Publications & Resources
Our faculty, students and researchers work together everyday to contribute to a better world by grappling with urgent problems we are facing in India. We conduct rigorous work to produce high quality learning resources and publications to contribute to public discourse and social change. Here, we feature a sample from our work for everyone to access. You can explore featured resources, policies, and the latest publications from the University.
To explore all the work of our University, please visit our publications repository.
List of Publications & Resources
- Published
- Authors
Abstract
An exercise done consecutively in two years may not constitute a tradition. But for the students of the elective “Urban sustainability in India: A social-ecological perspective”, mapping and knowing about the trees in the immediate vicinity of their campus is a ritual (read assignment). Working in groups of two, each group selected three trees of different species. They were required to identify the species, giving the scientific, common and Kannada names. Using their phones, they collected the GPS points of the trees, marking the location where each of the trees stood. They calculated the height of the tree using a clinometer, measured the girth in the field, and this data was used to calculate the above ground and below ground biomass, as well as the carbon stored by these trees. They also collected information on the economic, social, and cultural uses of the different species, documenting the multiple everyday benefits that we all derive from the trees around us. This booklet is the collective output of the class, based on their observations, the data collected by them in the field and secondary information sourced mainly from the internet. 30 trees of 16 species around the campus were mapped.
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The Limitations of India’s Census Legislation
in Azim Premji University
- Published
- Authors
Abstract
Most discussions on the quality of government data overlook the legal framework within which data are collected. This paper examines India’s Census Act, 1948, which provides the legal-administrative framework for conducting human population census. The Act stipulates punishment for interfering with the process of enumeration, but the punitive provisions are rarely used and have not been invoked to deal with cases of mass manipulation of the census. Major instances of manipulation were, in fact, reported in 1951 and 2001 after the government introduced additional punitive measures in 1948 and 1994, respectively. This paper compares the Census Act, 1948 with other Indian laws related to the collection of statistics as well as census laws of other common law countries and identifies the structural flaws of the Indian law vis-à-vis manipulation. It uses simple games to explain why the punitive provisions of the Census Act, 1948 are redundant in the event of mass manipulation and suggests that the problem can be addressed without recourse to law. The insights drawn from the games are examined in light of the experience of Nagaland, a state of India where census statistics were manipulated on a large scale in 2001.
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