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The paper uses illustrations from rural India and Bangladesh to develop a critical analysis of practices and experiences of poverty often overlooked in development policies. It challenges the principle measurement, calculative rationality and static representation in anti-poverty interventions that present poverty as a 'problem' to be resolved. It draws on poststructuralist ideas to express poverty differently and shift from problem-solving to problematisation. Drawing on the concept of 'rhizome' it highlights the connectivity, heterogeneity and multiplicity of poverty. Examples from interviews and photo diaries illustrate manifold poverty as a combination of heterogeneous activities, objects and affects that complicate development ethics and challenge the logic of reason in existing policies. The paper explores improvisation, experimentation, hope and repetition as mechanisms for critically evaluating aquaculture-led development and attending to overlooked objects, uncertain outcomes and untold stories of disadvantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies educational aspirations and grade achievements of teenagers in India, using Structural Equation Modelling with data from the Young Lives Study. The analysis differentiates direct effects of relevant socio-economic and individual characteristics on educational output from indirect effects through aspirations. In this sample, some student characteristics – parents' education, mothers' caste and the student's gender – have no direct effect on educational output, but an indirect effect on educational aspirations going through abilities. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds, and in particular girls, are at a disadvantage at age 12 because they have accumulated lower cognitive abilities. Abilities shape aspirations, which then impact educational output beyond the mere effect of abilities. Girls are at a double disadvantage: besides lower average skills at age 12, they developed lower aspirations than boys of the same characteristics. The economic situation of the household was neither directly nor indirectly related with students' achievements in school. These results help distinguish aspirations as drivers of behaviour from aspirations as correlates of other characteristics, and they have relevant policy implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on ethnography of one family's life with diabetes in a poor settlement in Delhi's suburbs, this paper examines the relationship between emotional structures of care and kinship in the face of chronic illness. While anthropologists have argued for a relational understanding of care and discussed how, in India, modernity and social transformations have resulted in crises of familial care, less attention has been paid to the emotional terrains of care and its difficulties as they unfold in concrete relationships over time. This paper demonstrates how emotional intensities define the possibilities, limits, and ambivalence of kin care for the chronically ill. Described as care without heart, this mode of attention implies a continuation of care labour that maintains kinship ties and holds the possibility of kin futures, but is disinvested emotionally and feels unsatisfactory. The analytic of care without heart expresses a particular mode of care by which persons navigate dominant moral regimes around gendered family responsibilities and imperatives of love in relationships, but without fully subscribing to them. Care without heart at once signifies an inadequate form of care, invokes North Indian normative moral regimes around family care responsibilities and emotions, and acknowledges the shortcomings of these regimes and norms of relatedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2018, Nuh, barely 75 km from India's parliament, was ranked by the Government as the country's most 'backward' district. It is a region fraught with many challenges including endemic poverty and simmering communal tensions, which among other factors have contributed to historically limiting women from pursuing higher education or building career aspirations. While the state has attempted to correct this by building new colleges, this paper explores how women experience and navigate these college spaces. Using a critical feminist lens, it seeks to understand the social and cultural possibilities that college life and higher education have in their lives. Findings suggest that while there are major restrictions on social agency within their everyday life, college emerges as a liminal space that provides an 'escape'. The college space for these women offers possible pathways of imagination, dialogue, solidarity and support, all forming the complex matrix of their future possibilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of household wealth dynamic remains an important methodology in the identification of poverty traps. To overcome measurement issues in survey data, livelihoods-based approaches of the dynamics of poverty are typically examined using panel regressions of a livelihoods regression on household assets and other socio-economic factors over time. In this paper, we characterise the livelihoods regression as a 'livelihoods technology', and use a latent class-technology approach to account for heterogeneity in how households generate a livelihood. We use a detailed dataset from rural India covering 213 households across 2001–2014, and control for selection issues through a Heckman Selection model. Our results are the first in the wealth dynamics literature to show that substantial heterogeneity exists in the technologies with which households generate their livelihoods. Importantly, we show that accounting for heterogeneity in household livelihoods 'technologies' more readily identifies different equilibria in wealth levels and provides previously foregone information on who is poor and why they remain poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the findings of a research study in Thane District, Maharashtra, India, on access to sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) for women and girls of Nomadic and Denotified Tribes (NT-DNT). NT-DNT communities face stigma and violence due to their historically criminalised status and nomadic lifestyle. Their precarious legal, social, and economic status has a negative impact on women's SRHR. Existing literature on this subject is sparse, and studies by researchers from within the community, which could bring about organic and community-led change, are almost non-existent. This study, carried out by a woman from a Nomadic Tribe, presents an insider's perspective on the experiences of and factors underlying the violation of the SRHR of girls and women of NT-DNT communities. The study used a human rights-based participatory methodology with qualitative methods including three focus group discussions with 21 women and 10 in-depth interviews with women and key informants from NT-DNT communities. The findings describe the gender, community, and health system barriers which hinder women's and girls' access to SRHR. Issues such as language barriers between the women and medical fraternity, criminalisation by the police, and extreme deprivation – more intense than faced by the general poor – are unique to women of these communities. The NT-DNT communities face extreme deprivation of basic resources such as identity documents, shelter, sanitation, education support, workplace safety, and transportation, which further deny women their sexual and reproductive rights. The paper aims to amplify these women's voices to advocate for better SRHR services for women and girls of NT-DNT communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper challenges (inter)national development narratives that propose schooling as a way out of poverty in the global South by interrogating poor children's experience of pedagogic and disciplinary processes in an Indian classroom. It also develops a theoretical framework to interrogate the relationship between urban poverty and classroom processes which attends to wider class and caste relations in the contemporary context of economic liberalism and 'political and social illiberalism'. Drawing upon parent interviews and ethnographic fieldnotes from a classroom in a state school it unpacks the term, 'labour class', used by teachers to refer to pupils' social background. Further, deploying the notion of 'deficit view' it shows how pedagogic practice, physical and verbal aggression experienced by pupils and pupils' struggles to engage with classroom teaching are shaped by realities of deeply stratified schooling, inadequate infrastructure in state schools and the relationship between 'labour class' communities and middle-class teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay critically examines the discourse of participation in development finance directed at the poor in the Global South from national and international development agencies. This discourse, often termed financial inclusion, posits the ability of development actors to reach the poor involving them in important economic decisions affecting their lives, provides access to products that improve their material conditions, and ensures their credit worthiness through highly nuanced information technology and social media tools. The paper presents evidence from two ethnographically inspired studies undertaken by the author in India and Kenya to ascertain the ways in which the participatory discourse in finance is understood among societal participants themselves. The paper presents relevant epistemes for analyzing what 'grassroots' actors understand as their participation in development-oriented financial inclusion projects. The study forwards two major conclusions: (1) 'habits of authority' among various development actors thwart effective participation; (2) technology platforms that allow for successive innovations and interconnections from businesses and other organizations encourage financial inclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present the results of a qualitative study by a non-profit organisation implementing a community-based urban adolescent development programme. The study highlights the sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) situation of marginalised young women in a developed state of India. Our findings, based on in-depth interviews with young women and frontline health providers, show that structural factors, such as economic and social stratifiers, gender norms and cultural beliefs, result in further marginalisation of young women. In turn, marginalisation adversely affects the realisation of SRHR through discriminatory practices around menstruation and lack of control in matters related to sexuality, contraception, pregnancy and safe abortion. Rights to the highest standards of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) care are compromised. Health system factors like providers' attitudes and knowledge, commodity supplies, and indifference to ensuring delivery of contraceptives and other services often result in unplanned pregnancies and affect the quality of young women's SRH care. Whatever information and support adolescents and young women get is from local community-based organisations. We conclude that structural determinants and violations of fundamental rights to education, equal opportunities and participation constitute a significant barrier to the enjoyment of SRHR by the marginalised young women in the study. Unless these are addressed, government policies and programmes to promote young people's SRHR will not benefit young women from disadvantaged communities. Partnership and complementarity between government programmes, adolescents and health rights civil society organisations are recommended to promote rights-based, equitable adolescent and youth-friendly services to this vulnerable population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internally displaced women are underserved by health schemes and policies, even as they may face greater risk of violence and unplanned pregnancies, among other burdens. There are an estimated 450,000 internally displaced persons in India, but they are not formally recognised as a group. Displacement has been a common feature in India's northeast region. This paper examines reproductive and maternal health (RMH) care-seeking among Bru displaced women in India. The study employed qualitative methodology: four focus group discussions (FGDs) were held with 49 displaced Bru women aged 18–45 between June and July 2018; three follow-up interviews with FGD participants and five in-depth interviews with community health workers (Accredited Social Health Activists – ASHAs) in camps for Bru displaced people in the Indian state of Tripura. All interviewees gave written or verbal informed consent; discussions were conducted in the local dialect, recorded, and transcribed. Data were indexed deductively from a dataset coded using grounded approaches. Most women were unaware of many of the RMH services provided by health facilities; very few accessed such care. ASHAs had helped increase institutional deliveries over the years. Women were aware of temporary contraceptive methods as well as medical abortion, but lacked awareness of the full range of contraceptive options. Challenges in accessing RMH services included distance of facilities from camps, and multiple costs (for transport, medicines, and informal payments to facility staff). The study highlighted a need for comprehensive intervention to improve RMH knowledge, attitudes, and practices among displaced women and to reduce access barriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has led to major learning about the social and economic losses that an external shock to the system can cause. In this paper, we examine some sustainability issues focusing on three key focal points of sustainable development – economic growth, poverty and inequality in the context of climate change. We focus on the inter-relationship between economic growth, investment, labour force participation, energy consumption, poverty and inequality under alternative scenarios using the global framing of Shared Socio-Economic Pathways (SSPs). An econometric model is used for estimating the relationship between GDP and its determinants along with fitting a General Quadratic and/or Beta Lorenz curve using the World Bank's Povcal software for determining the relationship between income, poverty and inequality. Alternative GDP growth paths, redistribution assumptions and poverty lines are used for simulations which reveal the extent of sensitivity of the developmental targets to scenarios up to 2030. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health financing equity analysis rarely goes below the state level in India. This paper assesses the equity and effectiveness of public spending on health in the state of Odisha. Using district-level public spending data for the first time, it sheds light on the incidence of public spending by geography and by type of services. There are three key findings. First, it identifies the weak link between district spending and district need, proxied by poverty rates or lagging sectoral outcomes, highlighting the potential for a more needs-based approach to public resource allocation. Second, the results indicate that at the household level health spending by the state is not pro-poor, especially in public hospitals, underscoring the need to improve access to care for the bottom 40% at these facilities. Third, an exhaustive analysis of micro-level treasury data brings into focus the importance of reforming public finance data systems to support evidence-based policy at the sub-state level. Significant district-wise variation in key health financing and equity indicators, combined with growing policy interest in the district level, underscore the utility of further empirical work in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates whether aspirations matter for education, which offers a common route out of poverty. We find that mother aspirations are strongly related to the child's grade achieved at age 18. The relation is nonlinear, suggesting there is a threshold, and depends on caste, household income and the village setting. The coefficients remain large and significant when applying control function estimation, using first born son as instrument. A similar strong relation is observed with learning outcomes, including local language, English and maths test results, and with attending school, but not with attending private education. These results are confirmed for outcomes at age 15. The findings provide direct evidence on the contribution of mother aspirations to children's education outcomes and point to aspirations as a channel of intergenerational mobility. They suggest that education outcomes can be improved more rapidly by taking aspirations into account when targeting education programmes, and through interventions that shape aspirations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper highlights the complex relationship between development and language and argues that poverty as a condition of underdevelopment is materialized in representation. Instead of limiting the scope of the topic to the rhetorical aspects of development thought, it is proposed that development language produces a specific reality of poverty while writing about it. Using a post-structuralist framework and drawing from various Planning Commission reports on poverty lines, the paper goes on to implicate these reports in the production of authoritative knowledge and the elision of the poor. Through the identification of the cut-off line, which distinguishes the poor from the non-poor, these reports control our ways of knowing and suspend our ability to imagine poverty in any non-institutional manner. Such representation not only omits poor’s everyday experience and converts poverty as experience to poverty as knowledge, but also predicates its objectivity on such elision. The paper also highlights the slippages and contradictions in these reports, and shows how in the seeming inevitability of poverty knowledge, people find innovative ways to appropriate and disrupt it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this first paper, we explain why traditional knowledge is an important theme in the study of Indian agriculture, especially given the crises routinely facing poor, smallholder farmers. We begin with an overview of some of the key authors who have written about the problems facing small farmers both within and outside India. Different authors have focused on different aspects of the benefits that can be derived from the local knowledge and skills of farmers, but these do not always pertain to organic farming. Our interest in organic farming is specifically about 'traditional' knowledge. With the industrialisation of agriculture in India and elsewhere, many poor, small farmers have been deskilled and placed into vulnerable positions. Traditional knowledge has been undermined, overwhelmed or has survived only in fragments. How 'traditional knowledge' might be retrieved, reinvented, reintroduced and modified so as to create a farmer-driven, sustainable and biodiverse agriculture is our concern. In the final section of this paper, we analyse the four situations we have been working on as examples of the possibilities and challenges facing the revival of 'traditional knowledge' in the villages of Kolkata, central India and Sikkim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until recently, the only way for the population of developing countries to access the Internet was through expensive smartphones, designed in and for developed countries. In the past few years, however, a major new innovation has emerged, the smart feature phone with Internet connectivity, which was specifically designed for those with low incomes in developing countries. This paper explains the development process for the smart feature phone, how this has influenced the nature and extent of adoption, and its use by low-income groups, including their demonstrated preference for uses related to entertainment rather than more traditional "work-related" goals. The focus is on the case of India, where the JioPhone has already reached millions of people with low incomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an evaluation of a supported women's self-help programme with over 1.5 million participants in one of the poorest rural regions of the world (Uttar Pradesh, India). Methodologically, it shows how indicators from the direct capability measurement literature can be adapted for programme evaluation in a low-income country setting. Unique data on capabilities across a range of dimensions are then developed for some 6000 women and used to estimate a number of propensity score matching models. The substantive empirical results of these models indicate that many of the capability indicators are higher for programme members, that the difference appears robust, and that there are significant benefits for those from scheduled tribes and lower castes. The discussion highlights two points. First, human development improvements offered by multi-strand programmes can help to explain the paradox as to why nearly 100 million women (in India alone) have participated in self-help programmes despite modest global research evidence for micro-finance impacts on nominal incomes. Second, results argue strongly for the use of capability measures over agency measures focused solely on household decision-making to assess women's empowerment when structural causes of disempowerment, external to the household, are present and significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From research in central Chhattisgarh, this paper interprets the bearing that healthcare beliefs and practices may have in shaping maternal and child nutrition both in the light of biomedical recommendations and within the context and constraints of a rural village setting. It contends that health beliefs and practices that are at variance from biomedical recommendations appear to have few consequences for gestational nutrition and for child health in relation to pregnancy. In the postpartum however, health ideas at variance from biomedical recommendations appear to have an important bearing on maternal nutrition and infant feeding, and may put mothers and children at risk of nutritional deficiency. Maternal 'eating down' following a surgical procedure such as a caesarean delivery or tubectomy is especially noteworthy, since food intake quantity is reduced over an extended time frame. While caring practices are influenced by cultural formulations, they also reflect, perhaps, adaptations to health risks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among countries with comparable levels of income, India has one of the more progressive disability policy frameworks. However, people with disabilities in India are still subject to multiple disadvantages. This paper focuses on state-level variations in outcomes for people with disabilities to provide an explanation for the contrast between the liberal laws on paper and the challenges faced by people with disabilities in practice. Using average monthly per-capita expenditure as an indicator of economic well-being, instrumental-variable Wald estimator results indicate that households with members with disabilities have expenditures that are 14% lower compared with households with able members. This effect is most pronounced among families with male adults and children with disabilities, and in states that are relatively poor, relatively more urban, those that experience extremes in annual rainfall and temperature, and those that have low to medium levels of inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key agenda of policy-makers in both the developing and the developed worlds is to have an inclusive growth. Financial services have been recognised as one of the fundamental services that have the potential to achieve this objective and help move towards a more just and equitable society. This paper attempts to assess the impact of three information and communication technology-driven initiatives in the field of financial services by differentiating them on the basis of service design. This study goes beyond the stated objective of these services and uses Sen’s capability perspective to study their impact across three non-economic outcome variables viz. literacy, service-specific well-being and empowerment. The data for the study are collected from the urban poor across different locations in a large metropolitan city in South India where the three different services are being offered. The study follows a quasi-experimental design (field study) and ensures matching of the treatment and control groups through propensity score matching. The matched data are analysed using an independent samplet-test. The result of the analysis shows that service design plays a key role in increasing service literacy, improving service-specific well-being and empowering end users. The study suggests that the true challenge for providers (government and partner agencies) of these services is in designing a service that ensures a balance of structure and flexibility without constraining the choice of end users through innovative service blueprints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

HIV infection poses a serious threat to the economy of a household. Out of pocket (OOP) health spending can be prohibitive and can drag households below poverty level. Based on the data collected from a cross-sectional survey of 401 households with HIV+ members in Pune city, India, this paper examines the consumption levels and patterns among households, and comments on the economic impoverishment resulting from OOP medical spending. Analysis reveals that households with HIV members spend a major portion of their monthly consumption expenditure on food items. Medical expenditure constitutes a large portion of their total consumption spending. Expenditure on children's education constitutes a minor proportion of total monthly spending. A high proportion of medical expenditure has a bearing on the economic condition of households with HIV members. Poverty increases by 20% among the studied HIV households when OOP health spending is adjusted. It increases 18% among male-headed households and 26% among female-headed households. The results reiterate the need of greater support from the government in terms of accessibility and affordability of health care to save households with HIV members from economic catastrophe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reviews the impact and effectiveness in implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) at state level as well as at village level with focus on inclusiveness, rural labor markets and agriculture. The paper finds that some states are more effective in implementation then others. The states which effectively integrated MGNREGA works with local planning gained much in terms of employment generation and asset creation leading to increased agricultural potential. The scheme is more inclusive of vulnerable sections of the society including scheduled castes and tribes and also women. Study also highlight the village level differences in implementation and effective implementation leads to reduction of hunger and poverty. More importantly the scheme increased bargaining power of rural laborer in agricultural sector, resulted in higher wage rates, better work environment and less exploitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]