The Intersection of Gender,Caste and Class Inequalities in Child Nutrition in Rural India

While studies have investigated inequalities in child nutrition along single axes of social power such as, gender, caste and class, there has not been any study that has examined the intersection of the different axes in determining nutritional outcomes of children. This paper examines the intersection of gender, class and caste in determining children's nutritional outcomes for rural north, rural south and rural India as a whole. The paper investigates the intersectionality of the three axes in rural India and focuses on regional differences. The results show that children with particular disadvantageous group affiliations often find significant compensatory benefits from other beneficial identities. Class inequality dominates caste inequality and caste inequality dominates gender inequality in rural North India for all levels of stunting. In contrast, caste inequality dominates class inequality which in turn dominates gender inequality for severe stunting in rural South India.     

Economics of Marriage Change in a South Indian Village

The Indian marriage system has undergone major changes in the last few decades. Studies have found an expansion and intensification of dowry and increase in age at marriage. Using information from a village in Tamil Nadu, south India, this article shows that recent marriage changes in the study village (increased number of love-marriages and stagnation or slight decline in marriage age) are caused by the economic independence and personal autonomy among the younger generation which are products of major changes in the socio-economic organization of the society.     

Female Demographic Disadvantage in India 1981–1991: Sex Selective Abortions and Female Infanticide

Using evidence from a number of sources (including the 1981 and 1991 censuses of India, prior research, and NGO reports), this article examines whether bias against girl children persists during periods of development and fertility decline, whether prenatal sex selection has spread in India as elsewhere in Asia, and whether female vs. male child mortality risks have changed. The authors present estimated period sex ratios at birth (SRBs) calculated by reverse survival methods along with reported sex ratios among infants aged 0 and 1, as well as sex ratios of child mortality probabilities (q5), from the two censuses. The findings show an increase in ‘masculine’ SRBs and persistent (or even worsening) female mortality disadvantage, despite overall mortality decline, due to selective neglect and the spread of female infanticide practices in some areas. Research and reports indicate the increasing use of prenatal sex selection in some regions. In India, preference for sons appears to be undiminished by socio-economic development, which interacts with cultural sources of male bias. The increased masculinity of period SRBs in some areas, together with persistent excess female child mortality and female infanticide, creates a ‘double jeopardy’ for girl children. Legislation curbing prenatal sex determination and policy measures addressing societal female devaluation have had little impact, suggesting that female demographic disadvantage is unlikely to improve in the near future.     

Modernity as a “Rain of Words”: Tracing the Flows of “Rain” between Dalit Women and Intellectuals in Tamil Nadu

In this paper I investigate the ways in which modernity in contemporary Tamil Nadu may be understood as something other than a purely exclusionary category. I enquire into the flow of language, imagery, music, resonant phrases and film dialogues that has allowed the values of the Self Respect movement in Tamil Nadu to move as a “Rain of Words” across social divisions of class, gender and caste. Egalitarian humanism and rationalism are here treated as part of a modern “tradition”, allowing us, in the process, to redefine what “tradition” might mean. The central place and reverence accorded to intellectuals in Tamil modernity is explored in respect to political party workers, NGOs, parish priests, and social workers in rural areas. I bring together two aspects of Tamil politics normally treated as separate, or in tension with one another: the egalitarian rationalism of the Self Respect movement, and the cultivation of language for its affective and non-rational elements in the politics of language nationalism. Arguing that it is the latter that has allowed the former to circulate as effectively as it does, I focus on the fresh meanings given to these values by young Dalit girls from agricultural labouring communities, as well as girls in coastal fishing communities in Tamil Nadu.     

Bodies,Shrines, and Roads: violence, (im)mobility and displacement in Sri Lanka

In Sri Lanka, gender and national identities intersect to shape people's mobility and security in the context of conflict. This article aims to illustrate the gendered processes of identity construction in the context of competing militarised nationalisms. We contend that a feminist approach is crucial, and that gender analysis alone is insufficient. Gender cannot be considered analytically independent from nationalism or ethno‐national identities because competing Tamil and Sinhala nationalist discourses produce particular gender identities and relations. Fraught and cross‐cutting relations of gender, nation, class and location shape people's movement, safety and potential for displacement. In the conflict‐ridden areas of Sri Lanka's North and East during 1999–2000, we set out to examine relations of gender and nation within the context of conflict. Our specific aim in this article is to analyse the ways in which certain identities are performed, on one hand, and subverted through premeditated performances of national identity on the other hand. We examine these processes at three sites—shrines, roads and people's bodies. Each is a strategic site of security/insecurity, depending on one's gender and ethno‐national identity, as well as geographical location.     

Litigation against Political Organization? The Politics of Dalit Mobilization in Tamil Nadu,India

This article examines contemporary Dalit assertion in India through an ethnographic case study of a legal tool being mobilized by Tamil Nadu's lowest‐ranking Arunthathiyars in their struggle against caste‐based offences. The Arunthathiyars of western Tamil Nadu are increasingly taking recourse to the 1989 Prevention of Atrocities Act (PoA Act) in an attempt to bring members of higher castes to justice. The article explores how Arunthathiyars are employing the law and how their litigation is reshaping the politics of caste in this region. The authors document how a process of litigation by Arunthathiyars is countered by a politicization of caste by the dominant Gounders of the region, who recently entered electoral politics with a new caste‐based party. Even though the litigation route further antagonizes caste relations, it is argued that the PoA Act has provided Dalits with an invaluable tool to seek justice, democratize public space, and challenge the power of the dominant caste in the region. Dalit social movements, it is concluded, are more likely to be successful if they are backed by a legal weapon and accompanied by Dalits’ growing economic independence.     

Lead ingots from a shipwreck Off Poompuhar, Tamil Nadu, East Coast of India: evidence for overseas trade and their significance

Various types of lead ingots have been reported from a number of shipwrecks from different parts of the world. In 1991 exploration of a wreck off Poompuhar, Tamil Nadu, East Coast of India, at a depth of 19 m yielded a gun, rudder gudgeon, gunpowder boxes and a variety of lead ingots. The most significant ingots are those marked W: Blackett and D with a crown symbol on the obverse and 1791, 1792 and some merchant marks on the reverse. These are similar to Blackett lead ingots found in England, the Netherlands and Sumatra. Pb-isotopic analysis has revealed their source as the North Pennine lead mines of England. Further, the lead used was of high purity -93%. Records show that Blackett was a well-known lead-exporting company in England since 1694. The wreck off Poompuhar may be a Toni type cargo ship carrying traded lead ingots of different manufacturers.     

Violent maritime spaces: Conservation and security in Gulf of Mannar Marine National Park,India

The militarisation of conservation involves the integration of conservation, security and counterinsurgency through violent and armed strategies, or ‘war, by conservation’. We describe a militarised conservation practice in which a marine protected area was established by the state and supported by international actors in a region of ongoing ethnic and military conflict as a case of conservation, by war. Conservation and security actors actively criminalise artisanal fishing communities in Gulf of Mannar Marine National Park in India. The harvest of sea cucumbers, marine species of commercial value historically traded between the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka, was banned and has become the target of militarised action. When the Sri Lankan civil war broke out in 1983, sea cucumber trade turned into a security concern as the same sea routes were also being used for trafficking arms, ammunition, and other contraband. Tamil Nadu was geographically and logistically involved in the civil war due to ethnic ties. The Sri Lankan civil war and its social and political consequences on the neighbouring state of Tamil Nadu due to ethnic ties is a fitting case of the nexus of conservation and security in a marine context. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted with artisanal fishers and conservation and security actors, we show that violent political conflict provided the justification for securitisation of conservation. As the state focuses its conservation efforts on the marine protected area, commercial fisheries detrimental to fisheries and biodiversity conservation continue. Marine protected areas allow the state to achieve its security outcomes even as it fails to meet its conservation goals due to non-local drivers of declines in species populations. Trans-boundary marine environments are particularly difficult to govern due to the dynamic nature of the seascape. The materiality of the sea and the conservation-security nexus results in the creation of a violent maritime space.     

Sound and identity explored through the Indian Tamil diaspora and Tamil Nadu

Sound is very much a part of identity. While identities are neither singular nor stable, they can be expressed through sound in daily life. Scholars have used soundscapes in geography to understand urban environments within cities, rural national park systems, and provide musical insights into cultural landscapes. However, furthering discussion on the role of sound in identity can move concepts of soundscape and cultural landscape forward. The goal of this paper is to investigate how identity and culture, though they are dynamic, can be performed and stabilized through sound in particular moments and yet also exist banally. Soundscapes through both spoken language and music can give geographers further insights on identity and place. Sound can also show how non-dominant identities distinguish themselves from larger national identities. With research in Tamil Nadu, India and Cleveland, OH, this paper examines sound’s role in identity, belonging, and community through lived experience and performance. Focusing on intersections and tensions between soundscapes, this paper investigates how the Tamil soundscape is used to assert and perform identity.     

Why Indians Vote: Reflections on Rights,Citizenship, and Democracy from a Tamil Nadu Village

This paper contributes to an empirical and theoretical understanding of democracy and political participation in India through an ethnographic study of the meanings attached to voting in rural Tamil Nadu. Based on a study of voting in a rural constituency during the 2009 national elections, the paper explores the variety of motivations that compel people to vote. It explores how voting is informed by popular understandings of rights and duties as citizens, programmatic policies and their local implementation, commitment to caste and party loyalties, and authority of charismatic leaders. The paper explores the roots of the political consciousness and rights awareness that underpin high levels of electoral participation. It suggests that elections form unique moments that allow ordinary people to experience an individual sense of citizenship and of democracy itself while at the same time allowing them to pursue projects of recognition, respect and assertion as members of communities. It is precisely this dual feature that makes voting so enduringly attractive to India's contemporary electorate.     

Socio-economic inequalities in health among older adults in two rural sub-districts in India and Bangladesh: a comparative cross-sectional study

Health inequalities have been observed among older people in many developing countries, particularly among those with least social protection and low socio-economic (SES) status. This study attempted to examine effects of SES on the health of older adults, and related gender differences, in two rural sub-districts - Matlab, Bangladesh and Vadu, India. The study utilised the WHO SAGE-INDEPTH Wave 1, 2007 Matlab, Bangladesh and Vadu, Pune District, India datasets. Both gender and SES indicators were strongly associated with all health indicators of older adults in the Bangladesh site, whereas in India, education and asset quintiles were not consistently associated with self-rated health, quality of life and functional ability score but gender was consistently associated with all health indicators except the quality of life score. The SES-health gradient was noticeably higher amongst older adults in Matlab, Bangladesh than in Vadu, India. Education was also found to be an important predictor of health outcome in both sites.     

Second demographic transition or aspirations in transition: an exploratory analysis of lowest-low fertility in Kolkata,India

Fertility transition occurred during the 1970s in Kolkata (erstwhile Calcutta), capital of the state of West Bengal, India, and has remained persistently at the low fertility level. Fertility rate in Kolkata attained its lowest-low level in the beginning of the present century. It currently has the lowest fertility rate (TFR 1.2) in India. This could be a case of second demographic transition (SDT) or pertains to changing dynamics in childbearing, childrearing, and/or aspirations for children. Using primary data of 600 couples (1200 individuals) and employing quantitative and qualitative methods, this study found that constraints in childbearing and childrearing; and aspirations for children have a strong negative and significant effect on second and higher order childbearing among couples, particularly among women. In our study there was no strong evidence of voluntary childlessness as well as decline in the importance of marriage, family and children as posited by SDT. Thus we argue that SDT might have to be redefined for a developing country context.     

A Tale of Two Cities: A Decomposition of Recent Fertility Changes in Shanghai and Hong Kong

In the past 20 years, Hong Kong and Shanghai's total fertility rates (TFR) have undergone drastic changes: first declining and then rebounding. We use a decomposition method to assess changes in the TFRs of these two cities during the period 1990–2010. During the period of decline from 1990 to 2000, the decrease in marital fertility rate (MFR) was the major cause behind Shanghai's TFR decline; the decrease in nuptiality and MFR were equally responsible for the decline in Hong Kong's TFR. During the 2000–2010 period, although the decline in nuptiality exerted downward pressure on TFR, both cities experienced an increase in TFR mainly due to an increase in the MFR. Analysis of the difference in TFR between the two cities in 2010/2011, also reveals that Hong Kong's marriage delay has a negative impact on fertility and it is the higher MFR that leads to a higher TFR than Shanghai's TFR. It also shows that a reduction of first- and second-order births is equally responsible for Shanghai's lower MFR. Despite the one-child policy in Shanghai, some couples continue to postpone their first births, while others have even chosen to be childfree (a preferred term to ‘childless’). The tempo distortion is diminishing more prominently in Hong Kong, while the decline in fertility aspiration adds much uncertainty to future fertility trends in Shanghai.     

Gainers and Losers: A Note on Land and Occupational Mobility in a South Indian Village, 1977–85

ABSTRACT This paper examines evidence on changes in the pattern of land-ownership and in household occupations based on a longitudinal study of a village in the relatively advanced agricultural region of Tamil Nadu, India. The question motivating the paper is whether the occurrence of mobility moderates the high levels of inequality observed in the region. The matrix approach is used to examine mobility. Matrices of occupations and land-holdings are constructed for the eighty-three panel households, spanning a period of eight years, to indicate the degree and direction of mobility. The investigation suggests that agricultural modernization within the existing structural framework has provided restricted opportunities for occupational change and has not mitigated the extreme polarization in the distribution of land.     

Fertility decline in rural China: a comparative analysis

Many models have been proposed to explain both the rapidity of China's fertility decline after the 1960s and the differential timing of the decline in different places. In particular, scholars argue over whether deliberate policies of fertility control, institutional changes, or general modernization factors contribute most to changes in fertility behavior. Here the authors adopt an ethnographically grounded behavioral-institutional approach to analyze qualitative and quantitative data from three different rural settings: Xiaoshan County in Zhejiang (East China), Ci County in Hebei, (North China), and Yingde County in Guangdong (South China). The authors show that no one set of factors explain differential timing by a combination of differences in social-cultural environments (e.g. spread of education, reproductive ideologies, and gender relations) and politico-economic conditions (e.g. economic development, birth planning campaigns, and collective systems of labor organization) during the early phases of the fertility decline.     

THE CAUSES OF THE ASIAN FERTILITY DECLINE

The Asian demographic transition is treated as one aspect of the global Industrial Revolution, which started in the West but now involves the whole world. In fact, the multiplication of per capita income in Asia in the second half of the twentieth century has been the world's fastest. With the rise in female education, urban living and non-agricultural employment, as well as the mortality decline that began early in the twentieth century and government family planning programmes, fertility fell nearly everywhere from the 1960s presaging below-replacement fertility levels. The continent's macro changes are outlined and micro studies of the causes of fertility decline and the delay or forgoing of marriage are drawn from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Thailand and South Korea. It is concluded that marriages will be increasingly forgone or delayed and that most, perhaps all, ESCAP Asia will this century experience below-replacement fertility. The path followed is much more likely to resemble that of Mediterranean Europe than Northern Europe.     

Korean unification: a solution to the challenges of an increasingly elderly population?

South Korea experienced below replacement fertility for the first time in 1983, which also marked the point from which fertility rates continued to decline over the next 20 years to reach a low of 1.2 in 2003. In spite of recent pronatalist policies, the fertility rate has remained near this level and has not increased appreciably. The reasons for sustained low fertility in South Korea are complex and solutions remain elusive. One option that has been suggested is reunification with North Korea, which could address the eventual decline in the population and mitigate the increasing proportion of the elderly. Although the conditions surrounding the German reunification experience were vastly different than what Korea will likely undergo, it is informative to look at Germany as a guide to the demographic parameters of reunification. Three projection models for 2015–2050 are presented; even the highest fertility models show that reunification will not be the answer to population restructuring already underway in South Korea as a result of sustained low fertility.     

Class,Caste, Gender,and the Materiality of Cement Houses in India

Recently, large parts of India and the global South have experienced a rapid transformation from mud to cement houses, which has been promoted by governments and cement companies for its positive impacts on household socioeconomic status and gender inequalities. But we know little else about how different communities are participating in house transformation. In this paper, I study the embodied and affective dimensions of house transformation in Himachal Pradesh, India. I argue that house transformation is also the transformation of traditional gender and caste identities into new middle-class identities which benefits some social groups, like upper-caste women and Dalit men, but not others like Dalit women along intersectional lines. My work extends literature in infrastructure studies and urban political ecology by highlighting how the materiality of infrastructures interacts with everyday dimensions of difference to reproduce the marginalisation of historically oppressed groups along intersectional lines of class, caste, and gender.     

Determinants of temporary labour migration in southern India

We present new data from three village panchayats in northwest Tamil Nadu and investigate the associations between demographic and socioeconomic factors with temporary labour migration from this setting. Individual (n?=?1110) and household (n?=?278) level logistic regression models were used to demonstrate how factors at each of these levels can influence temporary labour migration trajectories. Young males were most likely to temporarily migrate for work from this region. Additionally, large households from historically disadvantaged castes with marginal land and housing were most likely to have at least one migrant member. Households with multiple migrant members appear to use temporary migration to cope with serious deprivation relative to households with only one migrant member. These findings provide a strong case that can be compared to other settings in India and can be used to inform improved policy and targeted development initiatives to support temporary migrant workers and their households.     

Hopes,dreams and anxieties: India's one-child families

While rapid fertility decline in India in the last two decades has received considerable attention, much of the discourse has focused on a decline in high parity births. However, this paper finds that, almost hidden from the public gaze, a small but significant segment of the Indian population has begun the transition to extremely low fertility. Among the urban, upper income, educated, middle class, it is no longer unusual to find families stopping at one child, even when this child is a girl. Using data from the India Human Development Survey of 2004–2005, we examine the factors that may lead some families to stop at a single child. We conclude that the motivations for this very low fertility are likely to be a more extreme form of those for low fertility rather than reflecting the qualitative change in ideologies and worldviews that is hypothesized to accompany very low fertility during the second demographic transition.