India
This issue is dedicated to India. That country is one of the
major emerging economies in the world and will rank alongside
China as one of the superpowers of the 21st century. Its
growth is currently sustaining global GDP, offsetting the slow
down in the USA and Europe.
The contributors are a distingished team of India scholars,
brought together by Christiane Hurtig.
Jacques Pouchepadass provides a general historical setting to
the whole issue, recalling Nehru’s definition of India as « a
bundle of contradictions held together by strong invisible
threads ».Veronique Dupont paints a picture of urban India,
a recent development, which includes a mere 29% of the
total population. Nonetheless, these 350 million town-dwellers
amount to the second largest town population in the
world and produce three quarters of India’s GDP. Jean-Joseph
Boillot addresses two issues : can India’s growth spread
through all the states, or will regional inequalities slow down
the overall growth rate ; and can the savings/investment
relation be conducive to strong growth ?
Christophe Jaffrelot analyses the social promotion of the
Dalits or « untouchables » - or at least of some of them -
thanks to the quota system, but thanks, too, to the influence
of Buddhism. Stephanie Tawa Lama-Rewal addresses the frequently
misunderstood condition of women in India where
two situations co-exist, on the one hand a state of extreme
violence against women, with thousands of « dowry deaths »
each year and a lack of 35 million women due to infanticide
or abortions of female fœtuses, and on the other hand the
exceptional place women occupy in Indian politics. Suman
Modwel describes India’s attitude vis a vis the World Trade
Organization (WTO), bringing out its contradictions : the
huge services sector only employs 23% of the workforce but
produces 54% of GDP, while agriculture (contributing only
19% of GDP but employing 60% of the workforce) has to be
subsidized and protected, whereas an alternative policy
within WTO might have sought to promote it into a major
export industry. Christiane Hurtig herself, not only designed
the whole issue, but also contributed papers on the economy,
on India’s science policy seeking to turn the country into a
«knowledge-based economy» (according to a UNESCO
report), on the caste system and social handicaps and on global
warming. India is paying the price of climate change with
a disordered monsoon system, so damaging for a monsoondependent
agriculture, while at the same time India has
become the fourth major world polluter. The CNRS is present
in India through joint research projects and extensive research
networks in the natural as well as in the social sciences
and a short paper by J-F. Faure summarizes this collaboration.
A list for further reading compiled by Christiane Hurtig
completes this issue.
CNRS Abroad
India is among the top four countries sending post-doctoral
scientists to France, 242 in 2007, just after Brazil, China and
Italy.
France’s policy is to attract top-level scientists for extended stays
(one year or more) – in addition to Ph.D. students, of course -
so as to improve international scientific collaboration : over
4,000 came in 2006 and over 5,000 in 2007.
Together with the Kastler Foundation, whose primary aim is to
facilitate the arrival of those scientists in France, our own «CNRS
Alumni Association» aims at maintaining close links with those
scientists after they return home.
We are inviting them to set up «CNRS Clubs» in their respective
countries, whose members will be entitled to receive three publications
: this quarterly Journal («Rayonnement du CNRS»), the
monthly «Journal du CNRS», and the quarterly «CNRS
International Magazine» (in English). For further information,
contact us at : http://www.anciens-amis-cnrs.com