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This paper focuses on everyday watery relations; children and young people's fluid, messy, affective encounters with the rainy season in India. We attend to the rhythms, depths, capacities and flows of water and argue that a more nuanced understanding of watery entanglements is needed in the context of fluid inequality. Through in-depth, ethnographic research with children and young people, we offer new ways of thinking about watery relations and inequality attending to the material-social-spatial–temporal complexities of living with the monsoon. [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]

The aim of this paper is to examine the inequality and poverty issues of rural households in India from the perspective of a household's monthly per capita consumption expenditure using data on nearly 20,000 households. In examining these issues, the paper first sets out a model of a poverty-inequality trade-off whereby governments could choose the poverty-inequality combination they most preferred. Then the paper proceeds to examine whether there is a 'caste basis' to inequality and poverty in India or whether distributional and deprivation outcomes are 'caste blind' and entirely determined by the attributes of the individual households. Our overarching conclusion is that households' outcomes with respect to their position on the distributional ladder, or with respect to their chances of being poor, are dependent in large measure on their caste. So households from the Scheduled Castes were more likely to be in the lowest quintile of consumption, and were more likely to be poor, than high-caste Hindu households. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper measures the degree of inequality in child mortality rates across districts in India using data from the 1981, 1991 and 2001 Indian population censuses. Results show that child mortality is more concentrated in less developed districts in all three census years. Furthermore, between 1981 and 2001, the inequality in child mortality seems to have increased to the advantage of the more developed districts. In the decomposition analysis, it is found that while a more equitable distribution of medical facilities and safe drinking water across districts has contributed to reducing inequality in child mortality between 1981 and 1991, different levels of structural change among districts have been responsible for a very large part of the inequality in child mortality to the advantage of the more developed districts in all three census years. The paper concludes with some brief comments on the policy implications of the findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2020 editor-in-chief (Andrew Malekoff) issued a special call for papers for group work stories on pandemic 2020. Among the 28 stories accepted for the series there were 16 from India, 9 from the United States, 2 from Canada and 1 from Israel. General submissions from the U.S., Canada and Israel were typical for the journal. Atypical are submissions from India. Rather than publish the stories in one special issue of the Journal, he decided to spread them out over several issues through 2022. In the course of organizing the special series (with a December 2021 deadline) he continued communication with a few of the authors from India, with particular interest and concern in the deteriorating situation as 2021 unfolded. Although the present commentary is not about group work per se, it is an update by Ajay Saini, Nancy and Andrew Malekoff on the current state of affairs in India, with some contrast to the situation in the U.S., that offers continuing context for the stories in the series. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a comparative analysis between the media of India and South Africa, two emerging regional economic powerhouses and emerging democracies. The analysis is macro. The paper describes and analyzes media content and journalism practices in each country and how Indian and South African media have given limited attention to the deep divisions—centered around class, gender, race, and caste—which mark day-to-day life in each society. Consequently, we conclude, that delegative democracy, characterized by the exclusion of the voices of the poor and marginalized, is perpetuated by a globalized, liberalized, and privatized media. [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]

The extraordinary growth and reduction in inequalities achieved between the mid-1960s and mid-1990s by the High Performing Asian Economies (HPAEs) — namely Hong Kong, the Republic of Korea, Singapore, Taiwan (collectively called "the four tigers"), Japan, China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand — has been discussed at great length in the economic literature. However, no clear explanation has been suggested for the poor performance of other Asian economies, like India, which share the HPAEs geographical proximity and similar economic structures. This paper shows that the stark contrast between the high growth rates and declining income inequalities of HPAEs on one side, and low growth rates and stable (or rising) income inequalities of India and other Asian countries on the other side, may at least in part be explained by the different role that human capital has played in those economies between the mid-1960s and mid-1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective. In India, Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (ST/SC) have been excluded from Hindu society for thousands of years. Together, they comprise over 24% of India's population and still suffer worse health conditions compared to the rest of the Indian population. This paper decomposes the gap in child malnutrition between the ST/SC and the remaining Indian population, looking at both the ST/SC's disadvantageous distribution of health determinants and possible discriminatory or behavioral differences. Design and setting. A Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition was applied to decompose the gap in children's average height-for-age z scores, using data from the 1998/1999 Indian Demographic Health Survey. Results. The gap was found to be primarily caused by the ST/SC's lower wealth, education and use of health care services, but also differences in the effects of health determinants played an important role. It was found that within rural areas ST/SC are not necessarily located further from educational and health care facilities. Conclusions. The use of Oaxaca type decomposition can be very useful when studying ethnic inequalities in health as it explicitly allows for discriminatory or behavioral effects. The results did not point to discrimination against ST/SC regarding health care or education. However, in the quest to increase health care use and education among ST/SC, policy makers will have to take into account all the barriers to these services, including those related to cultural sensitivity and acceptability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to examine the growth performance and its impact on inequality and poverty in China and India. The recent upsurge in growth rates in China and India is seen widely as the 'success' story of globalization. It is also claimed that these developments will make a significant impact on the reduction of global inequalities and poverty. Although a number of scholars have analysed the recent economic performance of China and India, these studies, however, have not taken into account the past policies and their impact on current performance. We find there is a gap in the current discussion, which overlooks historical and economic factors on the recent performance. This article critically assesses the claimed fall in global poverty due to mainly the rise of China and India in recent years. The article questions the 'pro-globalization' argument, which suggests that there is a link between 'market liberal' free market policies and falling poverty. It is argued instead that the evidence concerning poverty reduction is ambiguous, and it is not that the most successful economies have adopted pro-globalization policies. Studying the developmental changes taking place in these two countries is important because they together account for 37.5% of the global population. These populous neighbours, regarded as symbols of poverty and failure until two decades ago, contain large numbers of people living below the officially defined poverty line. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introductory essay reviews the scholarship on the politics of social policy, and shows the contribution of the special issue to explaining expanded welfare commitments in Brazil, China, India and South Africa in the twenty-first century. Much literature on welfare expansion in lower- and middle-income contexts views it primarily as a policy corrective to the economic dislocations produced by global economic integration. This special issue focuses on the political factors that are critical to understanding the shape social policies have taken and their effectiveness in ameliorating poverty and inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines how technopolitical response to covid-19 resulted in differentiated urban citizenship regimes in India's smart cities. Using Isin and Ruppert's framework, we argue that India's digital citizens enacted their subjectivities in response to acts of calling, closing and opening in the cyberspace. Acts of calling encouraged citizens to participate and engage with the state online, systematically excluding those who did not have access to digital infrastructures. Acts of closing were implemented through the technologies of the surveillance state diminishing rights of freedom and privacy. In response, digital citizens enacted their political subjectivities through acts of opening by means of online campaigns, petitions and citizen journalism. Although the risk of technocracy remains real, we argue that the interplay of calling, closing and opening digital acts enabled the enactment of digital citizenship in India by raising the old questions of social citizenship rights and new forms of data and digital rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the causes of India's Maoist insurgency and its changing dynamics. To explain its origins, we empirically test three hypotheses using cross-state-level data: inequality of wealth in states; inefficient state government; and, disgruntled provocateurs. Our analysis reveals that insurgency is caused by inequality of wealth in states, not inefficient state governments and disgruntled provocateurs. Subsequently, we study variations in the number of Maoist attacks and the selected targets in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal using newspaper reports of events. Our analysis demonstrates that the numbers of incidents and the type of targets selected depend on electoral competition between regional political parties and their interactions with Maoists. The findings, therefore, indicate that whereas inequality of wealth can explain the insurgency's presence in states, political competition within states could explain its dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of social mobility in a terrain of increasing inequality has gained particular urgency in post-reform India. We approach social mobility not as a one-way ascent toward the top, rather as a risk-laden enterprise prone to fluctuations that include both incremental gains and the possibility of sliding downwards. We argue that to ‘move up the ladder’ is not merely a matter of individual choice or hard work in the face of odds as free-market believers have long held. It is as much an outcome of collective political bargaining, privileges that dominant class and caste status affords, access to resources and, indeed, occasional luck. Two propositions follow. First, we suggest that the state remains albeit as a reluctant enabler of social mobility in the age of markets. Second, the participation in the new economy hinges also upon one’s ability to ‘dress up’ for the part, to be able to craft one’s look as if one belonged to spaces – work or leisure – that one desires to inhabit. The work of appearances, we suggest, does not operate at individual levels alone, it also encompasses the nation’s spectacular projection of itself in the global political economy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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The Indian growth process has been marked by the relative absence of structural change and the inability of faster output expansion to shift people out of low-productivity activities into higher value ones. Recent rapid growth has also been based on and resulted in growing inequalities. Private accumulation has relied upon existing social inequalities that create segmented labour markets that keep wages of certain social categories low, and on types of exclusion that allow large-scale displacement and dispossession without adequate compensation. The associated boom has required debt-driven bubbles to provide domestic demand since incomes of the masses have not risen in tandem, but such a strategy is inherently unsustainable. This growth process is now reaching the limits of its viability and is facing constraints posed by economic, social, political and environmental challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

InRed Tape, I do not use the term “arbitrary” in opposition to “systematic”, as is alleged by Harriss and Jeffrey. Arbitrariness accompanies systematic forms of discrimination, and is the result of both, the indifference to outcomes and to the chaotic style of functioning of Indian bureaucracies. Interpreting structural violence, or explaining injustice, requires understanding what the state means to different people. The chief argument that poverty is a form of violence, and represents the killing of the poor, underlines the injustice that results from treating poverty as a biopolitical fact. I employ a notion of politics that is not restricted to parties and mobilization, but which saturates all relations of inequality. Despite voicing dissatisfaction with the analysis presented inRed Tape, Harriss and Jeffrey fail to forward an adequate and coherent alternative. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Although a large literature exists on finance and economic growth, few studies have empirically examined the relationship between finance and inequality. Using grouped national household sample survey data on monthly household consumption expenditure at the sub-national level for the years 1999–2000 to 2006–2007, we examine the relationship between Financial Development (FD) and rural and urban inequality in India. The results indicate that FD is associated with a reduction in inequality, but only in the urban areas. Further, inequality is found to be higher in the richer states compared to less developed and low income states, and as state income increases, inequality also increases both in the rural and urban areas. Finally, our results show that increase in population per bank branch leads to higher inequality in urban areas but decline in rural areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]