India's Parliament as A Representative Institution
by Jessica S. Wallack

India's parliament is failing as a platform for representing and aggregating citizens' preferences to form public policy. Policies increasingly pass without discussion and disruption seems to be replacing debate. While most of the public and academic critique of the Parliament focuses on the members and discusses reforms to the electoral system or membership criteria, this paper steps back to consider how well the institution is equipped to represent the population in policy deliberations. India's parliamentary procedures stand out among parliaments around the world in the limitations they place on most members' ability to represent their constituents in the normal course of debate or policymaking. I argue that these features may contribute to the observed disruption, lack of debate, and decline in standing. The conclusion suggests some institutional reforms.

 

The First Kashmir War Revisited
by Shuja Nawaz

This article re-examines the First Kashmir war between India and Pakistan on the basis of previously unavailable secret documents from the headquarters of the Pakistan Army to explain the thinking behind the initial tribal incursion into Kashmir and the subsequent prosecution of the conflict between the Pakistan and Indian armies. It then analyzes the effects of this war on the officers involved and its contribution to the emergence of a praetorian tradition in Pakistani politics, as evidenced in the attempted coup d'etat of 1951.

Book Review of Political Violence and the Police in India. By K. S. Subramanian
by Arvind Verma

K. S. Subramanian's Political Violence and the Police in India appears at a timely moment, a time, for political violence still remains an unfortunate part of India's democratic polity. The book provides new insights into the genesis of political violence and the role of the police in handling it. It documents and discusses the failures of police departments to escape politicization a manipulation by the vested interests of the bureaucracy are well documented. The book is most useful in its analyses of the so-called Naxalite problem and the violence perpetrated against India's helpless Dalits and Adivasis. It is limited, however, by the lack of discussion of the role of the police under different state governments and their record of dealing with political violence. Nevertheless, it has great strengths and makes a valuable contributions to our understanding of the relationship between political violence and role of the police.