Papers by Melissa Cyrill
Contemporary Review of the Middle East, 2014
A version of this paper was presented at the First West Asian Studies National Convention, Centre... more A version of this paper was presented at the First West Asian Studies National Convention, Centre for West Asian Studies, JNU on 14 November 2014.
The goal of this paper is to place the role that new social media has played in achieving collective action using the early events of the Arab uprisings and the experiences of Egypt and Tunisia as particular references. Almost four years since the uprisings began, their disrupted momentum has challenged the oft hypothesized and heavily mediatized season of unified Arab awakening. The political economy of communications differed across the affected region making it evident that these countries were in different stages of social, economic, political and digital development. This informs why different regimes were more or less vulnerable to opposition (including cyberactivism) and why the structure of opposition, in turn, varied. Though resisting techno-optimist narratives, the paper seeks to explain the communicative and connective power of social media in the Arab context as well as its disruptive potential in discourse-shaping. In setting up the stage for street protests, the use of ICT’s by Arab activists most crucially aimed at revealing an accurate picture of their respective societies, not just within but also to a broader international audience. Rather than support the cohesive neoliberal success stories quoted in the international media, the respective online Arab publics cast film onto the reality of everyday economic and political repression. Moreover, Arab cyberactivists created virtual forums for citizen journalism through enabling ordinary citizens to question regime legitimacy and record instances of governmental brutality, corruption and violations of human rights. This allowed for the continued exchange of civic discourse, deliberation and articulation, enhancing the region’s social capital and contributing to the growth of a tentative virtual civil society.
The liberating role of cyberspace in overcoming gender, class and geographical barriers is, however, tempered in the final analysis by the contradictory impact of networked technologies – in terms of the quality of content generated and by whom as well as the capacity of regimes and traditional political actors to monitor, control and manipulate online communication (“Tyrants can tweet too”). Further, in the persisting debate between those on the optimist and pessimist sides of networked technology communication, an underlying tension is that while leaderless network structures can mobilize and even unite a disparate coalition of protestors around issue- specific demands such as “The people want the fall of the regime”, they are ineffective at articulating nuanced demands in the subsequent negotiation processes. Cyberactors are also reluctant to participate in the political processes of party building and institutional organization. In other words, digital storytelling supersedes the political communiqué and expressive protest- politics tends to depoliticize the impact of cyberactivism.
Presented at seminar entitled "India and Saudi Arabia: The Emerging Socio-Cultural and Economic D... more Presented at seminar entitled "India and Saudi Arabia: The Emerging Socio-Cultural and Economic Dimensions" organised by the Centre for West Asian Studies, JMI, New Delhi on 03-03-2015.
To begin with, the governing elites of the oil rich Arab Gulf states focused on essentially two matters. The first one related to how they would use their resource funded wealth to develop their countries. The second related to the problem of facilitating this development with the least disruption to the regime status quo. Until most recently, the answers to the above conundrum had been a more or less uniform application of a twin policy of rentier strategies and labour importation. In doing so, the Gulf monarchies decided to share their wealth but not political power with their native populations through the expansion of social welfare services and government employment opportunities. Additionally, ambitious schemes of development were unveiled to impart modern infrastructural facilities by way of roads, airports, communication networks, and industrial and financial investment projects. Needless to say, their construction and operation required an abundance of skilled and blue-collar labour. In pursuing a unique immigration policy, the Gulf kingdoms, as exemplified by Saudi Arabia, decided to follow a policy of importing labour, not people. The inevitable outcome since, has been a sharply divided social and political order in which a significant to more than half the population of the respective Gulf states are citizens with full rights, while the remainder, constituting upto two-thirds of the labour force, are migrants living in a subordinate position and subject to expulsion at any time. This has ensured the particular character of Saudi and Gulf economic demography.
Given this backgrounder, Indian migrants are required to be equipped with the full knowledge that their sojourn to the Gulf is temporary. There is a permanent illusion of impermanence amongst all the participants – the host governments, the governments of the sending countries and, the immigrants themselves. This has come to mean that while migrants to the labour markets of the region may continue to be an enduring feature, their specific numbers and professional allocations are susceptible to changes. This is because fundamental decisions concerning migration – how many migrants should be absorbed, from which countries, occupational preferences and wage levels, the scope of labour rights and worker benefits – are all decided not by market mechanisms but established by ways of policy.As witnessed in the paranoia unleashed by Saudi Arabia’s renewed efforts at Saudization, the fate of migrant workers ultimately rests upon the political dispensation rather than simply manpower needs. Indian migrants rarely, if ever, protest against the regime for they are dependent on the existing political order for their economic security. Thus, it is regime change or a movement towards populist initiatives that threaten the Indian guest worker. And, it is this understanding that has heightened the volume of fears attached to Saudization objectives, encapsulated most recently in the Nitaqat policy due to its future and uncertain implications.
A version of this was published in the academic journal Strategic Analysis, Routledge
The commen... more A version of this was published in the academic journal Strategic Analysis, Routledge
The commentary examines the inconsistency in the reasoning behind interventionist policies in the Middle East region using the illustrative cases of Libya, Bahrain, Syria and Egypt and the international coverage of it thereof. The piece more or less reflects upon the period of the Arab uprisings and reflects on future implications.
The paper seeks to address the central hypothesis that the "rentier" regime's policy of identity ... more The paper seeks to address the central hypothesis that the "rentier" regime's policy of identity politics has limited the scope of citizenship in Bahrain further leading to instability. This has also led to the continued dependence on expatriate labour to secure economic diversification aims, which emerge from the reality of the Bahraini kingdom's dwindling energy resources despite the reliance on it for revenues.
Conference Presentations by Melissa Cyrill
The presentation was made as part of the Young Scholars' Conference, held at the Centre for West ... more The presentation was made as part of the Young Scholars' Conference, held at the Centre for West Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. It briefly examines the contemporary Gulf labour migrant experience through the recent media coverage of specific case studies. In doing so, it proposes that the increased soft power investments of some of the GCC states have inevitably exposed them towards greater international public scrutiny. The hypothesis is tested against the visible impact of external pressure on the changing labour conditions in some of the Gulf States.
The goal of this paper is to place the role that new social media has played in achieving collect... more The goal of this paper is to place the role that new social media has played in achieving collective action using the events of the Arab uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia as a case study reference. Almost four years since the uprisings began, their disrupted momentum has challenged the oft hypothesized and heavily mediatized season of unified Arab awakening. The political economy of communications differed across the affected region making it evident that these countries were in different stages of social, economic, political and digital development. This informs why different regimes were more or less vulnerable to opposition (including cyberactivism) and why the structure of opposition, in turn, varied. Though resisting techno-optimist narratives, the paper seeks to explain the communicative and connective power of social media in the Arab context as well as its disruptive potential in discourse-shaping. In setting up the stage for street protests, the use of ICT’s by Arab activists most crucially aimed at revealing an accurate picture of their respective societies, not just within but also to a broader international audience. Rather than support the cohesive neoliberal success stories quoted in the international media, the respective online Arab publics cast film onto the reality of everyday economic and political repression. Moreover, Arab cyberactivists created virtual forums for citizen journalism through enabling ordinary citizens to question regime legitimacy and record instances of governmental brutality, corruption and violations of human rights. This allowed for the continued exchange of civic discourse, deliberation and articulation, enhancing the region’s social capital and contributing to the growth of a tentative virtual civil society.
The liberating role of cyberspace in overcoming gender, class and geographical barriers is, however, tempered in the final analysis by the contradictory impact of networked technologies - in terms of the quality of content generated and by whom as well as the capacity of regimes and traditional political actors to monitor, control and manipulate online communication (“Tyrants can tweet too”). Further, in the persisting debate between those on the optimist and pessimist sides of networked technology communication, an underlying tension is that while leaderless network structures can mobilize and even unite a disparate coalition of protestors around issue-specific demands such as “The people want the fall of the regime”, they are ineffective at articulating nuanced demands in the subsequent negotiation processes. Cyberactors are also reluctant to participate in the political processes of party building and institutional organization. In other words, digital storytelling supersedes the political communiqué and expressive protest-politics tends to depoliticize the impact of cyberactivism.
Drafts by Melissa Cyrill
The Arab world has enjoyed geostrategic importance since historical times as seen in the flourish... more The Arab world has enjoyed geostrategic importance since historical times as seen in the flourishing of trade and commerce, production of knowledge during what has been nostalgically referred to as the Islamic golden age, and most recently the discovery of energy resources critical to the stability of the international system. However, the region's particularistic and unique socio-cultural and political divisions have not lent themselves to easy analysis. Among others, one of the main difficulties in understanding the region is the space it occupies between tradition and modernity. This space has been shaped since history by the interloping forces of religion, economics and geopolitics, which in turn were sharpened and transformed by the respective colonial experiences that birthed nationalism followed by etatism as a means to legitimising the sovereign authority of the state (as dominated by a regime or leader). Thus resulted the fraught creation of the modern Arab nation-states, forced to embrace the capitalist economic system and its attendant structural and administrative requirements.
In an effort to understand this dialectical opposition between the forces of tradition and modernity, the paper focuses on the role of religious ideology and political consolidation in shaping the contours of the Saudi kingdom's state formation and sustenance. The dynamic between the intertwined assertions of the Sunni Wahhabi religious tradition on the one hand and the politically entrenched power of the Al-Saud regime on the other, underscores the intermeshed duality of the Saudi state. This means that even if the Saudi state is the instrument of modernization, it also simultaneously pursues policies to ensure its legitimacy through particular conventions, in this case, the Wahhabist religious movement in the Hanbali school of Sunni Islam. The paper will thus investigate the means and methods employed within the state towards achieving change with continuity, development with stability and reform and the regime maintenance of the Ibn Saud family.
Book Reviews by Melissa Cyrill
The Battle for the Arab Spring is in many ways a handbook for understanding the gravitas of the M... more The Battle for the Arab Spring is in many ways a handbook for understanding the gravitas of the MENA region’s renewed turmoil since December 2010. The book was first published in early 2012, at a time when the international community was analyzing, in the frenzied fashion that only revolutionary change can trigger, the events and counter-events in what was once considered a predictable and stable region.
India and China represented two of the most dynamic anomalies within the international system dur... more India and China represented two of the most dynamic anomalies within the international system during the height of the Cold War era in the 1950s. Both states were considered thus, as the world, particularly Western nations, looked upon their prospective futures with varying degrees of scepticism. India and China had both emerged as independent nation states carved out of an incredibly charged colonial environment and, as ex-colonies, had experimented with two very different and distinctive eco-political and social frameworks. Given this background, the book engages in a theoretical comparison between Mao and Nehru on the basis on their respective national efficacy beliefs.
A version of this was published in the academic journal Strategic Analysis, July 2014.
The World... more A version of this was published in the academic journal Strategic Analysis, July 2014.
The World Through Arab Eyes is based on a twenty year project and more specifically 10 years’ worth of actual public opinion polling in the Arab world by Shibley Telhami. It generates ample discussion and provides new lenses of analysis such as the 'prism of pain' while studying the Israel/Palestine conflict. The review assesses this original work, the functionality of analyzing public opinion and the particular contexts the book seeks to underscore while studying the Middle East.
A version of this was published in the May 2014 issue of Contemporary Review of the Middle East.
... more A version of this was published in the May 2014 issue of Contemporary Review of the Middle East.
India and GCC Countries Iran and Iraq, is an anthology focusing on India & the emerging security landscape in the Persian Gulf & a product of a conference organized by the Indian Council of World Affairs in Nov 2010. The review critically engages with the compilation, highlighting the failings from such a reproduction of recycled views that have eclipsed recent Indian bureaucratic approach to the Gulf region.
Short Notes by Melissa Cyrill
This is a short piece on the social justice protests, spread out intermittently in Israel during ... more This is a short piece on the social justice protests, spread out intermittently in Israel during 2011, 2012-13. The protests were not directed at any kind of austerity measures faced, but rather the dwindling life chances of young adults as the impact of neo-liberal policies has been evident in the declining scope and generosity of the public sector’s role in employment and housing. Yet even as there seems to be a precedent in the country whereby policies have to become necessarily conscious of the burden sharing undertaken by respective citizens, the abrupt conclusion without resolution indicates the continued desire of Israeli voters to support a strong right-wing orientation in government. This inevitably means the support for the state’s security policies and the occupation, all of which are intrinsic components to its “path of neoliberal impoverishment of the 99%”
MPhil Dissertation by Melissa Cyrill
Abstract:
Dissertation Submitted to Jawaharlal Nehru University In Partial Fulfillment of the Req... more Abstract:
Dissertation Submitted to Jawaharlal Nehru University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for Award of the degree of MASTER OF PHILOSOPHY.
The root causes of the GCC's employment problems are interlocked – a system of national education that has largely not been competitive or well aligned with the needs of modern industry, a culture of citizens conditioned to a protective government, a public sector that is overstaffed and inefficient, and counterproductive policies in areas such as immigration and social welfare. It is also reflected in the highly distorted labour market in the region, founded on a socio-ethnic duality. In some respects the labour market is rigid, with pronounced differences in the wages for non-nationals and nationals. In other aspects it is flexible as current laws make it very easy to import or deport foreigners based on hiring/firing. This is also why“unemployment” is a national issue, for if and when a foreigner‟s work visa is terminated, he or she is obliged to return to the home country.
In the final analysis –
• At the GCC level, the dissertation research disproves the hypothesis that growing numbers of GCC nationals have entered the private sector due to workforce nationalisation programmes, replacing foreign labour.
• The second hypothesis has been validated in that the growing mismatch between available local labour and the labour market requirements has undermined the success of Emiratisation.
• Finally, the failure of Emiratisation has been concluded while validating the hypothesis that Indian labour migration to the UAE has been vigorous despite Emiratisation.
Articles by Melissa Cyrill
"I should like to draw a line from the 'E' in Acre to the last 'K' in Kirkuk " , explained Sir Ma... more "I should like to draw a line from the 'E' in Acre to the last 'K' in Kirkuk " , explained Sir Mark Sykes as he slid his finger across a map laid out on a table at No. 10 Downing Street."
In an epoch where democracy has emerged as a capable alternative in other regions, the bitterness of colonial compromise cannot be easily repressed in West Asia. Sykes-Picot began the process of drawing up its irrational borders; a 100 years later the region still bears the consequences of its unthinking legacy.
http://www.hardnewsmedia.com/2016/04/gcc-era-cheap-oil
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Papers by Melissa Cyrill
The goal of this paper is to place the role that new social media has played in achieving collective action using the early events of the Arab uprisings and the experiences of Egypt and Tunisia as particular references. Almost four years since the uprisings began, their disrupted momentum has challenged the oft hypothesized and heavily mediatized season of unified Arab awakening. The political economy of communications differed across the affected region making it evident that these countries were in different stages of social, economic, political and digital development. This informs why different regimes were more or less vulnerable to opposition (including cyberactivism) and why the structure of opposition, in turn, varied. Though resisting techno-optimist narratives, the paper seeks to explain the communicative and connective power of social media in the Arab context as well as its disruptive potential in discourse-shaping. In setting up the stage for street protests, the use of ICT’s by Arab activists most crucially aimed at revealing an accurate picture of their respective societies, not just within but also to a broader international audience. Rather than support the cohesive neoliberal success stories quoted in the international media, the respective online Arab publics cast film onto the reality of everyday economic and political repression. Moreover, Arab cyberactivists created virtual forums for citizen journalism through enabling ordinary citizens to question regime legitimacy and record instances of governmental brutality, corruption and violations of human rights. This allowed for the continued exchange of civic discourse, deliberation and articulation, enhancing the region’s social capital and contributing to the growth of a tentative virtual civil society.
The liberating role of cyberspace in overcoming gender, class and geographical barriers is, however, tempered in the final analysis by the contradictory impact of networked technologies – in terms of the quality of content generated and by whom as well as the capacity of regimes and traditional political actors to monitor, control and manipulate online communication (“Tyrants can tweet too”). Further, in the persisting debate between those on the optimist and pessimist sides of networked technology communication, an underlying tension is that while leaderless network structures can mobilize and even unite a disparate coalition of protestors around issue- specific demands such as “The people want the fall of the regime”, they are ineffective at articulating nuanced demands in the subsequent negotiation processes. Cyberactors are also reluctant to participate in the political processes of party building and institutional organization. In other words, digital storytelling supersedes the political communiqué and expressive protest- politics tends to depoliticize the impact of cyberactivism.
To begin with, the governing elites of the oil rich Arab Gulf states focused on essentially two matters. The first one related to how they would use their resource funded wealth to develop their countries. The second related to the problem of facilitating this development with the least disruption to the regime status quo. Until most recently, the answers to the above conundrum had been a more or less uniform application of a twin policy of rentier strategies and labour importation. In doing so, the Gulf monarchies decided to share their wealth but not political power with their native populations through the expansion of social welfare services and government employment opportunities. Additionally, ambitious schemes of development were unveiled to impart modern infrastructural facilities by way of roads, airports, communication networks, and industrial and financial investment projects. Needless to say, their construction and operation required an abundance of skilled and blue-collar labour. In pursuing a unique immigration policy, the Gulf kingdoms, as exemplified by Saudi Arabia, decided to follow a policy of importing labour, not people. The inevitable outcome since, has been a sharply divided social and political order in which a significant to more than half the population of the respective Gulf states are citizens with full rights, while the remainder, constituting upto two-thirds of the labour force, are migrants living in a subordinate position and subject to expulsion at any time. This has ensured the particular character of Saudi and Gulf economic demography.
Given this backgrounder, Indian migrants are required to be equipped with the full knowledge that their sojourn to the Gulf is temporary. There is a permanent illusion of impermanence amongst all the participants – the host governments, the governments of the sending countries and, the immigrants themselves. This has come to mean that while migrants to the labour markets of the region may continue to be an enduring feature, their specific numbers and professional allocations are susceptible to changes. This is because fundamental decisions concerning migration – how many migrants should be absorbed, from which countries, occupational preferences and wage levels, the scope of labour rights and worker benefits – are all decided not by market mechanisms but established by ways of policy.As witnessed in the paranoia unleashed by Saudi Arabia’s renewed efforts at Saudization, the fate of migrant workers ultimately rests upon the political dispensation rather than simply manpower needs. Indian migrants rarely, if ever, protest against the regime for they are dependent on the existing political order for their economic security. Thus, it is regime change or a movement towards populist initiatives that threaten the Indian guest worker. And, it is this understanding that has heightened the volume of fears attached to Saudization objectives, encapsulated most recently in the Nitaqat policy due to its future and uncertain implications.
The commentary examines the inconsistency in the reasoning behind interventionist policies in the Middle East region using the illustrative cases of Libya, Bahrain, Syria and Egypt and the international coverage of it thereof. The piece more or less reflects upon the period of the Arab uprisings and reflects on future implications.
Conference Presentations by Melissa Cyrill
The liberating role of cyberspace in overcoming gender, class and geographical barriers is, however, tempered in the final analysis by the contradictory impact of networked technologies - in terms of the quality of content generated and by whom as well as the capacity of regimes and traditional political actors to monitor, control and manipulate online communication (“Tyrants can tweet too”). Further, in the persisting debate between those on the optimist and pessimist sides of networked technology communication, an underlying tension is that while leaderless network structures can mobilize and even unite a disparate coalition of protestors around issue-specific demands such as “The people want the fall of the regime”, they are ineffective at articulating nuanced demands in the subsequent negotiation processes. Cyberactors are also reluctant to participate in the political processes of party building and institutional organization. In other words, digital storytelling supersedes the political communiqué and expressive protest-politics tends to depoliticize the impact of cyberactivism.
Drafts by Melissa Cyrill
In an effort to understand this dialectical opposition between the forces of tradition and modernity, the paper focuses on the role of religious ideology and political consolidation in shaping the contours of the Saudi kingdom's state formation and sustenance. The dynamic between the intertwined assertions of the Sunni Wahhabi religious tradition on the one hand and the politically entrenched power of the Al-Saud regime on the other, underscores the intermeshed duality of the Saudi state. This means that even if the Saudi state is the instrument of modernization, it also simultaneously pursues policies to ensure its legitimacy through particular conventions, in this case, the Wahhabist religious movement in the Hanbali school of Sunni Islam. The paper will thus investigate the means and methods employed within the state towards achieving change with continuity, development with stability and reform and the regime maintenance of the Ibn Saud family.
Book Reviews by Melissa Cyrill
The World Through Arab Eyes is based on a twenty year project and more specifically 10 years’ worth of actual public opinion polling in the Arab world by Shibley Telhami. It generates ample discussion and provides new lenses of analysis such as the 'prism of pain' while studying the Israel/Palestine conflict. The review assesses this original work, the functionality of analyzing public opinion and the particular contexts the book seeks to underscore while studying the Middle East.
India and GCC Countries Iran and Iraq, is an anthology focusing on India & the emerging security landscape in the Persian Gulf & a product of a conference organized by the Indian Council of World Affairs in Nov 2010. The review critically engages with the compilation, highlighting the failings from such a reproduction of recycled views that have eclipsed recent Indian bureaucratic approach to the Gulf region.
Short Notes by Melissa Cyrill
MPhil Dissertation by Melissa Cyrill
Dissertation Submitted to Jawaharlal Nehru University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for Award of the degree of MASTER OF PHILOSOPHY.
The root causes of the GCC's employment problems are interlocked – a system of national education that has largely not been competitive or well aligned with the needs of modern industry, a culture of citizens conditioned to a protective government, a public sector that is overstaffed and inefficient, and counterproductive policies in areas such as immigration and social welfare. It is also reflected in the highly distorted labour market in the region, founded on a socio-ethnic duality. In some respects the labour market is rigid, with pronounced differences in the wages for non-nationals and nationals. In other aspects it is flexible as current laws make it very easy to import or deport foreigners based on hiring/firing. This is also why“unemployment” is a national issue, for if and when a foreigner‟s work visa is terminated, he or she is obliged to return to the home country.
In the final analysis –
• At the GCC level, the dissertation research disproves the hypothesis that growing numbers of GCC nationals have entered the private sector due to workforce nationalisation programmes, replacing foreign labour.
• The second hypothesis has been validated in that the growing mismatch between available local labour and the labour market requirements has undermined the success of Emiratisation.
• Finally, the failure of Emiratisation has been concluded while validating the hypothesis that Indian labour migration to the UAE has been vigorous despite Emiratisation.
Articles by Melissa Cyrill
In an epoch where democracy has emerged as a capable alternative in other regions, the bitterness of colonial compromise cannot be easily repressed in West Asia. Sykes-Picot began the process of drawing up its irrational borders; a 100 years later the region still bears the consequences of its unthinking legacy.
The goal of this paper is to place the role that new social media has played in achieving collective action using the early events of the Arab uprisings and the experiences of Egypt and Tunisia as particular references. Almost four years since the uprisings began, their disrupted momentum has challenged the oft hypothesized and heavily mediatized season of unified Arab awakening. The political economy of communications differed across the affected region making it evident that these countries were in different stages of social, economic, political and digital development. This informs why different regimes were more or less vulnerable to opposition (including cyberactivism) and why the structure of opposition, in turn, varied. Though resisting techno-optimist narratives, the paper seeks to explain the communicative and connective power of social media in the Arab context as well as its disruptive potential in discourse-shaping. In setting up the stage for street protests, the use of ICT’s by Arab activists most crucially aimed at revealing an accurate picture of their respective societies, not just within but also to a broader international audience. Rather than support the cohesive neoliberal success stories quoted in the international media, the respective online Arab publics cast film onto the reality of everyday economic and political repression. Moreover, Arab cyberactivists created virtual forums for citizen journalism through enabling ordinary citizens to question regime legitimacy and record instances of governmental brutality, corruption and violations of human rights. This allowed for the continued exchange of civic discourse, deliberation and articulation, enhancing the region’s social capital and contributing to the growth of a tentative virtual civil society.
The liberating role of cyberspace in overcoming gender, class and geographical barriers is, however, tempered in the final analysis by the contradictory impact of networked technologies – in terms of the quality of content generated and by whom as well as the capacity of regimes and traditional political actors to monitor, control and manipulate online communication (“Tyrants can tweet too”). Further, in the persisting debate between those on the optimist and pessimist sides of networked technology communication, an underlying tension is that while leaderless network structures can mobilize and even unite a disparate coalition of protestors around issue- specific demands such as “The people want the fall of the regime”, they are ineffective at articulating nuanced demands in the subsequent negotiation processes. Cyberactors are also reluctant to participate in the political processes of party building and institutional organization. In other words, digital storytelling supersedes the political communiqué and expressive protest- politics tends to depoliticize the impact of cyberactivism.
To begin with, the governing elites of the oil rich Arab Gulf states focused on essentially two matters. The first one related to how they would use their resource funded wealth to develop their countries. The second related to the problem of facilitating this development with the least disruption to the regime status quo. Until most recently, the answers to the above conundrum had been a more or less uniform application of a twin policy of rentier strategies and labour importation. In doing so, the Gulf monarchies decided to share their wealth but not political power with their native populations through the expansion of social welfare services and government employment opportunities. Additionally, ambitious schemes of development were unveiled to impart modern infrastructural facilities by way of roads, airports, communication networks, and industrial and financial investment projects. Needless to say, their construction and operation required an abundance of skilled and blue-collar labour. In pursuing a unique immigration policy, the Gulf kingdoms, as exemplified by Saudi Arabia, decided to follow a policy of importing labour, not people. The inevitable outcome since, has been a sharply divided social and political order in which a significant to more than half the population of the respective Gulf states are citizens with full rights, while the remainder, constituting upto two-thirds of the labour force, are migrants living in a subordinate position and subject to expulsion at any time. This has ensured the particular character of Saudi and Gulf economic demography.
Given this backgrounder, Indian migrants are required to be equipped with the full knowledge that their sojourn to the Gulf is temporary. There is a permanent illusion of impermanence amongst all the participants – the host governments, the governments of the sending countries and, the immigrants themselves. This has come to mean that while migrants to the labour markets of the region may continue to be an enduring feature, their specific numbers and professional allocations are susceptible to changes. This is because fundamental decisions concerning migration – how many migrants should be absorbed, from which countries, occupational preferences and wage levels, the scope of labour rights and worker benefits – are all decided not by market mechanisms but established by ways of policy.As witnessed in the paranoia unleashed by Saudi Arabia’s renewed efforts at Saudization, the fate of migrant workers ultimately rests upon the political dispensation rather than simply manpower needs. Indian migrants rarely, if ever, protest against the regime for they are dependent on the existing political order for their economic security. Thus, it is regime change or a movement towards populist initiatives that threaten the Indian guest worker. And, it is this understanding that has heightened the volume of fears attached to Saudization objectives, encapsulated most recently in the Nitaqat policy due to its future and uncertain implications.
The commentary examines the inconsistency in the reasoning behind interventionist policies in the Middle East region using the illustrative cases of Libya, Bahrain, Syria and Egypt and the international coverage of it thereof. The piece more or less reflects upon the period of the Arab uprisings and reflects on future implications.
The liberating role of cyberspace in overcoming gender, class and geographical barriers is, however, tempered in the final analysis by the contradictory impact of networked technologies - in terms of the quality of content generated and by whom as well as the capacity of regimes and traditional political actors to monitor, control and manipulate online communication (“Tyrants can tweet too”). Further, in the persisting debate between those on the optimist and pessimist sides of networked technology communication, an underlying tension is that while leaderless network structures can mobilize and even unite a disparate coalition of protestors around issue-specific demands such as “The people want the fall of the regime”, they are ineffective at articulating nuanced demands in the subsequent negotiation processes. Cyberactors are also reluctant to participate in the political processes of party building and institutional organization. In other words, digital storytelling supersedes the political communiqué and expressive protest-politics tends to depoliticize the impact of cyberactivism.
In an effort to understand this dialectical opposition between the forces of tradition and modernity, the paper focuses on the role of religious ideology and political consolidation in shaping the contours of the Saudi kingdom's state formation and sustenance. The dynamic between the intertwined assertions of the Sunni Wahhabi religious tradition on the one hand and the politically entrenched power of the Al-Saud regime on the other, underscores the intermeshed duality of the Saudi state. This means that even if the Saudi state is the instrument of modernization, it also simultaneously pursues policies to ensure its legitimacy through particular conventions, in this case, the Wahhabist religious movement in the Hanbali school of Sunni Islam. The paper will thus investigate the means and methods employed within the state towards achieving change with continuity, development with stability and reform and the regime maintenance of the Ibn Saud family.
The World Through Arab Eyes is based on a twenty year project and more specifically 10 years’ worth of actual public opinion polling in the Arab world by Shibley Telhami. It generates ample discussion and provides new lenses of analysis such as the 'prism of pain' while studying the Israel/Palestine conflict. The review assesses this original work, the functionality of analyzing public opinion and the particular contexts the book seeks to underscore while studying the Middle East.
India and GCC Countries Iran and Iraq, is an anthology focusing on India & the emerging security landscape in the Persian Gulf & a product of a conference organized by the Indian Council of World Affairs in Nov 2010. The review critically engages with the compilation, highlighting the failings from such a reproduction of recycled views that have eclipsed recent Indian bureaucratic approach to the Gulf region.
Dissertation Submitted to Jawaharlal Nehru University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirement for Award of the degree of MASTER OF PHILOSOPHY.
The root causes of the GCC's employment problems are interlocked – a system of national education that has largely not been competitive or well aligned with the needs of modern industry, a culture of citizens conditioned to a protective government, a public sector that is overstaffed and inefficient, and counterproductive policies in areas such as immigration and social welfare. It is also reflected in the highly distorted labour market in the region, founded on a socio-ethnic duality. In some respects the labour market is rigid, with pronounced differences in the wages for non-nationals and nationals. In other aspects it is flexible as current laws make it very easy to import or deport foreigners based on hiring/firing. This is also why“unemployment” is a national issue, for if and when a foreigner‟s work visa is terminated, he or she is obliged to return to the home country.
In the final analysis –
• At the GCC level, the dissertation research disproves the hypothesis that growing numbers of GCC nationals have entered the private sector due to workforce nationalisation programmes, replacing foreign labour.
• The second hypothesis has been validated in that the growing mismatch between available local labour and the labour market requirements has undermined the success of Emiratisation.
• Finally, the failure of Emiratisation has been concluded while validating the hypothesis that Indian labour migration to the UAE has been vigorous despite Emiratisation.
In an epoch where democracy has emerged as a capable alternative in other regions, the bitterness of colonial compromise cannot be easily repressed in West Asia. Sykes-Picot began the process of drawing up its irrational borders; a 100 years later the region still bears the consequences of its unthinking legacy.