Showing papers in "Journal of South Asian Development in 2015"

The Indian Women’s Movement Within and Beyond NGOization

Abstract: The article documents some of the transformations to the women’s movement in India in the post-independence period. Given the empirical and ideological centrality of nongovernmental organisations (...

The Politics of Property in Land New Planning Instruments, Law and Popular Groups in Delhi

Abstract: Alongside the policy of promoting real estate in land as a vehicle for driving accumulation and financing urban development, the Government of India introduced a policy to provide property rights to squatters as part of Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY) programme, an urban poverty alleviation scheme. Based on ethnographic research carried out in the Kathputli Colony, a squatter settlement in Delhi, this article examines the politics of creating in-situ property rights under the RAY. The article illustrates the manner in which property rights are produced and reconfigured through contestations over their meaning and boundaries. The making of property at the Kathputli Colony constitutes a fluid and conflictual process, influenced by several actors, including urban planning authorities, courts, non-governmental organizations and colony residents. My analysis of the process reveals how the planning authority mobilized a language of legal rights for squatters as well as participatory planning instruments to facilitate t...

Revisiting Urban Property in India

Abstract: Over the last three decades, processes of economic transformation and market liberalization have had far-reaching consequences for property regimes across the world.1 These transformations are felt particularly strongly in urban areas, where land and housing have been turned into real estate. Discourses on private property are also part of emerging subjectivities and urban policies,2 which are redefining citizenship in terms of property ownership. In many contexts, including urban India, property has enhanced both monetary gains and social status for those individuals and communities benefiting from post-liberalization ownership regimes. Thus, what Shatkin argued for Southeast Asia in the late 1980s holds true in India today, that ‘real estate development and speculation in real estate products have become a major means for wealth accumulation by propertied people in many cities’ (2010, p. 272). While wealth accumulation per se is neither new nor necessarily problematic, the accumulation of capital through real estate enabled by liberalization policies has certainly not benefitted all social groups in equal measure. Even though marginalized groups are equally exposed to glowing media representations of urban renewal and homeownership, many continue to be subjected to evictions and exclusions, struggle to claim basic rights as citizens and can only dream of participating in the emerging consumer culture (Baviskar, 2010; Dey, Samaddar & Sen, 2013; Rao, 2010). Transformations of urban areas under regimes of millennial capitalism have renewed scholarly interest in questions of urban politics, urbane culture and urban power dynamics in the post-liberalization era (Shatkin, 2010; 2014). Many transformations affect the appropriation of land beyond the city, as the burgeoning literature on land grabbing and the commodification of agricultural land across and beyond the subcontinent shows (Adnan, 2013; Feldman & Geisler, 2012; Levien, 2011). However, a key question about urban property markets concerns the role Journal of South Asian Development 10(3) 255–266 © 2015 SAge Publications India Private Limited SAge Publications sagepub.in/home.nav DOI: 10.1177/0973174115611760 http://sad.sagepub.com Introduction

Quality of Governance, Corruption and Absolute Child Poverty in India:

Abstract: Mundle, Chakraborty, Chowdhury and Sikdar (2012) developed the first quality of governance (QoG) measures to assess the performance of India’s states. The present article builds on Mundle et al.’s ...

Link Work: Land and Housing Brokers in Mangaluru, India

Abstract: In Mangaluru, a smaller rapidly urbanizing coastal city in southwest India, there is a broker on every street. They are skilled, reputation conscious figures, who interpret class, jati, age and gen...

Individual and Ecological Variation in Child Undernutrition in India A Multilevel Analysis

Abstract: Despite the substantial burden of child undernutrition in South Asia, little is known on the relative importance and contribution of individual and micro/macro environments in shaping variation in child undernutrition. Using measures of anthropometry, we decompose the variation in child undernutrition in India to the levels of child, communities and states, quantifying the extent to which variation at each of these levels can be explained by known proximal and distal risk factors, measured at the individual (child/household) level. Data are from under-five singleton children participating in the 2005–2006 National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3). The outcome variables were: height-for-age z-score (HAZ), weight-for-age z-score (WAZ) and weight-for-height z-score (WHZ), as well as their associated measures of anthropometric failure: stunting, underweight and wasting, defined as more than two standard deviations below the median of the referred z-scores, respectively. We also considered the composite index of ...

Contesting the boundaries of religion in social mobilization

Abstract: This article seeks to contribute to an understanding of the dynamics of religion in social mobilization It argues that existing approaches to the study of the role of religion in social mobilization have been insufficiently nuanced and have failed to probe the multiple and often contradictory influences that religion can have on mobilization channels On the basis of three qualitative case studies from Malaysia, Bangladesh and the United Kingdom, we identify three key factors of religion that can catalyze social mobilization: theological resources; religious spaces; and the interaction of both with the wider context This leads us to conclude that the boundaries of the ‘religious’ dimension of social mobilization are fluid, and that the religious element of social mobilization can never be disentangled from its social and political context

Economic Growth in South Asia: Binding Constraints for the Future

Abstract: We investigate the proximate determinants of economic growth in South Asia from 1996 to 2010. The study is conducted in a panel data framework with a special emphasis on the role of institutions in conjunction with physical capital stock, human capital stock and openness as the major predictor variables. Moreover, we also attempt to ascertain the direct and indirect effects of corruption on the economies in South Asia and thereby estimate the effects of various constraints that could restrict high growth in the region in the near future. Human capital stock and openness are crucial to the region’s economic growth, but institutions need substantial reform if the accelerated growth rates are to be sustained. The impact of physical capital stock is subject to each country’s institutional quality. Corruption is found to have a negative influence on the economies of South Asia, and its interplay with weak institutions tends to magnify this adverse impact. In the future, institutional reform should be directed ...

Spatial Segregation, Real Estate Markets and the Political Economy of Corruption in Lucknow, India

Abstract: A number of scholars have argued that discrimination against Muslims in India’s urban housing markets stems from long histories of Hindu–Muslim ‘communal’ violence, and that the resulting antagonism and discrimination against Muslim tenants and homebuyers leads to their permanent ‘ghettoisation’. In such accounts, the state is portrayed as absent and unable to provide ethnic minorities with a sense of security, so that disenfranchised Muslims seek out the ‘safety in numbers’ of segregated and often traditional neighbourhoods, even when urban housing markets provide updated and modern accommodation elsewhere. Based on official property registration data and ethnographic fieldwork in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, I complicate this narrative, focusing on the productive practices of networking and collusion that enable a veritable building boom in ‘traditional’ Muslim neighbourhoods. The article shows that proximity to bureaucrats, the relative electoral strength of Muslims, and the existence of waqf property result in lower expenses for corruption and thus higher profit margins for Muslim developers in traditional Muslim areas. Irrespective of discrimination elsewhere, this arguably creates positive incentives for Muslims to stay put, and thus demonstrates that their continued segregation does not necessarily indicate blanket disenfranchisement – but rather a differential incorporation in the political economy of collusion.

Migrant Narratives in State-led Development The Reang Experience in Tripura (North-east India)

Abstract: Many state-led development policies in India are formulated for tribal communities who are deemed ‘backward’. The institutionalization of such ethnic categorizations through development policies re...

No Female Disadvantage in Anthropometric Status among Children in India Analysis of the 1992–1993 and 2005–2006 Indian National Family Health Surveys

Abstract: Female disadvantage in child mortality, intra-household allocation of food and coverage of health interventions has been shown to exist in India. At the same time, there has been limited examination of female disadvantage in nutritional status. Using measures of anthropometry and anthropometric failure, we study female disadvantage in child nutritional status from the data collected from the Indian National Family Health Survey (NFHS) undertaken in 1992–1993 and 2005–2006. Height and/or weight measurements were available on 70,148 children aged 0–47 months in both survey periods. Child anthropometry (height/length-for-age [HAZ], weight-for-age [WAZ], weight-for-height/length [WHZ]) and anthropometric failure (defined according to the 2006 WHO growth standards as stunting, wasting and underweight) were analysed using linear and logistic regression models. In pooled regression models, boys were more likely to have lower anthropometric scores and higher rates of anthropometric failure. Across survey periods,...

Governing Growth Understanding Problems in Real Estate Development in Dhaka, Bangladesh

Abstract: On 24 April 2013, Rana Plaza, a nine-storey building that housed five garment factories, a commercial bank and several retail shops, collapsed, killing more than 1,100 people. Had Bangladesh’s well...

Contradictions, Negotiations and Reform The Story of Left Policy Transition in West Bengal

Abstract: This article provides a historical perspective on a rather unique chapter in the era of economic reforms in India—the case of the state of West Bengal. In 1991, the Government of India began to pursue a policy of economic liberalization, causing serious political challenges for the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPIM)-led Left Front coalition in West Bengal. Historically, the CPIM had strongly opposed economic reforms, but was compelled to undertake a policy ‘transition’ owing to the stagnating economy of the state. The transition, and the motivations behind it, was a topic debated often—especially once the party started courting private investment, pushed for large-scale industrialization, and eventually suffered a historic defeat in 2011 after 33 years in power—but rarely has a coherent historical narrative of what caused the transition been brought to the forefront. This article attempts to address that gap by examining the following question: what were the local political conditions that compelled ...

'Daughters are Just Like Sons Now': Negotiating Kin-work and Property Regimes in Kolkata Middle-class Families

Abstract: This article draws on two decades of fieldwork with middle-class families in Kolkata, India. It addresses property regimes with reference to inter-generational and gender relations, which leave women in an ambiguous situation with regard to ownership rights. Focusing on genealogies of different middle-class homes, the article examines how women’s rights in housing continue to be mediated through the joint family ideal and patrilocality. Whilst new influence the middle-class imagination, talk about ‘homeownership’ does not necessarily reflect the realities of middle-class family life. Paying particular attention to the role of women at different lifestages, I argue that the current re-imagining of middle-class femininity through ‘modern homes’ remains deeply embedded in earlier discourses of the ideal family, the related residential patterns and modes of property transmission as well as domesticities. This draws attention to the way women can gain as demographic change favours single daughters as heirs to ...

Predatory Property: Urban Land Acquisition, Housing and Class Formation in Tiruppur, South India

Abstract: While liberalization policies have unleashed unprecedented opportunities for accumulation and wealth extraction in India, the urban social consequences of post-reform economic restructuring have been poorly documented to date. Based on ethnographic research carried out in the city of Tiruppur in South India, this article describes the processes of land acquisition and politics of housing that shape the contemporary dynamics of urban restructuring and class formation in this industrial city. The article describes how a powerful caste not only profited from rapid industrial accumulation, but in the process also came to monopolize the urban property market and real estate industry. Moreover, this new urban elite mobilizes urban property in the competitive pursuit of status and distinction through which they seek to establish themselves as an urban, industrial class. It is argued, first, that such processes of wealth accumulation and status competition have led to the dispossession of the urban working classes from home ownership in the city and, second, that urban property plays a key role in the transformation of urban class relations and in the production of a property-less labouring class that is kept under increasingly precarious and uncertain living conditions in the city.

Towards a Framework to Determine Backwardness: Caste, Inequality and Reservations in India

Abstract: The decision to carry out a caste-based census in India in order to, among other things, get a more scientific basis for reservations has generated considerable debate. Much of this debate has focused on data quality, without much attention paid to the question of what should be the scientific basis for determining whether a caste is backward. This article explores the concepts used, implicitly or explicitly, in the literatures on caste and reservations to come up with a framework to determine dominance-based caste hierarchies in a milieu of change. We test this framework in an empirical reality drawn from the south Indian state of Karnataka to argue for a more disaggregated and inclusive approach to reservations.