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In this paper, a model for development of Self-Help Groups (SHGs) has been presented in perspective of India to ensure the Economic and Social development of the country and addressing, simultaneously, some of the major challenges being faced by India. Adequate microfinancing to the SHGs and developing entrepreneurship among its members may help in achieving several targets like poverty alleviation, women empowerment, employment generation, homogeneous development etc. If planned properly, the SHGs can become an instrument for all round and all-inclusive development of India or any other similarly placed developing country. SHGs may also play an import role in the endeavour of India to become a five trillion economy, to achieve self-sustainability and to attain the Sustainable Development Goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global pandemic Covid-19 and its ill effects has created a fear all over the world. This novel virus has affected 216 countries across the globe. The number of confirmed cases and death are on the hype as per the daily reports by world health organisation and it has sparked an economic crisis. Due to self-isolation, social-distancing, restrictions on transportation services have put every sector of economy on downturn. The people in unorganised sectors are losing their jobs. The demand for manufactured goods and other commodities has been decreased. The demand for medical supplies and essential food items are on an increase. In this article, the socio-economic implications of Covid-19 on India has been summarized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This detailed case study of India's "outsourcing" industry illustrates the challenges in linking macro and micro human resource policies with an economic development strategy based on export-oriented services. The rapid expansion in the outsourcing of services to India has raised the possibility that this sector will be a key engine of India's economic growth. Based on extensive field research carried out over a four-year period, the authors of this study argue that four interrelated human resource policy challenges threaten the outsourcing industry's growth: two "macro" problems (current skill shortages and the inability of the country to produce higher levels of skills for the long-term growth and sustainability of the industry), and two micro problems (very high levels of employee turnover and rapidly increasing employee costs). The authors evaluate current policy responses and suggest options. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution explores the role of the state in the contemporary food regime in light of critical theories of neoliberalisation. Heeding recent calls for downscaling food regime analysis, I suggest a Gramscian reinterpretation of recent right-to-food legislation in India on the backdrop of longer histories of capital, power and nature. I argue for seeing the recent right-to-food case in India as partaking in a longstanding hegemonic process of neoliberalising the country's agro-food system, where hegemony is negotiated through unstable equilibria facilitating renewed capital accumulation for dominant classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As critics have recently demonstrated, developmentalist thinking sustains modern European imperialism by portraying non-Europeans as further back on a fixed scale of civilizations. The problem persists in the developmental logics underlying contemporary Marxist and liberal political theory, suggesting that developmentalism is implicitly bound to domination and imperialism. This article complicates this connection by drawing out anti -imperial developmentalist arguments articulated from the other side of the colonial divide. I elaborate three distinctive developmental logics in anti-imperialisms advanced by Surendranath Banerjea, Aurobindo Ghose, and Shyamji Krishnavarma, leading figures in India's independence movement, to show the particularity of the form of developmentalism so intimately bound to domination. This exposition aims to provincialize it by uncovering alternative developmentalist schemas offering distinctive conceptual resources for understanding progress in relation to anti-imperialism. By reaching beyond the Western lens framing the problem of developmentalism, I show its instabilities and consider its utility in resisting imperialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "Protect, Respect, Remedy" Framework along with the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights is the current global standard regarding corporate conduct. This article analyses the UN Framework from the vantage point of labour rights in India by looking at the garment supply chain. It argues that it can do little to induce states and businesses to bring substantive improvements to working conditions in a largely informal economy like India. Without the state performing its duty to protect human rights, the secondary responsibility of corporations can do very little in realising the rights of workers. Nonetheless, its tallest contribution is that it has given a platform for civil society to push for better conduct from all businesses and marks the beginning of a unified international business and human rights agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the location and production of liminality with regard to voting rights of Tibetan exile community in India. Liminality is related here to the legal and bureaucratic 'inbetweenness' that characterises and orders the life of the Tibetan exiles in India. Tibetans born in India have been registered as voters in India's electoral list albeit without an accompanying claim or path to citizenship. The paper argues that these voting rights are simultaneously contested and embraced by the Tibetan exile community. Responses of the exile community to voting rights are produced by the interaction between (a) the lived experience of statelessness and (b) complex constructions of cultural, political and legal identity. Both these factors are fundamentally informed by the liminal space that the exile community inhabits in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethnic communities constantly fear of being stripped of their cultural identities, which intern their preference of shying away from settling in slums. The difficulty arises from the highly contingent conceptualization of 'slum', as an agglomerate of poor seeking income. The paper investigates paradox of identity embedded in insecurities among ethnic migrants who lack recognition by the state and society. Data was collected using observation, in-depth interviews, and focus group discussions. Constant comparative method (CCM) together with thematic sampling was used for data analysis. The finding suggests that alienation of ethnic migrants is a consequence of constant negotiation of their identity in response to 'self-society-State'. It recommends slum to retain independent social space for ethnic community and society in a composite culture. To overcome the challenges of identity, income, and insecurity among ethnic migrants, the paper proposes a convergence model to integrate co-existence of multiple identities for public entitlements, welfare, and social acceptance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The prevalence of disability in activities of daily livings is higher among Indian elderly as compared to other ageing countries in Asia. This study provides an overview of the prevalence of disability by gender and region (rural and urban) among the tribal elderly in West Bengal, India. Cross-tabulation method was employed to examine the pattern of tribal ageing disability in all 19 districts of West Bengal. Based on Census 2011 data, the study showed that prevalence of disability among tribal elderly was significantly higher than general elderly population. The study also validated the low socio-economic and vulnerable condition of the ethnic groups in different districts of the State. The governments should implement the public health policies to reduce the burden of disability by providing healthcare services, education and social and economic security particularly to the rural tribal elderly disabled people for their better quality of life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inherited caste identity is an important determinant of life opportunity for a fifth of the world’s population, but is not given the same significance in global development policy debates as gender, race, age, religion or other identity characteristics. This review asks why addressing caste-based inequality and discrimination does not feature in intergovernmental commitments such as the Sustainable Development Goals, and whether it should. Taking India as its focus, it finds that caste has been treated as an archaic system and source of historical disadvantage due compensation through affirmative action in ways that overlook its continuing importance as a structure of advantage and of discrimination in the modern economy, especially post-liberalization from the 1990s. A body of recent literature from anthropology, economics, history and political science is used to explore the modern life of caste in society, economy and development. Questions are asked about caste as social hierarchy, the role of caste in post-liberalization rural inequality, in urban labor markets and in the business economy, and the effect of policies of affirmative action in public-sector education and employment. Caste is found to be a complex institution, simultaneously weakened and revived by current economic and political forces; it is a contributor to persisting national socioeconomic and human capital disparities, and has major impacts on subjective wellbeing. Caste effects are not locational; they travel from the village to the city and into virtually all markets. Caste persists in the age of the market because of its advantages – its discriminations allow opportunity hoarding for others; and the threat of the advancement of subordinated groups provokes humiliating violence against them. The evidence points to the need for policy innovation to address market and non-market discrimination and to remove barriers, especially in the informal and private sector; and to ensure caste has its proper place in the global development policy debate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the impact of security expenditures from military alliances involving third-party intervention on violent incidents from non-state actors. Our main learning is a rather surprising fact that at a lower level of security expenditure in the violence affected area, an increase in security expenditures leads to an increase in violent incidents (rather than a decrease); and only at higher level of security expenditure in the area, an increase in security expenditure leads to a decline in violent incidents. For the analysis, we use a novel dataset on naxalite violence obtained directly from the police head-quarters of the three most affected states in India. The data consists of 64 districts spanning over years 2001 till 2013 and includes information on the annual number of violent incidents and the size of the security forces allocated specifically to curb the naxalite violence. We use negative binomial regression model with the number of violent incidents as the dependent variable and lagged size of security forces as the independent variable, while controlling for other relevant variables. Further, to address issues of potential reverse causality, we use a propensity score matching technique to infer the causal nature of such an association. We also argue that when the union government intervenes as a third party to support the state governments to fight the naxalites, the latter may be under-funding by free riding. However, despite such underfunding, if the overall contribution is positive and continued, eventually the concentration of security forces in an area will overwhelm the naxalites and reduce the incidents. Lastly, we highlight that though the mainstream literature on civil wars has used per capita income as a proxy for security expenditures, it becomes inappropriate when a more direct measure of security expenditures is used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The privatization and liberalization policies adopted by the Indian state beginning in 1991 dramatically changed the country's media landscape. India now boasts the second-largest media market in the world. The expansion of news media has given women many opportunities to enter the profession. The 'macho newsroom' culture, prevalent in the 1970s and 1980s, has changed into one where women are frequently hired at entry-level positions. Such demographic changes in the workforce, however, have not been without serious societal, cultural, and political implications for female journalists, especially those who choose to cover politics. This article addresses the challenges female journalists face on a daily basis within the larger context of the rise in religious nationalism and social media use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article talks about violent rape of women in India, laws against the crime in the country, and social factors that influence their perpetration. It further looks at topics including the psychology of rapists, rape as a means of expressing power by men over women, and cultural practices like bride kidnapping and honour killing.

Summary This paper explores the recent fall in female labour force participation and its socio-economic determinants in India. The major contribution of this paper is: to explore both micro- and macro-level factors which determine female labour force participation rate (LFPR); to examine the “U shape” female LFPR, by examining the likely income and substitution effects of the real wage increase, to identify the sub-sectors within manufacturing and service sectors that could create jobs for new female job aspirants and those older women displaced from agriculture in recent years; and thus to understand the conditions under which female LFPR could be raised. Using both macro-level and household survey (NSS) data, we find that the recent fillip in the process of structural transformation has pushed a large number of females out of agriculture. The growing mechanization in agriculture and rising capital intensity in manufacturing sectors together have limited the opportunity for females because of their low education and skill and due to other cultural constraints. We also found that the rise in real wages in rural areas and the consequent improvement in the standard of living has produced a strong negative income effect which outweighs the positive substitution effect and as a result female LFPR has declined substantially. However, with the massive increase in female enrollment in secondary and higher levels of education, it could be expected that the substitution effect of the increase in real wage would become stronger if appropriate measures are taken by the government, which are suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite rapid urbanization across the Global South, identity politics within rural-urban migrant communities remains understudied. Past scholarship is divided over whether village-based ethnic divisions will erode or deepen within diverse poor migrant populations. I assess these divergent predictions through an 'ethnographic survey experiment' (N=4,218) among unique samples of poor migrants in India. Contra conventional expectations, I find intra-class ethnic divisions are neither uniformly transcended nor entrenched across key arenas of migrant life. Instead, I observe variation consistent with situational theories predicting ethnic divisions will be muted only in contexts triggering a common identity among migrants. I pinpoint urban employers and politicians as these triggers. Poor migrants ignore ethnic divisions when facing these elites, who perceive and treat them in class terms. However, migrants remain divided in direct interactions with each other. These bifurcated findings imply poor migrants may be available for both class-based and ethnic mobilization in the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In northeast India, there are several indigenous peoples who reside along the Sino-Indian border about whom there is very little academic research. Some communities are present on either side of the border, making research very difficult. The Mishmi is one such indigenous group living in the northeast region of India bordering southern Tibet. Out of four Mishmi clans, three reside on the Indian side and one on the Chinese side of the international border. After the 1962 Sino-Indian War, movement of Mishmi people across the border was restricted, impacting social ties and trade-related activities. We discuss relations between the Mishmi and the British, followed by their interactions with the Indian administration. We document how people used the borders before the war and how development on the border has impacted Mishmi lives. This research is a first attempt to document information about the Mishmis in India and China. In this article, we present our preliminary observations based on anthropological fieldwork in Arunachal Pradesh, India. Secondary information was gathered from websites, archives, and reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the legends surrounding the enigmatic figure of Zafar Khan Ghazi, whose tomb still stands at Tribeni (West Bengal, India), a major Hindu pilgrimage spot on the River Ganga. Zafar Khan has been seen variously as the spearhead of the Turkish conquest in late thirteenth-century Bengal, a harbinger of early Islam, and a founder of one of the first Sufi lineages in the region. It illustrates the conflicted nature of the ghazi pir figure, idealized as a Muslim warrior and martyr, but also remembered as a champion of the poor, a composer of odes to the river Ganga in Sanskrit, and a historical bridge between Muslims and Hindus. Examining the architecture of Zafar Khan's mosque and tomb built on the ruins of a Vishnu temple, along with iconic portrayals of the gaji in contemporary Bengali magalakabya verse poetry, the paper locates Zafar Khan as an interstitial and contradictory figure at the margins of what is commonly understood as Hindu devotional worship and iconoclastic Islam. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self Help Groups (SHGs) are voluntary associations for the poor who come together to improve their socio-economic conditions. Self Help Groups have become well identified internationally as the modern tool to combat poverty under certain schemes such as Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP), Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas (DWCRA) and Swarnajayanthi Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY) initiated by the government of India. After successfully forming groups and taking up suitable business activities, the members of self help groups are mainly facing problems with respect to marketing their products in the public. This paper attempts to focus on the major opportunities and challenges of self help groups in promoting their products. The objective of the study is to analyze the marketing strategies followed by self help groups. Descriptive research design is followed in this study. The study is undertaken in both rural and urban areas of Visakhapatnam region. The observations shown that even though the self help group members are getting opportunities to promote their products through fairs, exhibitions and retail outlets, they are unable to trade more quantity of products due to various problems. Therefore, besides financial support the members are expecting even marketing assistance from the government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to reiterate the relatively beneficial role of geographical indication (GI) for its culture based potential. The Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property (TRIPs), undermined this aspect by accentuating the trade aspects of GIs. This paper reveals that, GI underpins culture within its concept through the notion terroir. The paper argues that the domestic protection regimes that have been designed in the TRIPs’ paradigm have broadened the scope of culture based justification. For establishing this argument the paper examines the case studies of Darjeeling tea from India and Jamdani from Bangladesh. The paper draws the conclusion that this particular rationale is justifiable in reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the normative framework for the recognition of the right to adequate food under international and regional human rights law. It then examines the relevance of judicialisation of the right to food in India and South Africa. The article observes that while the right to food is not explicitly recognised in the Indian Constitution, the courts have purposively interpreted the Constitution with a view to holding the government accountable to its obligation under international and national law. It concludes by examining lessons South Africa can draw from the Indian experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manohar Malgonkar, who has succeeded in carving out a significant place in Indian Fiction in English through the fresh and spontaneous depiction of Indian life and its value-system along with the socio-political and historical changes in the destiny of the nation, skillfully communicates multi-colors of human bonds- 'man-woman, familial, racial and other social ones' in his major novel The Princes. The novel presents the uneasy life and broken bonds of the people of an Indian state- Begwad, particularly the painful and problematic stories of the royal family and their unpleasant relations and struggles for survival, leading to the dissolution of the state due to new democratic reforms for the reconstruction of India after Independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines how subjects of Indian graphic novels are influenced by the hippie subculture and by modern, post-liberalization India's urban life. It explores the artistic and sociological impact of such literature on the subjectivities represented. Particular attention is given to "Corridor" and "The Barn Owl's Wondrous Capers" by Sarnath Banerjee.

The article presents a speech by K. Sarwar Hasan, founder of The Pakistan Institute of International Affairs, delivered at the Columbia University, New York in 1963. Topics of the speech include views of philosopher Syed Ahmed Khan on Muslims joining the U.S. Congress; his support of the Ilbert Bill for which Hindus thanked him; origination of idea of separate electorates; social and political conditions in India.

Copyright of Journal on Masculinities & Social Change / Masculinidades y Cambio Social is the property of Journal on Masculinities & Social Change / Masculinidades y Cambio Social and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The growth of literacy from 12% at the end of British rule to 75% in the census of 2011 the country has registered a greater than six-fold improvement but with current rate it would take until 2060 to achieve universal literacy. The Government of India along with states executed successful programmes to boost literacy rate, it needs deliberate steps to engage the various communities/agencies to succeed effectively with purpose. In globalisation the bright prospect of literacy demands policy intervention required for accelerating the expected results in sphere of literacy. [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]

Copyright of Turkish Journal of Public Health is the property of Turkish Journal of Public Health and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Despite growing research on health and residential contexts, relatively little is understood about gendered contexts that are differentially important for women's and men's physical health in low- and middle-income countries. This study advances the prior knowledge by examining whether the local frequency of a salient and gendered practice in India--dowry--is associated with gender differences in physical health (acute illness, illness length, and chronic illness). Analyses are conducted using multilevel logistic and negative binomial regression models and national data on men and women across India (N = 102,763). Results show that as dowry frequency increases in communities, not only do women have a greater likelihood of poor health across all three health outcomes, but men also have a greater likelihood of acute illness and illness length. Men, however, have a lower likelihood of chronic illness as the frequency of dowry increases in communities. In the case of all three health outcomes, results showed consistently wider health gaps between men and women in communities with a higher frequency of dowry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I explore notions of modernity, citizenship, belonging and transgressions in South Asia through the fermented food,akhuni. Fermented soya beans, popularly known asakhuniin Nagaland, a state in Northeast India with a majority tribal population, has a distinct pungent aroma and taste. This food is relished across the eastern Himalayan societies, including Nagaland, but routinely causes conflict betweenakhuniconsumers and those who find the smell revolting. In 2007, due to increasingakhuniconflict in New Delhi, the Delhi police produced a handbook t hat cautions students and workers from Northeast India and eastern Himalayan societies that they should refrain from cookingakhuniand other fermented foods. Such official directives reiterate how the state plays a significant role in legitimising or prohibiting certain foods that particular social groups in contemporary India consume, relegating these communities to a remote position in the national social and culinary order. Against the backdrop of such friction, this article examines whyakhuniconsumers of the eastern Himalayan societies assert that eating fermented food is an integral part of their culture and history. Conversations about eating cultures, I argue, have to be understood as expressions of resistance, negotiation and the anxieties of striving to be a modern tribal in contemporary India. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

After the 2012 Olympics, Bronze Medal-winning boxer Mary Kom achieved national celebrity status in India. As a member of the Kom tribe, a Tibeto-Burman community from the Northeast region, she has come to represent a region long considered, and self-identifying, as outside the boundaries of the Indian nation. The same week that Mary Kom returned from London, thirty thousand Northeast migrants fled Indian cities fearing racially-motivated attacks. The so-called ‘exodus’ provoked rare conversations on racism within India. During this crisis, the figure of Mary Kom was invoked continually to challenge the existence of racism in India and posit paths to better integration in India's cities. These conversations paid little attention to the brutality perpetrated by the Indian state and military in the Northeast itself and the voices that publicised this brutality. Thus, while Mary Kom has come to represent a Northeast that Indians can embrace, figures such as dissident Irom Sharmila represent a Northeast that Indians wish to forget. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Background: Caste is one of the traditional measures of social segregation in India and differs from other indicators as it is both, endogamous and hereditary. Evidence suggests that belonging to lower castes exposes one to social inequalities and affects health adversely. We examined the association of caste with childhood anemia in India and explored the effect modifying role of adult education and household wealth. Methods: A cross-sectional analysis of National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data of 43,484 children aged 6-59 months was performed. Poisson regression analysis was conducted to study the association between caste and childhood anemia accounting for various maternal, child, and household related variables. Caste was categorized as "other caste" (least disadvantageous), "other backward caste", "scheduled tribe" and "scheduled caste" (most disadvantageous). Anemia was defined as mild (hemoglobin level 7-11 g/dL), moderate (hemoglobin level 5-7 g/dL) and severe (hemoglobin level <5 g/dL). Results: We found that children in scheduled caste had higher risk of having anemia [mild anemia: RR = 1.10, 95 % CI = 1.05-1.15; moderate anemia: RR = 1.19, 95 % CI = 1.14-1.24; severe anemia: RR = 1.87, 95 % CI = 1.51 - 2.31] after accounting for child, maternal and household covariates including adult education and household wealth. The interaction of caste with adult education and household wealth was not statistically significant for any level of anemia. Sensitivity analyses for children born to mothers of age ≥ 18 years at first child birth and body mass index (BMI) ≥ 18.5 kg/m2, resulted in similar findings. Conclusion: Caste is an independent determinant of childhood anemia in India. The level of adult education and household wealth did not modify the association between caste and childhood anemia. The findings may be used for countering childhood anemia and it may be beneficial to target future public health actions towards disadvantageous castes in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information regarding the heterarchy or hierarchy of development or nonprofit organizations in India. Topics discussed include the case study of the Resettlement and Development Agency, an Indian development organization, which shows evidence of emerging heterarchy, the introduction of heterarchy concept by biologist Warren McCulloch in 1945, and the used of destructurization term in describing the process of taking organization structure's element.

India's freedom at midnight, Nehru remarked sadly in his Independence Day speech, was won at the intolerably high cost of a communal holocaust. Partition's most tragic casualty was the man who had led India to Independence. Mahatma Gandhi was shot ... [dead] in January 1948. (Kumar 2005: 22-23) However, a fact which must, on no account be disregarded, is that, in spite of the ensuing violence, there persisted, on both sides, memories of a syncretic culture, of a shared cultural heritage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT While transnational commercial surrogacy in India has recently attracted the attention of journalists and feminist scholars critical of a novel and particularly intimate example of labor outsourcing, surrogacy in India is not only about global inequalities. In this research report, I call attention to silences in the most well-known accounts of surrogacy to the persistent local inequalities that structure infertility treatment in general-and surrogacy in particular. I argue that the disappearance of medical professionals' perceptions of surrogates as 'laborers' and of Indian infertility experiences in these accounts occurs not only because of significant challenges to data collection, but also because of widespread naturalization of inequality. Local inequalities that structure transnational surrogacy in India, in particular, and infertility treatment, in general, tend to escape the purview of examinations that employ a transnational frame. Most research on gestational surrogacy in India does not focus on the options available to Indians who face infertility. The few studies that put the dynamics of infertility among people living in India at the center of analysis have yet to explore fully the 'reproscapes' of infertility among people in India. [ surrogacy, infertility, inequality, India, transnational] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the study regarding the differentials in child sex ratio in India which suggest a monotonic decline in the sex ratio since 1991.

The article offers information on the Juvenile Justice (JJ) Act in India focusing on its role in therapeutic justice system, behavioral correction, and basic tenets and amendments to Shelter Home and Correction Center.