A meticulous study of the agrarian relations in three villages. ONE of our senior sociologists once drew my attention to the distinction between economics and other social sciences. Other social sciences – sociology and anthropology, for instance – he said, pay a great deal of attention to gathering primary data and interpreting them, whereas economics relies on secondary data for its analysis. This is, to a large extent, a fair...

There’s no doubt about it, this is incredible India all right. Where else in the world would you get judges of a high court treating a deity as litigant in a legal case? And then, because the said deity, otherwise referred to as Ram Lalla in the judgment, is to be treated as a minor (was this the only reason He did not appear in court himself?) where else would...

It is about capitalism and hierarchy The government has now reached a final conclusion on the raging controversy over the caste-based census in the country. In order to reconcile with the contending positions, the government has decided to conduct a separate stand-alone exercise of a parallel house-to-house enumeration of the caste affiliations of households. It is not yet clear as to whether the results and the data of the census proper...

KEY TRENDS   • Maternal Mortality Ratio for India was 370 in 2000, 286 in 2005, 210 in 2010, 158 in 2015 and 145 in 2017. Therefore, the MMRatio for the country decreased by almost 61 percent between 2000 and 2017 *14    • As per the NSS 71st round, among rural females aged 5-29 years, the main reasons for dropping out/ discontinuance were: engagement in domestic activities, not interested in education, financial constraints and marriage. Among rural males aged...

Economic liberalization since the 1990s has helped Dalits in Uttar Pradesh (UP) overcome caste inequalities, according to a research paper that argues against the view that reforms have exacerbated such disparities. The study by Devesh Kapur, Chandra Bhan Prasad, Lant Pritchett and Shyam Babu titled “Rethinking Inequality: Dalits in Uttar Pradesh in the Market Reform Era”, and excerpted last week in the Economic and Political Weekly, finds significant changes in patterns...