Social Change

Social exclusion, a European concept that has been inducted into the Indian social research domain, is the core area of inquiry in this article. It is argued that the concept of social exclusion needs to play a crucial role in Indian society in terms of handling multiple deprivations experienced by different social groups. This article aims to comprehend the trends of social exclusion and further examines its significance in Indian policy discourse. Further, it analyses the transformation that Indian state has undergone, having socialist orientation earlier and the neoliberal phase recently. The article has been divided into two sections. While the first section provides theoretical analysis of the concept and the second section studies purview of the new concept in Indian context and discusses some policy implications.

One wonders why child labour is so rampant belying states’ claim for proper protection of child rights. Is it because of the inferior quality of education that the community does not feel attracted to send their children to school? Or is it because of insensitive/non-responsive/non-functional nature of social protection system that the child rights are infringed/encroached upon in India? Or is it because of parents’ and communities’ ignorance about legal and social implications of this phenomenon that the children are allowed for labour either in the agricultural land or in a factory or hotel, etc.? Or is it because of certain structural inconsistencies and poverty in Indian rural society that children are forced to move out of their villages/districts in search of some remunerative jobs? It is this context of crisis and conflict, enrooted in the very answers to the aforesaid questions, that this paper has tried to examine, based on the findings of the study conducted in the rural zone of three districts—Jaunpur, Mirzapur and Sonbhadra—of Eastern Uttar Pradesh during the year 2011–12 and our revisit of the study area in the year 2013.¹ Broadly, three variables were considered to assess the status of child rights in the area under study: (i) quality of education, (ii) child labour and (iii) social protection structures.

Development-induced displacement has forced the indigenous populations of Jharkhand to abandon their traditional source of livelihood and join the modern economy. However, these indigenous populations are ill-equipped to achieve upward mobility in the modern economic system, thus being relegated to the margins of the labour market. The present study is an attempt to understand this process of marginalisation of tribal people in the labour market. Using various rounds of census as well as unit-level NSS data, the current position of the Scheduled Tribes in the employment and occupational hierarchy is analysed.

This article seeks to explore the intricate fusion of Christianity with traditional religion of the Sumi Naga. The manner in which the entire tribe converted, and the friction between the converts and the followers of traditional religion have been examined in the light of politics of identity and power. Having accepted new religion, traditional institutions were compromised, changes incurred; however, some traditional practices were retained in a modified manner. The new converts incorporated traditional aspects to the newly found religion, thus indigenising Christianity. Is this a strategy to maintain their distinct ethnic identity?

Over the last 30 years, Israeli society has undergone dramatic social, political and economic changes, and this study examines changes in the importance of the valued work outcomes between 1981 and 2006. Results are reported for cross-sectional studies conducted in 1981 (n = 973) and 2006 (n = 909), which were drawn from representative samples of the Israeli workforce. The samples allow us to examine the cohort effect/generational differences and the ageing effect. The findings reveal substantial differences in work outcome importance over the course of time. Between 1981 and 2006, there was a decrease in the importance of the intrinsic outcome of interest and the social outcome of serving society while the importance of the extrinsic outcomes of income, status and prestige increased. This trend reflects the transformation from a collectivist and altruistic society to an individualist and materialistic society, and can be explained by the generational/cohort effect and ageing effect. The changes in work outcomes over the course of time are explained by political, social and economic factors.

Ideology is a very crucial component of any movement and for its understanding. Unlike other features of a movement, which are easily perceived and made explicit, ideology is often vague and may or may not be present at the early stage of a movement. The article analyses an aspect of ideology wherein its capacity to withstand economic and political forces is considerably minimised. Examination of some past and present movements supports the proposition that sometimes ideology loses its resilience when lured by economic and political incentives. However, rare instances of open acceptance of failure of ideology to withstand the lure of economic and political benefits are often misunderstood for its resilience. Ideology that shapes and protects identity of certain majority group is also bound to change to accommodate smaller groups for various reasons.

The informal sector in India, as in other developing countries, is a source of employment and livelihood to an overwhelmingly large proportion of workers. Although the urban sector has been widely studied by social scientists around the world, not much research has been done on the non-agricultural rural informal sector, which has witnessed significant growth in the recent past. Based on an ethnographic field study of the handloom workers of Bihar, India, the article briefly describes the production process in the handloom industry, and drawing from the critics of economic development theories, it tries to explain how social networking in the rural labour market can affect economic outcomes. The findings of the study illustrate a unique kind of social networking in the handloom industry arising from caste and religion, which can be associated with notions of embeddedness and social capital.

Climate change is expected to eventually affect hundreds and millions of people and they will require resettlement, since their existing habitations will no longer remain liveable. Resettlement as a response to climate change impacts (or an adaptation strategy) is now becoming increasingly acceptable. But for humanitarian agencies, essentially focused on protecting and assisting the victims of human rights abuses, resettlement is an unchartered territory. They can, however, learn much from resettlement experience of development agencies, international as well as national. This article presents resettlement experience associated with development projects, its strengths and weaknesses, and looks at its implications for planning climate change resettlement.

The human development index (HDI), which portrays a simple characterisation of the development process by considering achievements in health, education and standard of living, is popularly used as the summary indicator of well being in comparative analysis of nations. However, the index as a measure has not remained free from criticisms on computational methodology and choice of indicators. Several methodological changes were undertaken in the twentieth anniversary edition of HDI in 2010. The purpose of this note is to review the revision in methods and point out what needs to be done further to improve quality of the HDI index.

Despite having high per capita income growth of all states during 1900s and 2000s, interstate inequality still remains. The proportion of internal mobility in India, including interstate mobility, responds to that inequality as it was in previous decades. The proportion of interstate migration has remained constantly low over the decades (since 1961), compared to the total internal migration, and it is estimated to decline to the level of the 1981 Census in the recent 2011 Census. It is an indication of increasing nativity of the population. The conventional pattern of migration from high-income states to low-income states during 1980s and 1990s is expected to disturb widely during 2000s with the emergence of new pool centres as well as destinations. During 2000s, India has produced more emigrants than immigrants, which is, just opposite of the 1990s.

The article describes the availability of food in the traditional food system in a village in Andhra Pradesh before the advent of borewell. The borewell era has seen disappearance of water both underground and over ground and the article describes its impact on the food system. People have now become from net producers of food to net purchasers of food from the PDS and the market.

Akmal Hussain and Muchkund Dubey (Eds), Democracy, Sustainable Development and Peace: New Perspectives on South Asia, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 2014, 652 pp., ₹1850, ISBN 9780198002346.

Ashok K. Pankaj and Ajit K. Pandey (Eds), Subalternity, Exclusion and Social Change in India, New Delhi, Cambridge University Press India, 2014, 387 pp., ₹895, ISBN 978-93-82993-24-7.

Rupa Vishwanath, The Pariah Problem: Caste, Religion and the Social in Modern India, New York, Columbia University Press, 2014, 400 pp., ₹2,850, ISBN 978-0231163061.

Ranjit Singh Ghuman and Indervir Singh (Eds), Nehruvian Economic Philosophy and Its Contemporary Relevance, Chandigarh, Centre for Research in Rural and Industrial Development, 2014, 295 pp., ISBN: 978-81-85835-70-5.

Manish Thakur, Indian Village: A Conceptual History, Jaipur, Rawat Publications, 2014, 224 pp., $42.44, ISBN 978-8131606384.

Prasenjit Biswas and C. Joshua Thomas (Eds), Construction of Evil in North East India: Myth, Narrative and Discourse, New Delhi, SAGE Publications, 2012, 296 pp., £40.00, ISBN: 978-81-321-0945-7 (HB).

Anirban Das, Towards Politics of the (IM)Possible: The Body in Third World Feminism, London, Anthem Press, 2012, 232 pp., $99, ISBN 9781843318552.

Swapna Banerjee-Guha (Ed.), Accumulation by Dispossession: Transformative Cities in the New Global Order, New Delhi, SAGE Publications, 2010, 268 pp., ₹596, ISBN 978-81-321-0313-4.