Land-holding,participation in agriculture and short-term migration in rural India

ABSTRACT

We analyse a nationally representative data set from India for the year 2013 in order to provide evidence on how short-term migration is affected by household ownership of land and participation in agricultural activities. We estimate a recursive-bivariate-probit model recognising the simultaneity between short-term migration and the decision to operate the land. The results of the likelihood ratio test imply that it would be incorrect to ignore this simultaneity. Households with less than 1?ha of land and those leasing out land are more likely to have a short-term migrant. Households leaving their land fallow, a common occurrence in South Asia, are also more likely to have a short-term migrant. Moreover, the choice of crops and livestock farming has a significant role to play in the migration decision. Current initiatives to increase coverage of irrigation and facilitate access to formal finance could improve the livelihoods of small and marginal farmers, thereby reducing the probability of distress-related short-term migration.     

Geographies of mediation: Market development and the rural broker in Maharashtra, India

This paper explicates the role of community-level intermediaries in post-liberalized economic sectors. Focusing on nascent commercial markets for improved, smokeless cookstoves in southwestern Maharashtra, I describe how development is encountered by three analytic groups – artisans, female stove users and NGO field officers. This study highlights patterns of strategic intermediary action, or forms of brokering, used to negotiate the commercialization process for individuals involved in the fabrication, distribution and use of improved cookstoves. A close analysis of the mediating agent can strengthen theories on how individuals and communities encounter sector privatization and state retrenchment. This study reveals a diverse set of brokering activities and actors, and shows how intermediaries combine tasks associated with traditional conceptions of the political fixer and market broker by working within and between groups of market, village and state operatives to transform market supply chains. Mediating agents coordinate counter regulating activities within civil society in the absence of heavy state intervention and play a crucial role in activating and connecting community interests to latent neoliberal state resources.     

National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, poverty and prices in rural India

The objective of this analysis is mainly to construct an intuitive measure of the performance of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) in India. The focus is on divergence between demand and supply at the district level. Some related issues addressed are: (i) whether the gap between demand and supply responds to poverty; and (ii) whether recent hikes in NREGS wages are inflationary. Our analysis confirms responsiveness of the positive gap between demand and supply to poverty. Also, apprehensions expressed about the inflationary potential of recent hikes in NREGS wages have been confirmed. More importantly, higher NREGS wages are likely to undermine self-selection of the poor in it.     

On hunger and child mortality in India

Despite accelerated growth there is pervasive hunger, child undernutrition and mortality in India. Our analysis focuses on their determinants. Raising living standards alone will not reduce hunger and undernutrition. Reduction of rural/urban disparities, income inequality, consumer price stabilization, and mothers’ literacy all have roles of varying importance in different nutrition indicators. Somewhat surprisingly, public distribution system (PDS) do not have a significant effect on any of them. Generally, child undernutrition and mortality rise with poverty. Our analysis confirms that media exposure triggers public action, and helps avert child undernutrition and mortality. Drastic reduction of economic inequality is in fact key to averting child mortality, conditional upon a drastic reordering of social and economic arrangements.     

论甘地与印度的分裂

甘地为印度的民族独立作出了独特的贡献,但他和穆斯林联盟及国大党大多数主要领导人一样,对于印度的分裂也应该负有一定程度的责任,因为他对于加速印度分裂的因素--真纳由民族主义者转变为种族主义者、穆盟势力的增强成长起了很大作用,在关键时刻没有利用自己在印度国民中的威望和影响尽可能避免分裂局面的出现.     

Mean consumption, poverty and inequality in rural India in the 60th round of the National Sample Survey

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.     

'A fist is stronger than five fingers': caste and dominance in rural north India

This paper explores the spatiality of caste and power in contemporary rural north India. I aim to introduce the social institution of caste to a non-specialist audience and illustrate how caste is changing. The paper draws upon Pierre Bourdieu's notions of social capital and habitus and the India-based research ofSrinivas (1955) andMendelsohn (1993). I argue that while caste as a religiously sanctioned system of resource transfer is in decline, caste organization and identity are important forms of social or symbolic capital for rural elites. Drawing on detailed empirical research in western Uttar Pradesh, I demonstrate the continuing importance of caste dominance in the reproduction of social inequality and relate caste to other axes of power.     

Why they do not plow: The domestic versus the intercaste mode of production in rural India

Morgan D. Maclachlan. Why They Did Not Starve: Biocultural Adaptation in a South Indian Village. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues. 1983. iv + 296 pp. including tables, photographs, references, and index. $30.00 cloth.     

论英国对印度殖民统治体制的形成及影响

从美国独立到拿破仑战争结束这32年时间内,英国调整了对印度的殖民统治政策。受工业革命以及福音教派运动的影响,英国政府改变了过去那种赤裸裸的殖民掠夺、殖民压迫政策,而在表面上代之以为土著人殖民地建立良好的政府,消除暴政、杜绝腐败、发展教育,这在一定程度上促进了殖民地经济文化的发展,从而“充当了历史的不自觉的工具”。英国对印度殖民新的统治体制的形成,对于英帝国的发展壮大意义重大。     

论冷战后东盟与印度关系的发展

冷战结束后 ,东盟实施了“大国平衡”战略 ,印度政府推行“东向政策” ,双边关系开始转变 ,在经历了 2 0世纪 90年代恢复接触、增进对话与合作阶段之后 ,2 0 0 0年以来东盟与印度关系进入到深化合作、快速发展的新时期 ,这主要是因为国际格局发生剧变 ,双方都有追求经济、安全利益的共同需要     

Australia and the rise of India

Australia is at risk of being left behind by the pace of India's emergence as a regional and global power and its lack of engagement with India during this emergence. The Rudd Labor government is developing a framework which may make Australia a significant partner with India. There is the potential for a thoroughgoing engagement of interests and ideals in proposals Australia has put forward in three areas. Australia's vision of an Asia Pacific Community, with cooperation as its habitual operating principle, and with a membership that includes India and the USA as well as China and Japan, fills a multilateral gap. Secondly, the International Commission on Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament may provide a global framework assisting the development of Australian and Indian initiatives in the controlling and winding back of nuclear proliferation. Thirdly, Australia's national carbon pollution reduction program is intended to demonstrate international leadership and engagement in climate change, and opens the prospect for Australia of a substantial bilateral partnership with India (and others) to advance common interests around climate change. Australia, while emphasising its close relationship with the USA, is preparing to live in a region where the USA will, over time, be less influential as its relative power declines. As other great powers rise, Australia can actively pursue a hedging strategy to diversify its dependencies, and develop a much deeper engagement with that other emerging Asian giant.     

Benefits,safety, and risks of immunisation programmes

Abstract

Immunisation is potentially the most effective and efficient of all preventive medical activities. It is also unique among interventions in that it protects both the individual and the community. The UK's immunisation programme has been highly successful in controlling a number of life threatening infectious diseases, and consequently public concern has shifted from the diseases to vaccine safety. In recent years a series of vaccine myths and vaccine safety scares have affected the UK and other industrialised countries. Although an effective vaccine without any risk is probably unachievable, the vaccines in use in the UK are very safe. Serious adverse outcomes truly attributable to vaccination are extremely rare, always far rarer than adverse outcomes among individuals acquiring the vaccines' target infections. Vaccine safety may be called into question, however, on the basis of spurious coincidental associations between vaccination and adverse events. An inadequate public health response in the 1970s to a scare over whooping cough vaccine allowed substantial losses of professional and public confidence to take place. Vaccine coverage halved and much preventable morbidity and mortality resulted. Plausible vaccine associations must be investigated thoroughly, and the UK has become a world leader in developing techniques for rapid investigations. The public health response to scares over MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) vaccine safety has been faster and firmer than for whooping cough and no link has been found between MMR vaccine and inflammatory bowel disease or autism. Consequently the impact on immunisation coverage has been small, though the cumulative threat of measles, mumps, and rubella epidemics is growing. Recently an international investigation excluded a possible association of intussusception with oral polio vaccine before it could become a vaccine scare. A clearer chain of communication in responding to vaccine myths and scares is needed. This must provide rapid information and, if appropriate, reassurance to professionals and the public. Considerably more training is needed for professionals in providing information to the public and supporting parents in making difficult decisions over vaccination. Though there is no place for complacency, and improvements are needed, the UK's ability to monitor vaccine effectiveness, safety, and risks is strong. As a consequence it has a vaccination programme that is very safe and very effective.     

Ecological Conflicts and the Environmental Movement in India

Nature-based conflicts have increased in frequency and intensity in India. They revolve around competing claims over forests, land, water and fisheries, and have generated a new movement struggling for the rights of victims of ecological degradation. The environmental movement has added a new dimension to Indian democracy and civil society. It also posesan ideological challenge to the dominant notions of the meaning, content and patterns ofdevelopment.     

Ageing and Dependency in India

This paper modifies the measurement of dependency and applies it to the Indian situation at the state level. It is generally believed that the aged are a burden on the family and the nation as they do not contribute to the national income. This is not always true. In India: 40 per cent of those aged 60 and over are working, which rises to 61 per cent in the case of males. On the other hand, there are adults (age group 15–59) who are not working and are dependants. In the measurement of dependency, adjustments for these factors are essential. This study employs three measures of dependency, namely (i) old age economic dependency, (ii) adult dependency and (iii) relative dependency. Based on these dependency ratios, inter-state variations and gender differentials in dependencies have been studied. The study shows that relative dependency of the old age population is lower than the adult population, and the opportunity of harvesting the demographic window is being missed in India.     

Problems in the Economic Regionalization of India

The authors propose a framework of a system of economic regions based on economic production principles. This principle is designed, on the one hand, to promote a regional economic specialization, and, on the other hand, to ensure integrated development of the regional economy. The Soviet geographers find that some major economic regions are already evident, for example, Western India (including West Bengal, Bihar and possibly Orissa), but that large parts of the country, especially in the north, lack sufficiently clear characteristics to make possible an economic regionalization without further detailed study.