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Private Non-State Sector Engagement in the Provision of Educational Services at the Primary and Secondary Levels in South Asia: An Analytical Review of Its Role in School Enrollment and Student Achievement
No full textPrivate (non-state) sector engagement in the provision of educational services at the primary and secondary levels in South Asia has recently undergone remarkable growth. This type of education comes in various forms, such as schools financed and managed by the private sector, schools financed by the government and managed by the private sector, private school vouchers, and tutoring outside the classroom. According to recent household survey data, almost one-third of school-goers aged 6 to 18 years in South Asia go to private schools, with a high concentration in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Pakistan. Data for India, Nepal, and Pakistan show that on average, private schools perform at least as well as government schools on student test scores, after controlling for socioeconomic factors, and they do so at significantly lower costs to society. However, student achievement varies greatly across schools of each type, with many weak private schools as well as strong government schools. Substantial, albeit indirect, evidence points to teacher behavior and accountability as an important driver of the effectiveness of private schools. In the long run, however, many factors may play important roles in sustaining the private sector's advantage. Another risk is that overall poor quality in a large government sector may set a low benchmark for the private sector. The findings cast doubt on the effectiveness of government regulations for private schools, given weak institutional capacity. Public-private partnerships with effective accountability mechanisms could leverage both equity and efficiency. Finally, it appears important to understand and customize teaching to the child's individual level
The political integration of Indian Ocean Ports-of-Trade
No full textThis paper will take a look at port cities in the Indian Ocean and explain their functions, importance and connections. However, unlike most recent works, the aim is not primarily to show their significance for economic and cultural integration but to try and shed some light on the political integration of port cities in their respective region and the impact this had on the Indian Ocean. The assessment of cultural and economic integration in this paper is thus by no means a complete picture, but rather aims at showing how recent research has highlighted elements of integration over those of division. For the purpose of this paper, a larger Indian Ocean region is looked at, including the Chinese Seas in the East and both the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea in the West. Chronologically the analysis will be limited to the time between the 7th century and the advent of the Europeans in the 15th century. At some points however, a view toward the era of European intervention will be useful
Shvetapradara: Negotiating Ayurveda and Biomedicine in Contemporary Ayurvedic Gynecology
No full textLeukorrhea, an increased amount of vaginal discharge, is considered by some the female equivalent to the culture-bound syndrome of semen loss anxiety (dhat syndrome) of South Asian men, and by others an idiom of distress. Ayurvedic concepts of the body are often cited as the underlying cause of Indian women's undue concern with it. It has been suggested that ayurvedic doctors recognize and treat shvetapradara, the ayurvedic equivalent of leukorrhea, as a disease which could have serious consequences if left unattended, but literature on the actual practice of modern vaidyas is rare, and ayurvedic gynecology as a separate branch of professionalized and institutionalized Ayurveda has not received any attention so far.
By taking on a praxiographic approach I follow shvetapradara through different sites and contexts within a government Ayurveda university hospital in North-West India, exploring the vaidyas' practices and academic work surrounding it, the materialities involved, both the scope and restrictions defining their practice, and subsequently the object enacted. Through this process and I arrive at a reflexion of contemporary professional ayurvedic practice, which is an amalgamation of biomedical and ayurvedic aspects.
I conclude that what goes under the name of shvetapradara in modern ayurvedic practice is a multiplicity of objects, whose identities differ according to their context, but are not congruent with what anthropologists and cross-cultural psychiatrists refer to in the context of dhat syndrome and somatization. I propose with regards to the study of modern institutionalized and professionalized Ayurveda that it be studied as its own system of medicine. Its specific way of using the language and practice of both Ayurveda and biomedicine deserves to be studied in its own right and without being reduced to two incommensurable parts. Modern professional Ayurveda in India is constituted of ayurvedic and biomedical aspects, but the whole of it is different than the sum of its parts
Karl Friedrich Geldner
No full textKarl Friedrich Eugen Geldner wurde am 17.12.1852 in Saalfeld als Sohn von Christian Friedrich Georg Geldner (1821–1890) geboren, welcher in Hildburghausen, später in Meiningen in verschiedenen kirchlichen Ämtern wirkte. Karl Geldner studierte wie der Vater in Leipzig, allerdings nicht Theologie, sondern Sanskrit und Avestisch bei Brockhaus und Windisch. Doch für aufstrebende Vedisten dieser Generation war der beste Studienort Tübingen, da man dort von Rudolph von Roth, der Koryphäe der sich erst entwickelnden vedischen Studien und dem verantwortlichen Veda-Spezialisten am sogenannten Petersburger Wörterbuch, den Fortschritt des Faches aus erster Hand erfahren konnte. Geldner meldete sich im Sommer 1872 bei Roth brieflich an und dieser antwortete am 10.6.1872, dass Geldner und sein Freund ihm »ganz willkommen sein« und er ihm gerne bei der »Wahl der Wohnungen« behilflich sein werde. In der kleinen Universitätsstadt studierte Geldner mit so manchen bekannten Namen der Indologie der nächsten Generation wie etwa Heinrich Zimmer und Richard Garbe, aber auch Charles Lanman, mit dem ihn trotz einiger Verstimmungen eine lebenslange Freundschaft verbinden sollte
Money or Ideas? A Field Experiment on Constraints to Entrepreneurship in Rural Pakistan
No full textThis paper identifies the relative importance of human and physical capital for entrepreneurship. A subset of rural microfinance clients were offered eight full time days of business training and the opportunity to participate in a loan lottery of up to Rs. 100,000 (USD 1,700), about seven times the average loan size. The study finds that business training increased business knowledge, reduced business failure, improved business practices and increased household expenditures by about $40 per year. It also improved financial and labor allocation decisions. These effects are concentrated among male clients, however. Women improve business knowledge but show no improvements in other outcomes. A cost-benefit analysis suggests that business training was not cost-effective for the microfinance institution, despite having a positive impact on clients. This may explain why so few microfinance institutions offer training. Access to the larger loan, in contrast, had little effect, indicating that existing loan size limits may already meet the demand for credit for these clients
Sprachliche Imagination im Film: Tapori Hindi und die Verwendung sprachlicher Register im populären indischen Kino
No full textDiese Arbeit verfolgt die linguistische Varietät des Tapori Hindi durch das filmische Medium und seinen sozio-politischen Kontext in den Bereich der alltäglichen Spracheinstellungen und wieder zurück. Der Korpus wird von Filmen gebildet, in denen der großstädtische Kleinganove, der Tapori, ein zentraler Charakter ist. Der Tapori ist eine traditionsreiche Figur des Bombay Films, der insbesondere in seiner sprachlichen Performanz Register an ihre Ränder führt und dabei sowohl sprachliche Reinheit als auch stereotype Eigenschaften filmischer 'Helden' hinterfragt. Es werden theoretische Ansätze von Mikhail Bakhtin herangezogen, um die Interaktion von stereotypen Charakteren, sprachlichen Registern und Chronotopoi in den filmischen Texturen zu analysieren
Demokratie in Südasien: Eine Bestandsaufnahme
No full textDer Autor befasst sich einerseits mit dem Zustand der Demokratie in den Staaten Südasiens. Andererseits analysiert er die Zustimmung der Bevölkerung zur Demokratie. Dabei kommt er zu dem Schluss, dass die Kritik an den Regierungen sowie an den politischen Eliten dieser Länder nicht mit einer generellen Kritik an der demokratischen Verfasstheit der Staaten einhergeht
Sisupalgarh/Bhubaneshwar, A Nationally Protected Monument
No full textDiese Veröffentlichung thematisiert den illegalen Hausbau innerhalb und bei der historischen Grabungsstätte von Sisupalgarh. Dabei handelt es sich um die Überreste einer alten Festung aus der Maurya-Zeit, die in ihren Strukturen einzigartig ist. Der Erhalt dieser Anlage ist, wie anhand von Bildern und Luftaufnahmen anschaulich gezeigt wird, durch den illegalen Hausbau innerhalb und bei der Ausgrabungsstätte massiv bedroht
Nepal: Tamang (West-Tamang, Dhading District) 1968 - 1983: Archiv András Höfer
No full textBei diesem Dokument handelt es sich um das Inhaltverzeichnis der Forschungsdaten des Ethnologen András Höfer. Die Materialien sind in der Bibliothek des Südasien-Instituts archiviert
