Arjun Appadurai, Samuel N. Harper Professor, The University of Chicago, Departments of Anthropology, and South Asian Languages and Civilizations and Director of the Globalization Project.

The bundling of race and ethnicity with nation is common in state ideology and popular perceptions in East Asia. These beliefs in racial homogeneity deeply held by the societies that make up this world region are now being challenged by the international migration of workers, most of whom are themselves from Asia or ethnic Asian origins. The advent of multicultural societies has already begun and, given both the globalization of migration and demographic trends in the higher income economies, it will increasingly become an issue for public policy in the coming decades. While central governments tend to continue to reify the race-nation ideology, local governments and citizen groups have in many instances become more positive in their responses to the issues of cultural diversity and social justice for foreign workers working and living in their communities. Mike Douglass is professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Hawaii. He has lived in East and Southeast Asia for more than twelve years, where he has carried out research and practice in urban policy and planning. His current research interests and projects include globalization and urban policy in the Asia Pacific region; urban poverty, environment, and social capital; foreign workers and households in Japan; and rural-urban linkages in national development. His recent books are Culture and the City in East Asia, edited with Won Bae Kim (Oxford, 1997); Cities for Citizens: Planning and the Rise of Civil Society in a Global Age, edited with John Friedmann (John Wiley, 1998); and Coming to Japan: Foreign Workers and Households in an Age of Global Migration, edited with Glenda Roberts (Routledge, 2000).

Mike Pillsbury earned a BA at Stanford and a PhD in political science at Columbia University. He is a longtime analyst in Chinese foreign policy and national security strategy at RAND Corporation, the Defense Department, and as a staff member on Capital Hill. He has authored several influential books and articles, including, most recently, Chinese Views of Future Warfare and China Debates in the Future Security Environment.

Telecom reform in India has been variably paced, with false starts and imperfectly empowered regulators. The government recently changed its strategy from generating high upfront fees to revenue-sharing. The latest move in January 2000 of bifurcating the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India into separate judicial and recommendatory bodies will be analyzed by the speaker in the context of broad trends towards reform. T.H Chowdary is the Information Technology Advisor to the Government of Andhra Pradesh, in the rank of a Minister for State. He has held executive and managerial positions in Indian Government's departments of Information and Broadcasting and Telecommunications. He was Deputy Director-General in the Department of Telecommunication and the first Chairman and Managing Director of VSNL, India's Overseas Telecom Corporation. He was President of the Institution of Electronics and Telecommunications Engineers (INDIA) and UNO/ITUs Senior Expert in Guyana (1985) and Team Leader in Yemen (1990-1991). He has worked extensively for the de-monopolization and liberalization of Indian telecommunication sector. He heads the Center for Telecommunication Management and Studies (CTMS) in Hyderabad, India and is consultant to several national and international electronics and telecom companies and financial Institutions and is on the Board of Directors of a number of corporations.

The history of Indian power sector is abound with myths like those that envisioned the big projects as "temples of modern India" some fifty years ago, to the recent characterization of the sector as a "millstone" hindering economic development. The dynamics of the sector provides a classic case of the debate on the role of state versus that of the market in developing economies. Lately, economic realism has led to reforms for developing competitive electricity market. Under the changing dynamics, long-term policy needs to be based on some robust insights. In this talk, the speaker will present an analysis of Indian power sector under different scenarios that take into account the "success" of reforms, technology transfer regimes and local and global environmental concerns. Some insights will be offered vis-?-vis the well known debates on fossil energy options (coal versus gas), decentralization versus centralization, renewable and nuclear technologies, and the extent of linkage between local and global environmental policies. Discussion will also address the status of reforms and trends. P.R. Shukla is a Professor with the Public Systems Group at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. He obtained Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1979. He has been a consultant to the Government of India and several national and international organizations. He is a leading expert on developing country policy, especially in the areas of energy, environment and technology. He is a lead author of several international reports of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). He is a co-author of eight books and numerous publications in reputed international journals and invited articles in books and proceedings.