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This paper argues that a distinctive form of public interest litigation has been used effectively in the Indian Supreme Court to protect the rights of exploited workers. By looking at the extreme cases of child labour and bonded labour, this study finds that the Indian Supreme Court has been labour-friendly, and has taken seriously the constitutional promise of socio-economic development. In rulings that enlist the aid of local governments and non-governmental organizations, the higher judiciary has helped to make positive changes for the most disadvantaged workers in Indian society. This paper results from a year of fieldwork in New Delhi, and relies on case rulings, archival work, and ethnographic field research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to understand the gender-specific consequences of the Shahargaon Jat community's increasing urban contact with New Delhi. It examines the consequences of a quick assimilation of Jat men into income-generating activities in the urban market and a corresponding loss of Jat women's economic roles, leading to their further seclusion and marginalization within the household and community. By providing a historically contextualized account of shifts in gender identity and relations in Shahargaon, the paper considers the ways in which the newly constructed urban patriarchal gender ideology and its asymmetric power relations reinforce gender disparity and marginalize women in an urbanizing community. The Shahargaon Jat community's particular historical and patriarchal context, kinship and marriage rules, and the present state of urbanization constitutes an example of the overall failure of urban exposure to improve economic participation and the overall quality of life for women in urbanizing communities in north India. It appears that the community's economic well-being has not worked in tandem with the women's social well-being in Shahargaon, in the sense that the Jat patriarchal system and its rules have largely remained unaltered despite exposure to the urban environment of New Delhi. Instead, Shahargaon's increasing urban context has intensified patriarchal control and the corresponding marginalization of Jat women. The Shahargaon case may illustrate a widespread pattern of the increasing gender asymmetry in several other urbanizing village communities in north India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines desired family size and sex composition, the extent of son preference, the underlying motivations for the preference, and the knowledge and use of the new reproductive technologies to achieve these preferences in two culturally distinct but economically similar immigrant communities in New Delhi, India. The two groups - one group from Punjab, north India, and the other from Kerala, south India - are considered in the literature to be two extremes in the socio-cultural spectrum, particularly in terms of kinship organizations, gender relations, women's decision-making power, and levels of women's autonomy. The results of the study suggest that shared urban experience, acceptance of a small family norm, and easy accessibility of new reproductive technologies and abortion services have led to similarities in desired family size, preference for sons, and means taken to realize their preference in the two communities. The article concludes with a discussion of the intricate and intersecting views of parents on family size, son preference and daughter neglect, and the many ways of regulating family size and sex composition in urban India, and draws parallel with similar research findings in India and elsewhere in Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]