A Clench-Fastened Boat in Kerala, India

In May 2003 the author observed a clench-fastened boat near Chertala, Kerala, India. The boat appears to indicate a vessel-type previously undocumented in the area. This article reports the observations made of the vessel and its pertinence to the boat-construction traditions of Kerala and the subcontinent.
© 2009 The Author     

Mahishi's rage: Communitas and protest at Sabarimala,Kerala

In September 2018, the Supreme Court of India lifted the ban on females of menstrual age entering the sacred site to Lord Ayyappan at Sabarimala in the Indian state of Kerala. Violent protests, for and against, engulfed Kerala throughout the main festival and pilgrimage season of 2018–19. This article explores the major sociopolitical and cultural forces that underpinned the violent protests at one of India’s (and also the world’s) major centres of religious pilgrimage. The central argument extends Victor Turner’s thesis in The ritual process to show how the dynamics of liminality and communitas created an intense vortex of crisis of potentially sociocultural transformational effect.     

Public Intervention and Poverty Alleviation: A Study of the Declining Incidence of Rural Poverty in Kerala,India

In the context of the continuing and lively debate on the estimates, trends and determinants of rural poverty in India, this article examines the sharp decline, since the late 1970s, in the incidence of rural poverty in the state of Kerala, well known for its record of social development. It is argued that, given the slow rate of growth of the Kerala economy in general and agriculture in particular since the mid-1970s, the ‘trickle down’ theory cannot explain the decline in poverty. Similarly, the fact that rural wages have increased faster than the consumer price index does not constitute a sufficient condition for crossing the poverty line. Expansion of state-directed programmes is seen to be the single most important determinant in reducing rural poverty. The effect of public intervention programmes is roughly estimated to be equal to one fifth of the consumption of rural labour households. The lesson of Kerala for poverty alleviation is that social protection expressed in terms of meeting the basic consumption requirements of the poor, especially the vulnerable among the poor, should be a necessary component of development policy. However, this is not a sufficient condition: there should also be a growth strategy which would provide adequate employment to all members of the labour force from the poorer sections of the population. The current line of official thinking in India, in the context of economic liberalization, is hardly conducive to such a strategy.     

Bridging the Social and Digital Divides in Andhra Pradesh and Kerala: A Capabilities Approach

Combining empirical evidence with Amartya Sen's concept of capabilities, this article argues that the digital divide is not merely a problem of access to ICTs. It is part of a larger developmental problem in which vast sections of the world's population are deprived of the capabilities to use ICTs, acquire information and convert information into useful knowledge. Fieldwork research including sample surveys conducted in rural locations in Kerala and Andhra Pradesh in India shows that these capabilities can only be created through large‐scale complementary interventions in economic and social development.     

Globalization Lived Locally: Investigating Kerala's Local Labour Control Regimes

This article uses the case study of a prominent electronics manufacturer in Kerala, southern India, to illuminate an approach to labour studies which focuses on local labour control regimes. Kerala was chosen for this study because of certain unusual characteristics of its labour market. Building on the theoretical base of local labour control regimes, empirical evidence from the case study reveals that local labour markets develop their own forms of labour control and worker response patterns. These are not always clearly visible and may require something more than superficial enquiry to bring their salient features into view. In this case, the Church is shown to play an unexpected role in local labour control regimes.     

State Life: Land,Welfare and Management of the Landless in Kerala,India

The pressing need to manage the spiralling number of landless people around the world has compelled several states to experiment with scattered land distribution programmes in combination with welfare transfers, instead of comprehensive land reform. This article examines the chasm between land demands and state responses in such contexts. Focusing on the Aralam resettlement site for the landless Adivasis in Kerala, India, it argues that management of the landless could take the form of ‘state life’ — a life envisaged by the state rather than the life the people wish to lead. Three interlinked processes are shown to shape state life in Kerala: the reduction of land to welfare, amplified welfare transfers and the mobilization of assumptions about the target population. State life enables states to extinguish simmering land struggles in the short term, but ultimately it reproduces landlessness.     

Land,Law and Courts in India: Tracing Land Rights Debates through Processes of Judicial Decision Making

The pace of industrial and allied infrastructure development in India is encumbered by scarcity in the supply of land. As a result, the state in India has frequently resorted to expropriation of land through conversion of land away from its traditional uses and through displacement of communities. Consequently, land acquisition in the country is mired in disputes over human rights and environmental rights violations. In the face of continued political support for infrastructure‐led development in India, those who stand to lose their land have often resorted to judicial recourse for pressing their rights. This article draws on empirical evidence from court cases related to two urban development projects in the states of Karnataka and Kerala to examine how courts have responded to the question of violation of land rights and appeals against land acquisition for the two projects. The author argues that the courts, while responding to the claims against the two projects, have refrained from holding the implementing agencies or the state governments accountable even in cases where there were recognizable incidents of malfeasance. The article illustrates that the inability of the courts to confront the state lends a tacit assent to the development agenda of the state.     

Mid-Holocene age obtained for nested diamond pattern petroglyph in the Billasurgam Cave complex,Kurnool District,southern India

India has one of the world's largest and most significant bodies of rock paintings and engravings, yet not a single rock art site or image has been directly and accurately dated using radiometric techniques. Here we report on results from the Billasurgam Cave complex near Kurnool in southern India. Although this cave complex has been investigated archaeologically since the late 1800s, it was not until 2008 that a large petroglyph, consisting of the remains of three nested diamond designs on a stalactite, was noted. In order to determine if this petroglyph had been made recently, flowstone was sampled from on top of and below the engraving. Radiocarbon dating revealed a mid-Holocene age of about 5000 cal BP for the petroglyph, but we cannot rule out the possibility that the engraving is several centuries younger. Similar nested diamond designs at some rock painting sites and on a chert core elsewhere in India have been assumed to be Mesolithic. Our result is consistent with this hypothesis, although we note that it also consistent with the creation of the petroglyph in the early Neolithic. We conclude that the Billasurgam engraved diamond design was probably made by Mesolithic foragers of the Kurnool region and is the oldest surviving form of rock art yet directly dated in southern India.     

Science,geography, and nation: the global creation of Thumba

Abstract

The origins of the Indian space program are typically traced back to the founding of a rocket launch base in Thumba in the state of Kerala in India in the 1960s. In creating infrastructure at Thumba, Indian scientific elites used geography as an instrument to create a vast international network of scientific and political actors committed to the science that was possible within India, particularly cosmic ray studies. They were drawing on a long tradition of linking geography to science redolent of the colonial era but were inspired by their newly constituted political imaginary of independent India as a place where science, geography, and nation were perfectly mapped on to each other. NASA’s help was crucial in this regard, enabled as a tool in Cold War high politics, as American technocrats sought to steer India towards the West, while India itself was keenly aware of a more proximate phenomenon, Pakistan’s own burgeoning efforts to do the same. Concerned about domestic opprobrium to large Indian investments in space technology, Indian and American actors shielded the Thumba project from critique by installing it under the umbrella of the international order, in this case the United Nations. This internationalism was complemented by a deep and firm belief in the universalism of modern science as a portable instrument, capable of improving the social order anywhere, regardless of political or social context.     

Trends and Sub-National Disparities in Neonatal Mortality in India from 1981 to 2011

Despite progress made in recent decades, infant and neonatal mortality rates (NMRs) in India have remained high compared to neighbouring developing countries. This study aims at establishing quantitative links between the relatively slow progress in fight against neonatal death at national level and strikingly varying mortality patterns at sub-national level. It appears that the tempo and quantum of reductions in neonatal mortality have been inconsistent across time, states, and urban and rural sub-populations. Decompositions have shown that the total NMR decrease in India, since the early 1980s has been largely driven by mortality changes in poorer states and rural areas, whereas compositional changes had negligible impact. The disparity in NMRs across the sub-populations which had been declining earlier stabilised in the 2000s. These disparities produce a heavy burden of avoidable death. While the mortality excess in poorer states and rural areas constitutes the core of bulk of excess deaths, some richer states, and urban areas, also show unexpected slower mortality decreases. However, the experience of the two states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu highlights the potential for declines in NMRs in low-income settings with sensible health and social policies.     

Non-economic Bases of Economic Behaviour: The Consumption,Investment and Exchange Patterns of Three Emigrant Communities in Kerala,India

This article takes issue with the rational choice approach that views the economy as an autonomous realm where isolated individuals make maximizing choices in terms of their personal preferences. The argument made is that income generation, consumption and exchange form a holistic complex that must be studied in its unity and that the economy and individual economic behaviour are articulated with a social context. This is demonstrated by evidence (collected through fieldwork) on the differences in the use of remittances by three villages in Kerala, India, which have experienced large scale migration to the Middle Eastern countries. In the three cases, it was the way in which income earned from international migration was perceived, together with the variation in ethnic structures, that explained the similarities and differences in their consumption, exchange and investment patterns. In each case, it was the larger ethnic structure that conditioned (1) the types of activities into which the money was channelled; (2) the range of people who were the beneficiaries of migrant remittances; (3) the patterns of reciprocity or charity practised by the migrants; (4) the selection of the trade-off point between community status and economic accumulation; and; (5) the groups of individuals who gained or lost economic control.     

Absorbing External Shocks: The Gulf Crisis,International Migration Linkages and the Indian Economy, 1990 (with special reference to the impact on Kerala)

The paper analyses the impact of the Gulf crisis on the Indian economy as a whole, on the state of Kerala which was the origin of the majority of the Indian migrants in Kuwait and Iraq, and on the returning migrants them- selves. The scale of the disturbances is estimated both with respect to the labour market, as well as the flow of remittances. Alternative policy responses are discussed, especially in the context of the Kerala economy, and the problem is viewed separately from the vantage point of the returning migrants, as well as that of the State Government. The effects of the crisis become more acute as the focus shifts from the level of the macroeconomy, to the state of Kerala, to the migrants themselves.     

Localizing the Different Faces of Archaeological Landscapes in South India

Siruthavoor is a village situated 40?km south of Chennai in south India. The people of this village share their landscape with archaeological remains of south India’s past, including Iron Age–Early Historic burials and medieval temples. As an archaeologist, having witnessed and been both an indirect and direct participant in the changing reactions, actions, and perceptions of the community towards these monuments, I use this paper to explore the implications we can draw from the interaction between archaeological landscapes and various actors, spanning a period of twelve years. In India, as in many other countries, archaeological landscapes, monuments, and objects face the possibility of alteration, conservation, preservation, or destruction. The factors involved in this, I argue, are specific to localized conscious and unconscious decision-making by people living around such archaeological sites. Delving deeper into these issues will help us understand these often seemingly inexplicable choices that imperil the continued presence of archaeological monuments in the contemporary landscape. The behind-the-scenes events that occur in the ‘field’ of archaeology often remain untold, and yet they hold a lot of information. Through this narrative, this paper explores some of the subjectivities that we need to acknowledge as academics.     

Loading and stability of a late 16th century Portuguese Indiaman

The stability characteristics of 16th century ships are not known with certainty, but safety issues related to floatability, stability and overloading were a cause of concern at the time. The aim of the paper is to advance knowledge in this field by developing a set of loading conditions for a typical Portuguese ship of this epoch, for both the voyage from Lisbon to India and the return voyage. This allows testing the reconstruction of the presumable Nossa Senhora dos Mártires as well as to use this reconstruction to bring a better understanding of safety and loading issues on the Portuguese East India route. Given the uncertainties about the loading conditions, several hypotheses are tested, varying the amount of ballast, the degree of overloading and the distribution of weights on board, and allowing the development of a range of plausible loading arrangements. The stability of the ship is then assessed using modern tools to develop the limit KG curve for compliance with a modern stability criterion applicable to large sailing vessels. The case study ship is a plausible reconstruction based on the analysis of nautical archaeological remains, contemporary documents and the use of modern naval architecture methods.     

Preservation between empire,nation and nationalisms: the problem of history and heritage in India

This article looks at the problematic questions of heritage and history in a postcolonial nation‐state such as India. It looks at the colonial past of the preservation of historical buildings and relates this to the postcolonial history of the use of heritage and history for both nation‐building and also to assert the claims and counterclaims of postcolonial identity politics. The article shows how the state and its bureaucracy historically acquired the right to be the custodian of culture, history and heritage, and it also argues that the state nevertheless was and remains circumscribed by subnational and communitarian claims to heritage and the past.     

Surviving in Contemporary Kerala: Reflections from Recent Research in a Fisher Village

This article is based on mixed‐method field research in Adimalathura, a coastal village in south Kerala, India, which has been identified as one of the poorest communities in the area. Although this fishing community has been facing severe ecological challenges, including massive resource depletion, it has been able to put up stiff resistance to impending dispossession in the face of a large port project actively promoted by the government, most major political parties and globalized capital. This article traces the history of public action and work in Adimalathura since the early 20th century, and reflects on its significance in the context of the present resistance. It examines the role of women in bolstering the community in times of severe challenges to men's livelihoods, and highlights the importance of women's provisioning work. Ultimately, the author cautions against exaggerating community strength and the capacities of the women even when they are able to utilize available resources competently.     

Champaner‐Pavagadh Archaeological Park: A Design Approach

Champaner‐Pavagadh, like many other heritage sites in India, is both an historic and ethnographic landscape. It possesses a unique status as a medieval city—Champaner—frozen in time, more or less protected by its sudden abandonment 450 years ago. At the same time, it is a living sacred site—Pavagadh Hill—visited annually by millions, with a resident population. Efforts are underway to declare the hill and the remains of the medieval city at its foot an archaeological park, which will ensure protection and conservation of cultural and natural resources. The challenge in designing the site as an archaeological park lies in articulating the pastoral image conjured up by the term in a manner that does not belie complex issues of land ownership, varied use, and ecological integrity of the site. Working landscapes—farms, flower fields, orchards, and nurseries—can be employed as a landscape‐design typology to ensure sustainability and to preserve and frame sightlines to monuments. Garden archaeology is necessary to uncover the symbiotic relationship between buildings and gardens of medieval Champaner.     

Beach Boys Do It Too: Subculture and Commoditised Desire in a Transnational Tourist Site in Kerala,South India

This article is based on an ethnographic study of a group of Scheduled Caste (SC) male youth in a globalised tourist site in Kerala, South India, who participate in situational sexual and romantic relationships with predominantly tourist women from the global north. We first aim to expand on the “sex and romance tourism” literature of such encounters to provide an Indian context. Secondly, we aim to highlight how young men involved in such encounters undertake complex mediations of localised and global forms of consumption and commoditisation to participate in the neoliberal tourist market place. Mainly by way of a subculture known as the Jungees, we describe how young men utilise the former processes to seek economic and social mobility for themselves and their families but also to valorise and re-imagine their identity along racial, gendered, caste and class-based dimensions. Finally, we explore the young men’s articulation of a hierarchy of preferred encounters that draws on gendered, sexualised and racialised local and global imaginaries of commoditised desire(s) of tourist women from the global north. We highlight the ways in which participants actively utilise the neoliberal context to engage in a range of self-generated livelihood strategies and to contest their marginality.     

CONTESTED BOUNDARIES: STATE POLICIES,FOREST CLASSIFICATIONS,AND DEFORESTATION IN THE GARHWAL HIMALAYAS

Prominent environmental scholars and activists in India have posited that environmental crises in the Indian Himalayas result primarily from adopting forestry practices that override local communities and argue that the region can be sustained only when the state allows local communities to practice indigenous forest management. This paper challenges those critiques: focusing on the Garhwal Himalayas, it shows that forestry practices involve contestation and negotiation between the state and local communities and argues that environmental scholars fail to recognize how particular classes have shaped forest use and management practices and played a central role in determining environmental sustainability for local communities.