Social Change

This article aims to examine the role of affirmative action policies in achieving desired outcomes among India’s Scheduled Castes in employment, education, health, and governance. It also addresses how economic criteria are not suitable for it and the problems associated with India’s affirmative action policies. The article reveals that a significant gap persists among castes, and caste is an important indicator of socio-economic backwardness. Thus, affirmative action policies should be maintained and enforced in order to realise the dream of an inclusive society.

Literacy acts as a vital catalyst to promote human development, foster social progress, and accelerate economic growth. The prevalence of any form of disparity in literacy whether that be based on gender or caste or be region-specific is not compatible with a democratic country’s overarching objectives of socio-economic development. However, despite considerable progress in literacy in recent years, there remain disparities with a bearing on development dividend. This article seeks to investigate the extent of gender disparity and rural–urban divide in literacy in Punjab using district-level data for 1991, 2001, and 2011. Sopher’s Disparity Index and Rural–Urban Differentials Index approaches have been employed to read literacy differentials. Further, the study tried to assess the relationship between literacy disparities and selected development indicators. Besides generating evidence on widespread gender disparity and rural–urban divide in literacy across districts of Punjab, the study revealed such differentials have a systematic adverse bearing on the selected set of development indicators. It is recommended that focused policy interventions should be carried out to improve the literacy levels of females, particularly those belonging to the scheduled caste (SC) community, as well as rural dwellers in districts of Punjab that are tormented by pronounced literacy disparities.

Launched in 2014, the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) is a flagship programme of the Indian government. In 2018–2019, the official SBM figures claimed that 99.08 per cent of Indian households used toilets, making this the most successful programme in India’s developmental history. This article narrates how the SBM achieved statistical success but failed in promoting toilet use. It is based on fieldwork conducted in Kanpur Gram Panchayat situated in Udaipur, Rajasthan. The field data show that the officials pressured the panchayat functionaries to construct toilets hastily and declared villages as open defecation free (ODF) to achieve statistical goals. This race to get an ODF village status did not do much good at the grassroots level because the constructed toilets remained incomplete or dysfunctional due to scarcity and non-availability of water. In reality, it was found that the toilets were being used to store firewood, dung cakes, and agricultural implements. In the fast urbanising and industrialising landscape of southern Rajasthan, the success of sustainable sanitation infrastructure largely depends on empowering scheduled tribes and flattening structural inequalities.

The degree of financial inclusion within the tribes in Kerala is being assessed here through a newly developed metric called the Individual Financial Inclusion Index (IFII). Apart from examining the regressors of financial inclusion, the study underscores the profoundly inadequate levels of financial inclusion observed among the tribes. The article advocates for a fundamental re-evaluation in the determination of financial inclusion strategies, emphasising the need for diligent intervention by governing bodies to facilitate sustained and comprehensive access to enable informed financial services decisions among tribes.

One of the severely marginalised internal migrant populations in India has been the migrant labourers who not only face the challenges of acculturation but also experience acute powerlessness. They work within the unorganised sectors and are often denied employment opportunities and social security. The socioculturally induced distress makes them more prone to develop mental health-related problems and creates greater health disparities. To design an appropriate community-level intervention, it is crucial to accurately capture the symptoms experienced by a particular community. Hence, the current work explores the impact of migration on the mental health of migrant labourers in India. The data were collected with the help of an epidemiological survey on 234 unskilled migrant labourers and analysed using stepwise multiple regression analysis. Findings indicate that 47.9 per cent migrant labourers experienced mental health related issues, among whom female participants reported more symptoms of mental health related problems. Further, acculturative stress, experience of discrimination, and living constraints emerged as risk factors in the study. The findings indicate an alarming situation where the mental health of the migrant community flags the need to design appropriate community-based interventions to reduce health-related inequalities.

Human trafficking is the fastest growing international criminal industry, which disproportionately affects women and children. To monitor the crime, the U.S. Department of State places each country into one of four tiers based on governmental anti-trafficking efforts. This study explores how women in government can influence these efforts. It is hypothesised that women serving in government have two effects—a direct and indirect effect—on a country’s tier ranking. The direct effect is defined as female politicians advocating for anti-trafficking policy. Female politicians are also linked to lower corruption, which indirectly serves to enhance anti-trafficking efforts. The analysis results indicate that the direct effect is identified when women in government are measured as female political power representation but is not found when women in government are measured as simply female political representation. The indirect effect is found in both cases.

In many ways, the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 called for conceptual re-organisation on matters critical to educational practice. Using a methodology of retrospective analysis, this contribution examines assessment issues envisioned in NEP 2020 by situating them in the socio-historical context of Indian education reforms. Adopting an approach of contemplative interpretation, the analysis raises concerns about the possible impact of realising the envisioned ideas. This stance allows for deliberation on critiques by drawing upon assimilated educational wisdom from contemporary research, both globally and in India. The analysis engages with and reflects on the arising tensions and practical challenges rather than being gripped by judgements about utility or the pressure to show tangible consequences. We argue that recognising the dynamic relationship between assessment and learning is critical to reinvigorating the discourse and practice of assessment.

This contribution makes the 23rd part of the Social Change Indicators series in which we explore the levels of social sector expenditures across states in India.

U Baxi, A Narain, L Liang, S Kakarala, S Chaganti, Of Law and Life: Upendra Baxi in Conversation With Arvind Narrain, Lawrence Liang, Sitharamam Kakarala, Sruti Chaganti, Orient BlackSwan, 2024, xxii + 582 pp., ₹2310, ISBN 978-93-5442-304-8 (Hardcover).

U Baxi, Towards a Sociology of Indian Law, Law and Justice Publishing Company, 2024, xxix + 250 pp., ₹425, ISBN 978-81-19129-94-2 (Paperback).

Amen Jaffer and Mashal Saif (Eds.), State and Subject Formation in South Asia, Oxford University Press, 2022, 350 pp., ₹995, ISBN 978-969-7340-16-3 (Paperback).

Ashok Pankaj, Lohia ke Sapno ka Bharat: Bhartiya Samajwad ki Ruprekha [India of Lohia’s Dreams: Contours of Indian Socialism] (Hindi), Lokbharti Prakashan, 2024, 200 pp., ₹225, ISBN: 978-8119996063 (Paperback).