional norms—the taboo on interfering in members’ domestic affairs. That erosion could strengthen ASEAN as something more than the sum of its sovereign members.

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