Looking, but not seeing: The state and/as class in rural India

2007 ◽  
Vol 34 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 408-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raju J. Das
Keyword(s):  
The State ◽  
Rural India

The Politics of Claim-Making in India

2021 ◽  
Vol 94 (3) ◽  
pp. 567-577
Author(s):  
Diego Maiorano
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Daily Life ◽  
The State ◽  
Rural India ◽  
Active Citizenship ◽  
Public Goods Provision ◽  
Essential Services ◽  
Indian State ◽  
Rural Dwellers

How do Indian citizens access the state? While a standard answer would be "through patronage," three recent books show that clientelism, while important, is just part of the story. Not just passive clients at the mercy of their political patrons, Indian citizens actively engage the state and their representatives to make claims and secure what is due to them. Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner's Claiming the State—Active Citizenship and Social Welfare in Rural India shows how rural dwellers navigate the local government system to access social welfare. Adam Auerbach's Demanding Development: The Politics of Public Goods Provision in India's Urban Slums documents how local political workers make claims on behalf of their neighbours and provide their settlements with essential services. Jennifer Bussell's Clients and Constituents: Political Responsiveness in Patronage Democracies persuasively demonstrates the importance of higher-level representatives in providing assistance to their constituencies. Together, these books not only demonstrate how political the daily life of ordinary citizens is, but also how the Indian state, while far from its Weberian ideal, is much more inclusive than previously thought.

Communities of hope? Gendered re-signification of microcredit in rural India

2019 ◽  
pp. 163-176
Author(s):  
Debarati Sen ◽  
Sarasij Majumder
Keyword(s):  
Community Development ◽  
West Bengal ◽  
Ground Level ◽  
The State ◽  
Rural India ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Social ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Development Alternatives

This chapter presents a picture of what gendered resilience looks like at the ground level in eastern India's Darjeeling district in the state of West Bengal. It focuses on how women interpret and react to popular market-based development alternatives like microcredit and the consequences this has had for community development. The chapter is divided into three sections. The first section charts the history and dynamics of microcredit's unfolding in Darjeeling and highlights the practices and discourses through which women demonstrate resilience. The second section lays out how and why women re-signify risk in the context of microcredit to make visible non-financial forms of risk that affect their families and, in turn, their communities. The third section explores how, after encountering the social and economic difficulties that came with the microcredit loans, many of the women set up their own groups for lending.

Women, poverty and work in colonial rural India: The Dufferin Inquiry, 1887–88

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-179
Author(s):  
Shireen Moosvi
Keyword(s):  
Labour Market ◽  
Gender Relations ◽  
Uttar Pradesh ◽  
The State ◽  
Rural India ◽  
Bride Price

The survival of the original reports of officials engaged in the Dufferin Inquiry (1887–88) from what is now Uttar Pradesh, enables us to have detailed descriptions of the extent of poverty in India’s countryside at that time. The details cover conditions of women, including their share in both domestic and field labour. One can infer the state of gender relations from these descriptions, with bride-price rather than dowry as the prominent institution. We are also able to see how caste customs also shaped women’s access to the labour market outside the home.

Decentralized Governance and Devolution of Funds to the Panchayats in India: A Critical Analysis of Two States

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-54
Author(s):  
M. Gopinath Reddy ◽  
Bishnu Prasad Mohapatra
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Andhra Pradesh ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
The State ◽  
Rural India ◽  
The Status ◽  
Decentralized Governance ◽  
State Taxes

The debates on the devolution of powers to the panchayats since the last two decades received enormous attention because of the increasing role played by these institutions in planning and implementation of the development programmes in rural India. But it is observed that devolution agenda including the agenda of fiscal devolution and tax decentralization has not been taken up sincerely in many states including the states of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. Based on the review of secondary data, the present article critically examines the status of the fiscal devolution to the panchayats in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. This article argues that both the states need to strengthen the own revenue of panchayats based on the recommendations of the Finance Commissions of the respective states. In this context, the process of tax decentralization and principles of sharing the state taxes should receive paramount importance.

scholarly journals Tackling Open Defecation and Improved Sanitation in Developing Countries: A Toilet Talk from the State of Bihar, India

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-57
Author(s):  
Sandeep Kumar Sinha ◽  
Pradeep Chaudhry
Keyword(s):  
Open Study ◽  
Behavioural Change ◽  
The State ◽  
Rural India ◽  
Old People ◽  
Open Defecation ◽  
Improved Sanitation ◽  
Sustainable Usage ◽  
Latrine Use ◽  
Free Status

Open defecation is a major blot on India’s overall reputation as an emerging economy as it still remains stubbornly widespread across rural India. The present paper outlines the economic and psychological aspects of toilets construction and their sustainable usage in two districts of the state of Biharviz. Gopalganj& Bhagalpur. Bihar’s performance is not up to the mark with respect to the sanitation figures among other states of India. It was found that households owning a government constructed latrine,still defecate in the open. Study evidences support a preference for open defecation; many survey respondents reported that open defecation was more comfortable and desirable than latrine use. Old people prefer going outside as they are used to this routineand do not mind defecating in the open for the rest of their lives.The study was conducted with an objective to better understand and assess the issues and strategies of behavioural change, policies present in the system and suggesting suitable recommendations to address the issue of sustenance of open defecation free status in the state.

Interrogating the Maoists and the Indian State: A Study of Salwa Judum in Bastar

2017 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
pp. 284-301
Author(s):  
Himanshu Roy
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Word Meaning ◽  
The State ◽  
Rural India ◽  
The Past ◽  
Peasant Movements ◽  
Indian State ◽  
Peasant Movement ◽  
Full Intensity ◽  
Communist Party Of India

Salwa Judum was a unique tribal-peasant movement that arose against the specific agenda of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) 1 (henceforth Maoists) in its full intensity in 2005 in the sub-region of Bastar ( baanstari, a Halbi word meaning the bed of or the land of bamboos) in Chhattisgarh. The movement began since January across different villages of non-Abujh Maad (the unknown hills of Madia/Koya tribes) sub-region that initially galvanised approximately 20,000 tribals. It was spontaneous and non-political (Prasad, 2012, p. 329). It was unique as the movement was against a ‘revolutionary’ group of Maoists and not against the state or against the zamindari system as most peasant movements in rural India were in the past. Its build-up was the culmination of suppressed anger of the tribals that had developed over decades against the Maoists also called ‘Naxalites’. It was a new and different phenomenon.

scholarly journals Embodiment of Untouchability: Cinematic Representations of the “Low” Caste Women in India

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 735-745
Author(s):  
Jyoti Atwal
Keyword(s):  
Social Justice ◽  
The State ◽  
Legal Rights ◽  
Rural India ◽  
Indian Cinema ◽  
The Third ◽  
Main Challenge ◽  
New Methodologies ◽  
National Significance ◽  
Women In India

Abstract Ironically, feudal relations and embedded caste based gender exploitation remained intact in a free and democratic India in the post-1947 period. I argue that subaltern is not a static category in India. This article takes up three different kinds of genre/representations of “low” caste women in Indian cinema to underline the significance of evolving new methodologies to understand Black (“low” caste) feminism in India. In terms of national significance, Acchyut Kanya represents the ambitious liberal reformist State that saw its culmination in the constitution of India where inclusion and equality were promised to all. The movie Ankur represents the failure of the state to live up to the postcolonial promise of equality and development for all. The third movie, Bandit Queen represents feminine anger of the violated body of a “low” caste woman in rural India. From a dacoit, Phoolan transforms into a constitutionalist to speak about social justice. This indicates faith in Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s India and in the struggle for legal rights rather than armed insurrection. The main challenge of writing “low” caste women’s histories is that in the Indian feminist circles, the discourse slides into salvaging the pain rather than exploring and studying anger.

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