Studies in Social Demography


Book Description

All these contributions in this violume are very useful and insightful in their own right.They together make a seminal contribution to the advancement of social demography in India.A work of this kind will not only help disseminate research findings across different disciplines but also help serious researchers wuth in the same discipline,know the past trent locate research graps and identify the pertinent and profound lines of enquiry needed for further development of the discipline.




India and the Knowledge Economy


Book Description

"In the global knowledge economy of the twenty-first century, India's development policy challenges will require it to use knowledge more effectively to raise the productivity of agriculture, industry, and services and reduce poverty. India has made tremendous strides in its economic and social development in the past two decades. Its impressive growth in recent years-8.2 percent in 2003-can be attributed to the far-reaching reforms embarked on in 1991 and to opening the economy to global competition. In addition, India can count on a number of strengths as it strives to transform itself into a knowledge-based economy-availability of skilled human capital, a democratic system, widespread use of English, macroeconomic stability, a dynamic private sector, institutions of a free market economy; a local market that is one of the largest in the world; a well-developed financial sector; and a broad and diversified science and technology infrastructure, and global niches in IT. But India can do more-much more-to leverage its strengths and grasp today's opportunities. India and the Knowledge Economy assesses India's progress in becoming a knowledge economy and suggests actions to strengthen the economic and institutional regime, develop educated and skilled workers, create an efficient innovation system, and build a dynamic information infrastructure. It highlights that to get the greatest benefits from the knowledge revolution, India will need to press on with the economic reform agenda that it put into motion a decade ago and continue to implement the various policy and institutional changes needed to accelerate growth. In so doing, it will be able to improve its international competitivenessand join the ranks of countries that are making a successful transition to the knowledge economy."




The Politics of the Poor in Contemporary India


Book Description

Based on diverse sorts of data and fieldwork in India, this book analyses how the poor participate in a democracy.







Social Inequality and Health Care


Book Description

India has committed itself to the pursuit of achieving the goal of Health For All by AD 2000 in accordance with the Alma-Ata declaration, 1978. There has been ample evidence to demonstrate that for the success of any health programme medical intervention alone will not bring about the desired results. Its success or failure depends, to a large extent, upon the interplay of several non-medical factors such as social, cultural, political, economic, and psychological. The role of these key factors in the domain of health care activities has been recently recognised by social scientists all over the world. It present a pioneering attempt in India to understand the relationship of social stratification and health care in a rural community from a sociological perspective.




The Social Context of Learning in India


Book Description

Why are children from disadvantaged and minority communities overrepresented among academic underachievers, poor learners, and school dropouts? This volume engages with this question and examines classroom learning as a process that involves a multitude of actors situated in specific social, cultural, and historical contexts. The volume covers an interdisciplinary spectrum of educational processes, contexts, educational ambitions, and limitations of low-caste, working-class, and middle-class students from different Indian communities and regions. The volume delves into the problem of academic underperformance from a social identity perspective and probes into social context-based variability in classroom learning, systemic disadvantages in the form of negative stereotypes, and the family as an under-studied social group in all discussions of schooling. It also examines the teachers’ perceptions and attitudes towards Adivasi students and other minority groups in primary schools and their effect on children’s classroom engagement. The chapters in this volume provide insights into unresolved and critical research questions that require the attention of teachers, school management, educators, and policymakers alike. This book will also be useful for academicians, policymakers, teacher educators, pedagogic practitioners in India and abroad, and state and central government institutions working on school education, educational psychology, policymaking in education, learning methods, and research on educational enhancement.




Agrarian Studies


Book Description

The Development and Planning Department of the Government of West Bengal held an international conference in Kolkata in 2002, which provided a forum for debate and discussion on new research in the field of agrarian relations in less-developed countries. The papers brought together in this volume were first presented at this conference, and cover a wide range of theoretical issues and empirical experiences. Some address land reform, and others focus on liberalized trade and mobile financial flows. Country case studies concerned with changes in agrarian relations include Mexico, Chile, Brazil, Cuba, China, and Bangladesh; others on South Africa, the Philippines, and sub-Saharan Africa identify land reforms in the contemporary period.










Neighbourhoods in Urban India


Book Description

'...a brilliant exploration of urbanism between the concept city and the lived city.... The volume focuses on urban life lived between home and the world, institutions and experiences, representations and affects.... Its fascinating range of empirically rich and analytically sophisticated excavations of neighbourhoods make the volume a must-have in the bookshelf on South Asian urban studies.' -Gyan Prakash, Princeton University 'A must-read for those who wish to study the micro aspects of contemporary urbanity.' -Sujata Patel, Savitribai Phule Pune University 'This book is a powerful addition to the study of Indian urbanism.' -Ravi Sundaram, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS) In the last couple of decades, the global South, in general, and India, in particular, have witnessed a massive growth of cities. In India, more than one-third of its population lives in cities. However, urban development, growth and expansion are not merely about infrastructures and enlargement of cityscapes. This edited volume focuses on neighbourhoods, their particularities and their role in shaping our understanding of the urban in India. It locates Indian experiences in the larger context of the global South and seeks to decentre the dominant Euro-American discourse of urban social life. Neighbourhoods in Urban India: In Between Home and the City offers an understanding of neighbourhoods as changing socio-spatial units in their specific regional settings by underlining the way value regimes (religiosity and subjectivities) give neighbourhoods their social meanings and stereotypes. It unpacks discourses and knowledge practices, such as planning, architecture and urban discourses of governance. It further discloses the linkages and disjunctures between the social practices of neighbourhoods and the language, logic and experiences of dwelling, housing, urban planning and governance, and focuses on the particularities and heterogeneities of neighbourhoods and neighbourliness.