A terse, brief order of the Supreme Court of India in the Networking of Rivers case in September 2002 impugns the role of public interest litigation in the wake of neoliberal reforms. At a poignant moment in India's 'tryst with destiny', socio-legal studies in India stand disarmed and disempowered without adequate conceptual and theoretical tools to analyse and interpret the event in emancipatory ways. The case inaugurates a new phase in judicial activism and Public Interest Litigation in India, a subject that has been written about extensively both in India and elsewhere. In this article the Networking of Rivers case is used as a vehicle to explore the trajectories of developments in socio-legal studies in India and the ways in which it may have contributed to the present theoretical and conceptual impasse. The article argues for a more geo-historically differentiated understanding of the theoretical underpinnings of socio-legal studies in India and the 'Third World' generally. KEY WORDS law in development; Networking of Rivers case; public interest litigation; river basin development; 'Third World' context SOCIAL & LEGAL STUDIES
Many people consider Martinique-born Frantz Fanon to be one of the most important anti-colonial thinkers of the twentieth century. Aziz Choudry, one of the co-editors of this issue of Interface, initiated a discussion with three colleagues-David Austin, Radha D'Souza, and Sunera Thobani-after many conversations about the legacy of Fanon in the course of collaborations in both academic and activist milieus. These four short pieces discuss the relevance of Fanon's writings for thought and action in struggles today. In doing so, they draw upon the writers' personal, political, activist and academic engagements with Fanon's writings and the questions which he grappled with, in a life cut short by leukemia at the age of 35 in December 1961.
The rise of new social movements has produced an emerging discourse on activist scholarship. There is considerable ambiguity about what the term means. In this article I draw on my work as a trade unionist, political activist, and activist lawyer in Mumbai, and later as a social justice activist in New Zealand to reflect on the meaning of activist scholarship, interrogate the institutional contexts for knowledge, and the relationship of knowledge to emancipatory structural social transformations. Although based on personal experiences, this article provides a theoretically oriented meta-analysis of activist scholarship.
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