Journal of South Asian Development current issue

Ethnographic Insights into Enduring Inequalities

Gorringe, H., Jeffery, R., Sariola, S. — 2009-04-24

This is a country where the poor fear tuberculosis, which kills 1,000 Indians a day, but people like me—middle-class people with access to health services that are probably better than England's—don't fear it at all. It's an unglamorous disease, like so much of the things that the poor of India endure (Adiga in Jefferies 2008).

From Militant Rejection to Pragmatic Consensus: Caste among Madigas in Andhra Pradesh

Still, C. — 2009-04-24

This article examines gender and age differences in Dalit attitudes towards caste inequality, using interviews and ethnographic fieldwork conducted among Madigas in Andhra Pradesh (AP). Madigas express a range of views about their position in society. Some oppose ideas of untouchability and espouse ideologies of equality. They deny the existence of caste and have no respect for what they see as the dying remnants of the old order. Others (especially elderly women) accept patronage and subordination in return for cash and security and exploit the old forms of subservience and deference. The paper argues that Madigas reject ‘caste–as–hierarchy’ and make use of ‘caste–as–identity’ and attempt to use their caste status as a resource which can be invoked when it is beneficial, and downplayed when it is not.

Adivasi Mobilisation: 'Identity' versus 'Class' after the Kerala Model of Development?

Steur, L. — 2009-04-24

In August 2001 there was widespread protest in Kerala, a state otherwise known for its remarkable achievements in ‘human’ development, at the starvation deaths that had occurred in a number of adivasi colonies. This prompted a continuing debate on the meaning of the Kerala ‘model’ of development for adivasis, in which a consensus seems to have risen that adivasis are the victims of Kerala's development experience and in which their current mobilisation is seen as the first time in history that their interests are being politically articulated. This article argues that such an interpretation is unwarranted and dangerous in that it ignores the present limitations of neo-liberalism on initiatives for the emancipation of subaltern groups and prevents them from using their historical political experience to dynamise their present political initiatives.

In the Name of 'Poor and Marginalised'? Politics of NGO Activism with Dalit Women in Rural North India

Govinda, R. — 2009-04-24

Assertion by the Dalits or ex-untouchables is one of the most significant developments in contemporary India. Dalit women have actively participated in Dalit movements and in women's and development NGOs activism. However, their voices and perspectives are said to have been marginalised by movements and NGOs alike. This article unpacks the complexities, contradictions and challenges that are produced, reproduced and subverted in NGO activism with Dalit women by examining a women's NGO and its relations with Dalit women, the state and international donors in rural Uttar Pradesh in north India. Which factors contribute to an NGO choosing to work with Dalit women? Specifically, what implications does having roots in a state-sponsored initiative have for the NGO under study? Does external funding necessarily change the character of activism with Dalit women? CanDalit women take on leadership roles in NGO activism with other Dalit women? The article explores these questions using interviews, observations and documentation collected and analysed in my doctoral research.

Performing Global HIV Prevention: Incentives, Identities and Inequality amongst Sex Workers in Chennai

Sariola, S. — 2009-04-24

Sex workers in India are central to HIV prevention programmes, yet the relationships of sex workers with those who conduct HIV prevention have not been studied. In this article I describe and analyse the relationships between four sets of very different social actors: global funding bodies; the Indian government; non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and; sex workers who are involved in HIV prevention in Chennai, India. Using ethnographic data derived from fieldwork conducted in 2004–5, I show that HIV prevention is a performance, rhetoric and a resource available to sex workers as well as to the NGOs. HIV prevention programmes create opportunities for sex workers for social mobilisation and offer them ways of subverting stigma, but these programmes are insufficient because they produce and reproduce existing power hierarchies. Thus when analysing inequality in sex workers’ lives, the influences of local power asymmetries as well as the global dimensions of international HIV prevention policies need to be considered.

Dis-embedding Health Care: Marketisation and the Rising Cost of Medicine in Kerala, South India

Wilson, C. — 2009-04-24

From the early 1990s, so-called ‘five-star’ hospitals have sprouted up in small towns and cities across the state of Kerala, South India. Equipped with expensive diagnostic technologies and super-specialist consultants, these institutions are now leading players in the vibrant local health care economy. Markets in health are often understood to increase inequalities by creating a two-tier system of provision for the rich and the poor (for example, Johnson 1995). This paper examines how the processes of marketisation have significantly increased the cost of treatment across the public and private health care systems. It contrasts earlier approaches to corruption in medicine that emphasised the over-use or misuse of technologies (Yesudian 1994) to contemporary Kerala, in which technology has become an important value in everyday medical practice. As a result of growing competition and income aspirations, the health care system is gradually being decoupled from local cost considerations, while doctors and private hospitals are increasingly viewed as exploitative and lacking in moral legitimacy.

'There is Peace Here': Managing Communal Relations in a Town in Central Gujarat

Heitmeyer, C. — 2009-04-24

This article describes the relations between Hindus and Muslims in a small town in central Gujarat following the massive violence against the Muslim minority community throughout many parts of the state between February and May 2002. While the ‘communal divide’ has become more pronounced following the 2002 attacks in many parts of the state as well as in the town in which the research was conducted, concerted efforts are made by members of both communities as a means of re-imposing a sense of ‘everyday peace’. As such, normative discourses presenting the 2002 violence as an aberration with respect to the state of local communal relations in the town represent a collective strategy of containing the tension and mutual suspicion which remain constant undercurrents in daily life. This article, moreover, explores the ongoing caste– and class-based social networks and interactions underlying public declarations of ‘everyday peace’ which have played a central role in, if not averting violence altogether, discouraging the development of further communal segregation and division in the aftermath of the 2002 attacks in the town.

Book Reviews

2009-04-24