This book is centred on the role of the triangular interactions among communities, educational sectors, and academic diplomacy in facilitating peaceful societal change by evaluating the common challenges in India, Myanmar, and Thailand. It analyses urban poverty, religious freedom, ethnic diversity, women’s rights, development and regional partnership, civil-military relations, and human security in democratic transition and explores in-depth the societal issues from local and international perspectives paying special attention to the protection of ‘rights’ and promotion of ‘security’ in these societies. The book highlights that the continuous application of knowledge across borders and the promotion of international norms are essential tools in enabling social transformations from the bottom. In addition, the contributors promote further discussion on both the process and the outcome from action research projects that shape the lives of the local people and their communities. The book therefore contributes to the existing literature by offering additional insights into the societies of India, Myanmar and Thailand for policy makers, social innovators, researchers, development analysts and planners and the general public including students.

This book explores the multifaceted obstacles to social change that India, Myanmar and Thailand face, and ways to overcome them. With a collection of essays that identify common challenges and salient features affecting diverse communities, this volume examines topics from subnational and local perspectives across the peripheries. The book argues that identity-based divisions have created a system of oppression and political contention that have led to conflicts of different kinds, and hence serving as the common cause of different social issues. At the same time, such issues have created space for marginalized groups around the world to call for change. The volume recognizes that social transformation comes into being through an active process of deconstructing and reconstructing shared norms and ideas. The contents in this book are thus centered around two focuses: the impacts of identities and grassroots. Both of these aspects are at the heart of each country’s transformations towards democracy, peace, justice, and freedom. Under this framework, the chapters cover a diverse range of common issues, such as, minority grievances, gender inequality, ethnic identity, grassroots power in alliance-making towards community peace, recovery and resilience, digital freedom, democracy assistance and communication, and bridging multiple divides. As identity-based cleavages are daily lived experiences for individuals and communities, it requires grassroots initiatives and alliances as well as democratic communication to tackle obstacles at the root. Ultimately, the book convinces readers that social transformations must begin at the individual to communal level and local to national level.

“This book focuses on the different challenges and opportunities for social transformation in India, Myanmar and Thailand, by centering communities and individuals as the main drivers of change. In doing so, it includes discussions on a wide array of issues including women’s empowerment and political participation, ethno-religious tensions, plurilingualism, education reform, community-based healthcare, climate change, disaster management, ecological systems, and vulnerability reduction. Two core foundations are introduced for ensuring broader transformations. The first is the academic diplomacy project – a framework for an engaged academic enquiry focusing on causative, curative, transformative, and promotive factors. The second is a community driven collective struggle that serves as a grassroots possibility to facilitate positive social transformation by using locally available resources and enabling the participation of the resident population. As a whole, the book conveys the importance of a diversification of engagement at the grassroots level to strengthen the capacity of individuals as decisive stakeholders, where the process of social transformation makes communities more interconnected, interdependent, multicultural and vital in building an inclusive society.”

"This book focuses on the different challenges and opportunities for social transformation in India, Myanmar and Thailand, by centering communities and individuals as the main drivers of change. In doing so, it includes discussions on a wide array of issues including women's empowerment and political participation, ethno-religious tensions, plurilingualism, education reform, community-based healthcare, climate change, disaster management, ecological systems, and vulnerability reduction. Two core foundations are introduced for ensuring broader transformations. The first is the academic diplomacy project - a framework for an engaged academic enquiry focusing on causative, curative, transformative, and promotive factors. The second is a community driven collective struggle that serves as a grassroots possibility to facilitate positive social transformation by using locally available resources and enabling the participation of the resident population. As a whole, the book conveys the importance of a diversification of engagement at the grassroots level to strengthen the capacity of individuals as decisive stakeholders, where the process of social transformation makes communities more interconnected, interdependent, multicultural and vital in building an inclusive society." Chosein Yamahata is a Professor at the Graduate School of Policy Studies, Aichi Gakuin University, Japan. He is the coordinator of the Academic Diplomacy Project and co-edited Rights and Security in India, Myanmar and Thailand (2020). Dr. Yamahata is also a Visiting Professor at the Faculty of Mass Communication at Chiang Mai University, Thailand. Donald M. Seekins is an Emeritus Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at Meio University, Japan. He is the author of Burma and Japan since 1940 (2007); State and Society in Modern Rangoon(2011) and The Historical Dictionary of Burma (2017). Dr. Seekins is co-founder of Burma Review and Challenges International Forum (BRACIF) and the Aunfair-Euro Roundtable (EAR). Makiko Takeda is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Policy Studies, Aichi Gakuin University, Japan. She is the convener of the Asian University Network Forum on Advances in Research (AUNFAIR) and Thailand-India-Japan Conclave (TIJC). Dr. Takeda is the author of Women, Children and Social Transformation in Myanmar (2020).

This book offers the assessment of Myanmar’s societal changes, development aspects, and political situation over the course of the nation’s short lived democratic transition disrupted by the coup d’état on 1 February 2021. A multitude of authors with different expertise add new dimensions of analysis to provide a foundation for any future international cooperation in Myanmar’s center and peripheries. The military’s institutionalization of its influence and control in political, economic and social affairs has negatively affected the safety, security and peace of people and their communities at the periphery. This in turn has led the people to undertake local grassroots initiatives towards securing a genuine democratic transition at the local and national level. The chapters probe into Myanmar’s transition and political crisis through in-depth discussion on the issues such as, but not limited to, state fragility, community resilience, political leadership, ethnic women’s organizations, human security, education equality, IDPs and non-state actors, ethnic community-based health organizations, the 2020 election, peace process, development issues, the coup’s destruction, and a new-born unity. The book covers an important collection of inputs from young and prominent scholars alike, offering a valuable resource for general readers, students, and practitioners. The editors present this volume as a vital collection to literature at a time of heated political crisis and societal responses on her current course since the contributors highlight the state of Myanmar by also focusing on the margins, the grassroots, and the recent coup.

Myanmar has faced numerous divisions that hinder its democratization and peacebuilding processes since emerging out of decades of military dictatorship. The coup d’état in 2021 terminated Myanmar’s limited and nascent democratization under the civilian leadership of the National League for Democracy (NLD); not only did the coup regime resurface old struggles, but also created new ones. Against the backdrop of Myanmar’s changing political landscapes from military to quasi-civilian to civilian rule in 2016, and back to military rule in 2021, the book discusses the various forms of interconnected struggles, both old and new. In this process, the contributed chapters come together to highlight the changing dynamics of stakeholders, relations between agents and beneficiaries, and the generated evolutionary processes in Myanmar’s democratization and its reversal. This book brings an even mix of researchers both within and outside of Myanmar to critically discuss how different agents and their interactions, in the form of center-periphery as well as state-non-state relations, continuously shape today’s political landscape. Its interdisciplinary composition also invites readers from various backgrounds to grasp with engaged research that identifies the various challenges and addresses ways in which to facilitate change from local and international perspectives.

Across the world states are seeking out new and secure supplies of energy but this search is manifesting itself most visibly in Asia where rapid industrialisation in states such as China and India is fomenting a frantic scramble for energy resources. Due to entrenched societal inequities and widespread authoritarian governance, however, the pursuit of national energy security through transnational energy projects has resulted in devastating impacts on the human and environmental security of local populations. These effects are particularly evident in both Thailand and Myanmar (Burma), which, located at the crossroads of Asia, are increasingly engaged in the cross-border energy trade. Based on extensive fieldwork and theoretical analysis this ground-breaking book proposes a new critical approach to energy and environmental security and explores the important role that both local and transnational environmental movements are playing, in the absence of effective and democratic governments, in providing ’activist environmental governance’ for energy projects throughout the region. By comparing the nature of this activism under two very different political regimes it delivers crucial theoretical insights with both academic and policy implications for the sustainable and equitable development of the South’s natural resources.