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The past decade has seen a growing body of literature pertaining to the rise of China and its implications for the East Asian region. In the meantime, impatient with the lack of constructive dialogues between China specialists and IR theorists, scholars have called for a “Chinese School of IR” or “IR Theory with Chinese Characteristics.” The establishment of a Chinese school of IR needs to take the country’s specific political, socio-cultural and demographic environments into empirical contemplation and theoretical formulation. The existence of a large Chinese diaspora--numbering 45 million--who have maintained substantial and unbroken linkages with the homeland for many centuries, is one of such factors unique to China. What, then, is the role of Chinese international migration in the on-going discourse on China rising and its international relations? Do the Chinese diaspora play an active part―as some other diasporas such as the Jewish, Indians, and Armenians have―in the hostland’s and homeland’s foreign policy processes? If not, why? How have ethnic Chinese in Southeast Asia responded to the rise of China?

Irrigation has a prime role in Indian agriculture offering food security to meet the needs of an ever growing population. Of late, the growth in the surface irrigated area has stagnated and declined. And, the area under ground water irrigation has increased massively leading to overexploitation. Facilitating policies towards electricity, credit, technological innovations in well exploration, extraction and use, demographic shifts, lucrative product markets and weak groundwater institutions are contributing to the over-extraction of groundwater. For the past four decades, groundwater extraction has exhibited a trajectory of initial utilization, agrarian boom, growing scarcity and eventually bust with a rapid fall in the groundwater table in semi-arid regions of India. This has forced several farmers to shift to dryland agriculture as they could not bear the brunt of failure of wells increasing economic scarcity of the precious groundwater resource for irrigation. The ineffective institutional efforts of the government to contain groundwater overdraft have proved in vain. The challenge is thus to frame effective institutions focusing on resource management rather than resource development. In this endeavor, this study critically examines trends in the growth of irrigation covering 1). the trajectory of well irrigation, 2). the degree of over exploitation, 3). causes and the consequences of groundwater depletion, 4). the management gaps and the appropriate institutional, 5). technical and corrective policy instruments to overcome the water crisis taking into account both demand and supply side issues. Further, this study show that groundwater management approaches which are effective in one country may not be effective or viable in another country due to the variation in type of aquifers, the number of users involved, alternative sources of water and the political economy at large.