‘Why don’t they use the toilet built for them?’: Explaining toilet use in Chhattisgarh, Central India

2021 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-115
Author(s):  
Suraj Jacob ◽  
Balmurli Natrajan ◽  
T. G. Ajay

Poor sanitation poses problems for health and policy. Sanitation policy has traditionally addressed open defecation (OD) by constructing toilets. However, a puzzle remains: in many parts of the developing world, why do people continue with OD despite toilets being built for them? While extant research is insightful, an empirical, socially driven explanation for ‘sanitation behaviour’ is still elusive. We advance such an explanation based upon fieldwork in central India where the state has built private toilets for villagers. Drawing upon and modifying pragmatic and analytic approaches in sociology and anthropology, we analyse ethnographic examples of individual toilet behaviour to present a social mechanism that explains toilet use (TU) as an emergent social practice resulting from a chain of ‘problem situations’ experienced by villagers. We find that coercive methods deployed by the state as part of toilet and sanitation policy do not produce durable TU habits, and that good quality toilets are necessary but not sufficient for behavioural change. Instead, we show the need for non-coercive methods of ‘nudging’ that rely on the dynamics of social learning that may enable context-sensitive policies around toilets and sanitation.

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-57
Author(s):  
Sandeep Kumar Sinha ◽  
Pradeep Chaudhry

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.


2021 ◽  
pp. 101269022098865
Author(s):  
Eivind Å Skille ◽  
Josef Fahlén ◽  
Cecilia Stenling ◽  
Anna-Maria Strittmatter

While colonization as policy is formally a historic phenomenon in Norway and elsewhere, many former structures of state organization – including their relationship to sport – remain under post-colonial conditions. This paper is concerned with how the Norwegian government contributes to creating a situation, which includes the Norwegian sports confederation (NIF) but excludes the indigenous people Sámi’s sports organisation. Based on existing data and literature, we analyse how the state favours NIF through a chain of legitimating acts. Thus, sport is a preserve of colonization, where a one-sided legitimation parallels a de-legitimation of the overarching sport policy goal of sport-for-all. However, there are signs of change whereby actors are challenging NIF’s monopoly and ‘older’ state-sport regimes.


2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-47
Author(s):  
Megha Sharma

The complexities of studying informal sector labour can be dealt with bringing a wide range of identities and ideas used by the workers, which encompass beyond the socio-economic and political identities. 2 2   This article is based on my MPhil dissertation, ‘Conditions of Informality: Beedi Industry in Colonial and Post 1947 Central India’, submitted to the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University in 2015. This article attempts to capture the diversified identities among the home-based beedi-making women workers and their settlement in Madhya Pradesh based on their oral interviews. Further, it captures how the division of work is sustained and perpetuated through the gendered allocation of work over the years. It also recounts how the state has perpetuated this division as the natural allocation of work in official discourse. Precisely, the article argues that how the worker’s narratives are an essential source to question the way work is explained in official language and the inequalities justified by the state.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (12) ◽  
pp. 2294-2312
Author(s):  
Tat'yana A. ZHURAVLEVA ◽  
Anastasiya E. ZUBANOVA ◽  
Yuliya S. SOROKVASHINA

Subject. The poverty of the population with all features and factors of its manifestation causes deep structural problems that affect the development of the national economy. Objectives. The aim of the study is a comprehensive analysis of the poverty of the population category, using statistical data, identification of causes of the gap in the level of salaries of Russian and foreign specialists, determination of factors that have the greatest impact on the development of working poverty in Russia. Methods. The study draws on methods of logical and statistical analysis. Results. We considered approaches to the definition of poverty in Russia and other countries, analyzed absolute and relative poverty in Russia, the impact of subsistence minimum on the definition of poverty, assessed nominal and real incomes of the population. The ratio of the average per capita income of the population and the subsistence minimum decreased over the past decade, however, the poverty was not overcome during this period. The per capita income in Russia turned out to be low, real incomes continue to decline. Due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, a decline in wages can be traced, both in space and in time. Conclusions. Worsening the poverty situation in the country creates a chain of problems related to the distrust of the State policy in the social and labor spheres, expanded production slowdown, an increase in social tension in the society. A reduction of working poverty should be a priority task for the State.


Author(s):  
Petro V. Makushev ◽  
Аndrii V. Khridochkin ◽  
Hanna O. Blinova ◽  
Oleksandr V. Taldykin

The relevance of the problem under study is due to the need for theoretical justification of the place of executive proceedings in the modern legal system of Ukraine and the functions of the state executive service to protect the rights of citizens and legal entities, as well as the interests of the country. The purpose of the article is to develop a modern model of administrative activity of state executive service bodies. The leading research method for this problem is modeling, which allows us to consider this problem as a focused and informed process of reforming the existing system of executive proceedings in Ukraine. The article presents the main causes of problem situations in executive proceedings and offers comprehensive ways to solve them, based on the structure of the modern state executive service, creating the theoretical foundations of executive proceedings and making specific amendments to the current legislation. The article clarifies the principles, functions and powers of the state executive service in Ukraine, as well as defines the functional features of the administrative activities of the state executive service bodies and discloses the contents of the administrative-legal status of the state executor in a mixed decision enforcement system. In Ukraine is not yet comprehensive research on state executive service in Ukraine in a mixed system of decision-making, with emphasis on the peculiarities of its reform in the present period and the formulation of the Concept. This determines the relevance of this study, its scientific and practical value


Author(s):  
Sid Bedingfield

This chapter details McCray’s battle with James F. Byrnes, South Carolina’s most distinguished politician of the mid-twentieth century. The elder statesman ran for governor in 1950 after a long career in Washington. At the time the NAACP had filed Briggs v. Elliott, a suit in Clarendon County demanding an end to segregated schools. Byrnes hoped to persuade the state’s African Americans to withdraw the suit in return to more funding for all-black schools in the state. McCray and his newspaper led the fight to rally support in favor of the Clarendon County case. McCray paid a price for his defiance. He was charged with criminal libel and served time on a chain gang. He and his supporters believe Byrnes pushed for the criminal charge to silence McCray’s newspaper.


Author(s):  
Ashis Jalote Parmar ◽  
G. Raghuram

This case describes the social cultural challenges confronted by Mr. Srikanth, President, Rotary Club, Chennai in making a village near Chennai in rural Tamil Nadu, Open Defecation Free (ODF). It highlights the role of a non-profit organization such as the Rotary Club and behavioral change consultants such as Feedback Foundation in the effective deployment of toilet construction and bringing about a social cultural change in village communities towards acceptance of ODF. The case also points to the of critical need of Swachh Bharat Mission addressing the socio cultural issues and bringing behavioural change, towards acceptance of ODF.


2001 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alvin Schupp ◽  
Jeffrey Gillespie

AbstractInterest in mandatory county-of-origin labeling of fresh meats exists at both the state and national levels. A sample of beef handling firms in Louisiana (processors, retailers and restaurants) was surveyed by telephone to identify the characteristics of these firms that would help explain their decision to support or reject the law. A factor supporting the label use was a belief that the label is valuable to buyers. Negative factors were that the firm is a restaurant, is part of a chain or franchise, or has experience handling imported beef, and the belief that labeling merely reflects more government interference in free trade.


1999 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 753-773 ◽  
Author(s):  
Satadru Sen

The penal colony that the british established in the Andaman Islands at the end of the 1850s was originally intended as a place of permanent exile for a particular class of Indian criminals. These offenders had, for the most part, been convicted by special tribunals in connection with the Indian rebellions of 1857–58. As the British vision of rehabilitation in the Andamans evolved, the former rebels were joined in the islands by men and women convicted under the Indian Penal Code. In the islands, transported criminals were subjected to various techniques of physical, spatial, occupational, and political discipline (Sen 1998). The slow transition from a convicted criminal to a prisoner in a chain gang, to employment as a Self-Supporter or a convict officer in the service of the prison regime, to life as a free settler in a penal colony was in effect a process by which the state sought to transform the criminal classes of colonial India—the disloyal, the idle, the elusive and the disorderly—into loyal, orderly, and governable subjects.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document