Abhisheka Dubey

Despite the creation, perpetuation and escalation of caste-based inequalities and violence in modern-day India, left-wing movements in the country have often been spearheaded by caste individuals. Most leaders of the Telangana movement, an armed agrarian movement against feudal landlordism under the Nizam of Hyderabad, were from rich peasant or landlord families. The Naxalite movement, a militant mass movement primarily comprised of armed peasants, has likewise been no exception. This chapter attempts to answer two apparent paradoxes – first, why were most of the Naxalite movement’s leadership caste individuals, often from rich landlord families, and second, why did certain Maoist groups welcome individuals from rich landlord families into the movement? I examine the relationship between leadership in militant movements and individuals’ socioeconomic profiles to argue that the prevalence of upper-caste individuals in positions of elite leadership and as recruits is attributable to the capacity to formulate and disseminate ideology, the capacity to enable collective action, and competitive mobilization. I further examine the (relative paucity) of overlap between the Dalit and Naxalite movements by examining the impact of the Naxalite movement’s broad ideology.

How successful have countries in Asia been at vaccinating their populations against COVID-19? What explains the broadly similar pace of rollout across countries in the region despite diverse governance capacities, demographic compositions, resources and economies? This paper presents a comparative analysis of the planning and implementation of national vaccination drives against COVID-19 across 21 South and East Asian countries. We advance an analytical framework to understand the different challenges countries encounter and distinguish three key factors on both the national and international level—vaccine shortages, governance capacity for mass vaccination and vaccine hesitancy. We apply the analytical framework to national vaccination drives, offering a snapshot of countries’ vaccination progress as of early 2021, and conclude with general trends for the COVID-19 vaccine rollout across the region.