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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]

Maoist struggles in Eastern and Central India against the Indian State have been under-reported in International Media. These struggles by mainly indigenous communities against the corporate-state mining nexus have become a national crisis and literally hundreds of Indian paramilitary forces, Maoists and indigenous people have died as a result of these conflicts. Local media have typically reported Maoism in terms of a law and order and security issue. This article highlights some of the ‘frames’ used by the media within a critical political economy inspired reading of the conflict that the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described as India's number one security issue. It deals with uneven globalisation, the under-reporting of lives lived by India’s most deprived communities and the other side of India’s tryst of globalisation that has led to many indigenous communities living lives on the edge. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A key feature of India’s economic transformation has been a change in the nature of diets. There is a move away from inferior to superior foods and a substitution of traditional staples by primary food products, reflected in higher consumption of proteins, sugars, fats and vegetables. As part of this dietary transition, our analysis focuses on the pervasiveness of eating out and is based on a rich household survey for 2005. We broadly confirm the important role of urbanization, demographic changes, expansion of the middle class and its growing affluence on eating out. Since even more deprived sections are not immune to these evolving dietary patterns and given their limited access to medical care, health outcomes may well be grim. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Workers in India are becoming increasingly precarious in spite of its significant economic growth during the past two decades. The extent of informalization and casualization, used as proxies for precariousness, can be deduced from government sources and shows that the size of the informal sector not only constitutes almost 90% of the working population but also is growing. While the informal sector is not an accurate measure of precarious work, two specific characteristics of Indian precarious work are highlighted. The first deals with nonregistered establishments, unmaintained accounts, and hiring no more than 10 workers, officially defined as the “informal sector.” Individuals engaged in this sector experience precarious employment. The second group involves workers engaged in the formal sector on short-term contracts. Combined, the size of both types of precarious work has increased sharply in the postreform period beginning in the early 1990s. The supposed rigidity of labor laws is often used to explain the rise in precarious employment. However, the article finds that although the numbers of industrial disputes and wage shares have declined, the use of contract work has increased in the formal sector, and thus the labor market has been conducive to industrial expansion in spite of the absence of substantial labor law reform. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Son preference in India manifests into extreme forms of daughter avoidance either through pre-natal sex selective abortion or post-natal excess female infant mortality. These victims of daughter aversion are India’s “missing girls.” This paper demonstrates a novel methodology for estimating India’s missing girls. Estimates were made of number and incidence of missing girls due to sex selective abortion and excess female infant mortality by age one for the time period 1950-2010. State level analysis reveals wide variations in incidence and source of missing girls. National level analysis shows that between 1950 and 2010, a total of 58.29 million girls went missing, of which 28 percent were due to sex selective abortion and 72 percent due to post-natal excess mortality. Over the time period examined, the contribution of post-natal excess mortality to the number of missing girls has reduced while the contribution of sex selective abortion has increased. Policy recommendations are discussed.JEL codes: J11; J13; J16. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses language dialects and differences in India as of June 2012, particularly the use of and evolution of Hindi. The article states that a majority of Indians speak Hindi and it is, along with English, the closest language that could be considered national in scope. The article also reviews the history of what the author calls modern standard Hindi and the differences between the Hindi and Urdu languages in India and Pakistan respectively. The article also linguistically compares Hindi to modern Hebrew and the development of what the author calls "Hinglish," a combination of Hindi and English.

Studies of money management and control will have more cross-cultural relevance if the family context of money across generations is taken into account. The study of money management and control in middle-income nuclear and joint family households in urban India illustrates the importance of examining money flows within the wider family context because there is a two-way flow of money beyond the married couple - between parents and adult children, siblings and other members of the extended family. In the three or four generational joint family, control and management at the household level is not necessarily duplicated for the constituent couples. We draw on open-ended interviews of 40 persons from 27 urban middle-income households in North India, between November 2007 and January 2008, to show that the male control of money is the dominant pattern. This pattern is linked to the ideology of male dominance that is found among the middle, lower middle and struggling households, particularly in non-metropolitan households. The upper-middle-class households predominantly in metropolitan households show a pattern of joint or independent control. The focus is on the couple's money decisions within the context of the wider family. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary society in India is marked by the growing importance of consumer culture, fuelled by the rise of disposable incomes in the hands of a huge middle class and increasing availability of a large variety of commodities in the open market, including a growing number of shopping malls. The article examines India’s ‘new middle class’ as an agency of consumption, engaged in a process which seems to be jeopardising long held ideals of self-sufficiency, self-reliance and anti-materialism. After the economic liberalisation of the 1990s, consumer goods appear to have become a crucial basis for redefining status distinctions in Indian society and for negotiating interpersonal and inter-communal relationships within the seemingly antithetical categories of tradition and modernity. As in other forms of globalisation, however, the resulting patterns of change are not simply based on total abolition of older ‘traditional’ structures and their replacement by new patterns. Despite apparent changes in shopping habits and the emergence of blatant consumerism, the older moral tradition continues to oppose rising materialism and individualism, contributing to the limited success of shopping malls. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article reports on mean consumption, poverty (all three FGT measures) and inequality during 2004 for rural India using National Sample Survey (NSS) data for the 60th Round. Mean consumption at the national level is much higher than the poverty line. However, the Gini coefficient is higher than in recent earlier rounds. The headcount ratio is 22.9 per cent. Mean consumption, all three measures of poverty and the Gini coefficient are computed at the level of 20 states and 63 agro-climatic zones in these 20 states. It is surmised that despite impressive growth rates deprivation is pervasive, pockets of severe poverty persist, and inequality is rampant. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article discusses medical costs and health care in India. The author explains that India's annual health care expenditure per capita is $21. The author states that most of this money does not come from federal finances so people have to pay for most care themselves. The author mentions that few hospitals receive subsidies from the government and that only five percent of the population in India has insurance coverage. The conditions of a municipal hospital in a Mumbai, India suburb are detailed. The article also discusses user fees at public hospitals.

This in-depth study carried out over a period of one year focuses on the life-worlds of haliya and kamaiya child workers from Morang and Bardiya districts, respectively. The participants, from ethnic Musahar and Tharu backgrounds, become bonded labourers to earn household income and are unable to attend full-time schooling. While a few have managed to forge a 'study-work' contract with their employers, the vast majority are working in difficult circumstances just to support their families. Given the tremendous physical and psychosocial impact from being a haliya or a kamaiya worker, all children want to stop working if they could receive external support on educational and skills learning activities to improve their future life prospects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the often misconceived problem of insurgency and various political, social, and law and order problems of northeast India, which Sanjib Baruah calls "Northeast India's Durable Disorder." The region has been stereotyped by the postcolonial state of India as a "disturbed area" infested with insurgents and militants. In its attempts to resolve this "durable disorder," India fails to engage with its underlying causes in the construction of new political boundaries in both the colonial and postcolonial eras. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent commercial boom in women's skin-lightening or "fairness" cosmetics in India is part of the larger context of escalating lifestyle consumerism in Asia's emerging market nations. This monograph examines the cultural politics of gender, nation, beauty and skin color in the persuasive narratives of Indian magazine advertisements and television commercials for fairness cosmetics and personal care products. We situate advertising's compact stories of ideal femininity within the sociology of colorism's transnational links to hierarchies of race, gender, caste, ethnicity and class and the rapid economic growth in the skin-lightening cosmetics sector in India over the past decade. Deconstructing advertising's visual and linguistic fields of meaning, our analysis dissects the rhetorical themes of bodily and personal transformation, modern and traditional science, and heterosexual romance that operate together to inflate the currency of light-skinned beauty. In conclusion, we outline recent challenges to the hegemony of colorism in India and suggest directions for future research that can build on this monograph's scrutiny of advertising's regulatory regimes of beauty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

M.N. Srinivas described rural India as characterised by the presence of locally influential 'dominant castes'. This article is an empirical engagement with the concept of 'dominant caste' in the context of electoral politics in a district of Bihar. An analysis of the patterns of caste interactions in this region shows that there is no settled 'dominant caste'. Numerical as well as economic and political strength is shared between several castes. Not only do the major castes compete and manoeuvre for power, even the minor castes challenge the major castes' attempts at establishing dominance, by approaching the courts and, in the case of disputes, making strategic alliances with one major caste in order to oppose another. This article examines the dynamics of these shifting caste responses and alliances in order to illustrate the fluidity of caste equations in contemporary Bihar. It also highlights the role of state institutions such as the police and the courts, but most significantly, electoral representation itself, as an instrument for fostering social change and political dynamism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democracy requires criticism. A significant feature of democracies outside the West, though often ignored by liberal traditions of analysis, is the practice of internal criticism. This article examines some experiences of internal criticism that may be found in the writings of some Indian philosophers, focusing especially on the work of Swami Vivekananda. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Indian state of Chhattisgarh has been continually confronted with violent assaults and murder targeting individuals who are believed to practice witchcraft. By sketching the murder of accused witch, Kulwantin Bai Nishad, in 1995, I highlight the way prevailing assumptions about witchcraft, long held by the media, police and state, were contested. Intersecting with a national and state discourse of modernist ideals, witch-related violence has been transformed into a politicised object that signals extreme underdevelopment in a state whose legitimacy depends upon progress and development. The Indian Police Service (IPS), the foremost organisation to contend with these issues, maintains a crucial role in administering the citizen-state encounter. Commonly associated with attributes of corruption, misuse of authority, violence and partisan politics, the police official emerged in the findings as an ordinary citizen having a special and sometimes difficult public job. By examining a discretionary 'practice' at work in police dealings with witchcraft accusations, I argue that power shapes what is recognised as criminal behaviour, the significance assigned to a crime and therefore, practices of policing. This article concludes that discretionary power opens up a terrain of unpredictability and 'formlessness' that lends hope for citizen rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a discussion of political, economic and social trends in India, focusing on the country's global position relative to China and the United States. An overview of India's late 20th century history, and an attempt to forecast likely geopolitical and sociocultural changes for the early decades of the 21st century are provided. The question is addressed whether India's established tradition of democracy will, in the long term, provide it with a durable and significant competitive advantage over less free nations, such as China. Difficulties India faces in alleviating the poverty of its lower classes are also discussed.

This paper considers the needed adaptation and mitigation agenda for cities in India - where the urban population is likely to grow by around 500 million over the next 50 years. It considers the likely changes that climate change will bring in temperature, precipitation and extreme rainfall, drought, river and inland flooding, storms/storm surges/coastal flooding, sea-level rise and environmental health risks, and who within urban populations are most at risk. It notes the importance for urban areas of an effective rural adaptation agenda - especially in maintaining the productivity and functioning of rural systems. It highlights the importance of today's infrastructure investments, taking into account climate changes, given the long lifespan of most infrastructure, and the importance of urban management engaging with changing risk profiles. One important part of this is the need to connect official adaptation initiatives to the much-improved natural hazard risk assessment, management and mitigation capacity that responded to major disasters. The paper ends by describing a possible urban climate change adaptation framework, including changes needed at the national, state, city and neighbourhood levels, and linkages to mitigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers the author's comments on the success of India to embrace democracy and become a model for globalization. The author notes that during the 1980s India was seen as a country whose future was certain to decline but since then has made vast improvements and emerged on the global scene as a world influence and has become indispensable in the globalized economy. The author suggests that perceptions of India were off base and in fact India was headed for where it is all along. The social conditions, however, remain quite bipolar despite economic and technological advances. Women are still viewed as inferior and poverty is still persistent. Democracy has not been able to properly address the issue and thus non-governmental organizations are best equipped to help the poor.

Dowry is exchanged in a majority of Indian weddings. Although its practice became illegal in 1961, dowry flourishes among all social classes. Families of the bride and groom negotiate transfer of assets to the groom and his family in exchange for marrying the bride, often within the context of an arranged marriage. Dissatisfaction with the amount of dowry may result in abuse of the bride. In extreme cases "dowry deaths" or the murder of the bride by her husband and his family take place. This article conducts a feminist psychological analysis of the dowry phenomenon, its link to domestic violence against women, and the role of the perpetrators. Existing and new explanations of the dowry system and its ramifications are explored. Psychologically based interventions and the implications of dowry- related violence in the larger context of Asian Indians living in North America and the United Kingdom are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses civil society and its distinctive features as a particular type of social and historical formation in India. Civil society develops not under totalitarian regimes but under liberal, pluralist and secular regimes. The comparative and empirical approach characteristic of civil society makes it difficult for the sociologist to declare that one among many societies approximates best to a universal model of the good society. The significance of voluntary action in linking society and politics together and in driving them forward in democratic systems cannot be strongly emphasized. Religious movements and assemblies for moral, ethical and spiritual discourses may contribute to the formation of a good civil society. Hinduism is changing, and one significant change is its tendency to define itself in opposition to other religions, notably Islam. Civil society requires the separation of open and secular institutions from the institution of kinship and religion, although it does not require the exclusion of the latter from society as a whole.

The article presents information on the decline of the Welfare Regime in India. The welfare state could not make a significant contribution in India and slowly it lost legitimacy. In the 1980s it suffered from a major crisis that led to the ascendancy of the liberal prescription for free market, profit-maximization ethos, and withdrawal of state regulation and participation in production and market activities. With the Structural Adjustment recommended for national economic recovery, states are now advised to drastically reduce government expenditures, reduce corporate taxation, increase the rate of return on capital investment, abolish the tariff barriers to release free competition for national and domestic industries, and reduce labor costs. The role of the state as the provider of a wide range of public services is in fact getting reduced globally. Many groups are feeling unprotected with the decline in public welfare measures, and cut in wage and increase in the hire and fire policy adopted for labor. In terms of its socio-economic ramifications, this decline of social welfare networks is primarily a loss to the small and poor farmers, more so in the dry land regions.

The article discusses the central role of sociology as to systematize five fundamental questions about social reality. These are: First, What is it? Second, How is it? Third, Why is it? Fourth, What will it be? Fifth, What should it be? The course of systematization requires a dialectical appreciation of the positive and negative components of each question, with a view to making an attempt to comprehend the sociology of Indian sociology. For `fact' and `value' operate as confounded variables: the aspects of reality one considers `desirable' to give priority for attention predicate the facts. The development of Indian sociology in this context may be put under a time-sequence with the pioneers, modernizers, insiders, and pacemakers versus nonconformists playing distinctive roles in the respective periods. Both the periodization and the specified role-characteristics of sociologists in the respective periods are schematic and, on that basis, they facilitate analysis of trends in Indian sociology.

The article reports about the rehabilitation of refugees in Bhopal, India. At present, the refugees in Bhopal are 74,77,000. Arrangements were made by the Indian government for their rehabilitation in which Bhopal played a major role. About 20,000 refugees came to Bhopal between 1949 and 1954. About 951 families were allowed to settle on land out of which, most of them were Bhawalpuris. Some unsponsored families were also accepted by the Government of Bhopal for rural settlement. About 241 families of Kashmiri refugees were sent to Bhopal but as they were not able to adapt to the climate and social conditions of Bhopal, they were migrated back.