Abstract: This article discusses protest efforts undertaken by platform-based food delivery workers during the first wave of the pandemic. Following the lockdown, food delivery platforms were categorized as ‘essential’ to ensure that their operations continued. Several changes were made during this time to hiring practices, platforms diversified into providing grocery services and incorporating safety protocols to enhance customer ‘confidence’ in their services. The article starts by showing how the pandemic helped to strengthen the platform’s position in the market on the backs of delivery partners’ who were reliant on platform work as a means of livelihood. Though publicly glorified as ‘superheroes’, their remunerations were slashed during the pandemic, triggering a series of strikes. Since June 2020, workers across several cities have resorted to protest the worsening conditions of work. It gives an ethnographic description of two strikes that took place in June and Sept 2020 in Hyderabad. It then compares these two strikes to discuss workers’ motivation or the lack of it to strike, the strike tactics used by them, as well as the responses of platform companies to the strike. I then focus on the structural and contingent factors which rendered worker’s bargaining power weaker, despite them being providers of ‘essential services’.

Abstract: Women’s empowerment is often defined to include aspects of agency, autonomy and choice, which in turn has consequences for facing intimate partner violence (IPV) and the ability of a woman to fulfil childcare responsibilities. This suggests that empowerment is directly and indirectly (via IPV) associated with child nutrition outcomes (CNOs), especially in South Asian countries where gendered norms may place the onus of childcare on mothers. We explore the interplay between empowerment, IPV and CNOs using nationally representative datasets from three South Asian countries—India, Nepal and Pakistan. We use a multivariate probit approach to investigate the direct and indirect effect of women’s empowerment and autonomy on child malnourishment (stunting, wasting and underweight). Across all countries, we find a strong statistically significant effect of improvements in decision-making power on increased likelihood of facing certain types of IPV. We also find a strong negative relationship between facing less severe violence in particular and CNOs across all countries, indicating that such violence experienced by mothers was detrimental to CNOs. Increasing women’s decision-making power within the household can help ameliorate adverse CNOs, and in India particularly, this increase in decision-making autonomy reduced the incidence of stunting and underweight children. The study concludes with limitations and directions for future work.

Abstract: Women paid domestic workers (PDWs) form an integral part of the informal labour population constituting two thirds of the total domestic workforce in contemporary India. The sector of domestic work is largely stigmatized and is often synonymous with low occupational prestige, servitude and being ‘dirty’ and menial. Thus, women PDWs are often exposed to unpleasant working conditions in their employers’ homes as well as social surroundings. Further, many of these women are also victims of domestic violence (DV) in their own homes. This study shares the lived experiences of work-employer relationships, hostile work conditions and DV through the lenses of women PDWs’ narratives. The article also chronicles the women’s hardships, suggesting the exploitative nature of domestic work and how it exposes women PDWs to additional adversities in the form of discrimination and harassment in employers’ homes and DV within their own domestic setting. It concludes by showing a pattern of survival among these women who endure countless challenges within both the workplace and home and employ coping strategies to navigate hostile domestic environments. The findings offer crucial insights into the limits and capacities of women PDWs’ struggles.

Abstract: This article examines the effects of parents’ educational backgrounds and career preferences on their children’s educational and employment opportunities in India’s various socio-religious groupings. Using information from India’s several National Sample Survey Rounds (2000–2012) and the Periodic Labour Force Survey Round 2018–2019, the article analyses co-resident father–son relationships. This study investigates the impact of a father’s occupational–educational status on the probability of their sons’ getting decent jobs. Additionally, the likelihood of completing a senior secondary and above level of education in relation to the educational backgrounds of the mother and father has been examined. For both occupational and educational attainments, this study uses the discrete choice model along with the logit equation. The findings indicate that the probability of getting jobs in the three mentioned occupations is restricted to sons whose fathers are already employed in similar occupations. In addition, there is a wide spectrum of inequity in access to jobs in these occupations among Socio religious communities. The father’s education has a significant impact on the possibility of receiving the senior secondary and above level of education. This study demonstrates a strong hierarchy across the father’s level of education, occupation, and socio-religious communities. This calls for conscious policy intervention to destabilize such a hierarchy. Communities must get a big push through their own resolve and timely and adequate interventions from the state and non-state actors.

Abstract: In coordination with the Government of Bangladesh, the United Nations Children’s Fund and Save the Children International have been conducting a non-formal educational programme for the children of Rohingya refugees since 2017. Domestic partner non-governmental organizations are implementing the initiative. The purpose of this study was to examine the policy and the institutional arrangements and determine how they may influence the inclusion of Rohingya children in the education system. We found that the programme has set up infrastructure, but the location of refugee education that the government created is distinctly short-term, top-down, emergency-oriented and restrictive in many ways. Evidently, in order to avoid geopolitical and local sociocultural tensions, the host government did not really want to integrate refugees into local services and facilities, particularly access to education in public institutions. Nevertheless, civil society organizations and the Rohingya negotiated with the government, to a certain extent, an ‘inclusive’ space through discussion, dialogue and resilience for an expansion of this educational sphere. This space has created a limited sense of empowerment among the Rohingya.

Abstract: Impact evaluations are dominated by the application of development economics to assess the direct impacts of change at the plot level, while studies that focus on the impact of such plot-level changes on livelihoods remain rare. This raises questions about the ‘so-what’ of the adoption of labour and money-saving practices such as Zero Tillage to the livelihoods of smallholder farmers. Piloting a qualitative photovoice methodology with 25 South Asian households, the priorities and strategies of resource-poor South Asian smallholder farmers are explored when they have freed time and financial resources available. Various activities related to agricultural and livelihood diversification are linked by informants to broader impacts on their resilience, life satisfaction and broader livelihood outcomes. Despite being a pilot qualitative study, results indicate that cereal system intensification may be synergistic and not antagonistic to crop and livelihood diversification, especially if framed in whole-of-livelihood-focused initiatives that look for opportunities to utilize saved resources. Likewise, the value of humanizing research through qualitative participatory methods that centre ‘people rather than plots’ is highlighted through the broad linkages that informants identified from their diverse livelihood strategies.

Abstract: The share of contract workers, i.e., the workers employed through contractors, as against the workers directly employed by factories, out of all workers employed in India’s organized manufacturing has increased significantly over the last three decades, reaching 38.6% in 2019–2020. Using plant-level panel data for the years 2008–2009 to 2017–2018, the paper examines econometrically whether export participation by the organized sector manufacturing plants in India induced them to hire contract workers. The empirical results indicate that the export market participation by manufacturing plants tends to raise their probability of employing contract workers. This effect of export participation on the probability of employing contract workers is found for plants in the medium-low and low-technology industries, and the impact is bigger in the medium-high and high-technology industries. The effect is found to be relatively stronger for bigger plants than small-sized plants. In high-technology industries, in-house firm-specific skill formation is important for firms for their being able to export their products, and, hence, in many technology-oriented plants of these industries export participation should not induce them to employ contract workers. Some support for this hypothesis is found in the empirical results obtained in the study.

Abstract: Thomas Cowan. Subaltern Frontiers: Agrarian City-Making in Gurgaon (Cambridge University Press, 2022), 220 pp. $94.99. ISBN-13: 978-1-0091-0047-2 (E-book). Sushmita Pati. Properties of Rent: Community, Capital and Politics in Globalising Delhi (Cambridge University Press, 2022), 320 pp. ₹995. ISBN-13: 978-1-0091-0047-2 (hard cover).

Abstract: In this article, we reflect on the consequences of COVID-19 interventions on coastal communities in south Kerala (India), and the responses of the local population to the latter. In particular, we map out the events which led to spontaneous protests in a number of fishing villages during the second wave of the epidemic in July 2020. We will show that whilst during the first wave of the epidemic, coastal communities remained supportive of government intervention, such an initial support begun to wane as the epidemic unfolded over time and became more aggressive and widespread. We argue that such a shift in fishing communities’ attitudes was a response not only to the consequences of a more forceful policy of containment of the epidemic but also to a sudden identification of coastal communities as the main locus of contagion in the district. We suggest that the consequent restrictive measures enforced on coastal communities were driven as much by epidemiological concerns as by a media-driven social panic built upon widespread negative stereotypes that have historically worked to marginalize, and even criminalize coastal communities in Kerala. We deploy the notion of bio-moral marginality to reveal ways through which the attribution of specific—and largely stereotyped and negative— physical attributes and moral dispositions to the bodies and behaviour of people belonging to fishing coastal communities constituted the ground upon which the social panic concerning the spread of the COVID-19 virus unfolded in south Kerala, thus leading to fishers’ militant response.

Abstract: In the field of migration and development, the role of diasporas has been examined critically because of the political consequences and culturally informed moral norms often attached to their engagement with their country of origin. These shape the nature of their interactions. Drawing on two case studies of diaspora philanthropic interventions in post-war Sri Lanka, this article applies a post-development framework to study the complexities of transnationalism. These cases highlight the complex and uneven relationships between local and diaspora actors, and in doing so illustrate the various kinds of diaspora organizations and their ‘constituencies’. The cases also show that diasporas can have a facilitative effect on local development, but that the process of change is rife with institutional complexities, competing agendas and shifting priorities over time. The article speaks to the need to conceive development as a process, even more so in a post-war context. This requires much time to understand the exact impact of diaspora interventions in any local situation.

Abstract: Cousin marriage is an important social institution in many parts of Asia and Africa; yet few studies have looked beyond the health consequences to its role in shaping intrahousehold dynamics. We use a unique survey of households in Pakistan to examine the role of parental consanguinity on education, child work and vaccination, and how those effects differ by gender. We apply ordinary least squares, Tobit, inverse probability weighting with regression adjustment treatment effects and intent-to-treat estimation techniques to a dataset of 1,020 households from 9 districts and control for a rich set of covariates. We model selection into consanguineous marriage using the availability of opposite-gender marriageable cousins. Our results show that the adult children of parents who are first cousins completed fewer years of education and are less likely to have attended school. Educational attainment was curtailed equally for daughters of both marriage arrangements, but consanguineous daughters faced a double burden of consanguinity and gender discrimination. For school-aged children of consanguineous couples, the number of days of school missed is higher in some specifications, but enrolment and educational expenditures are roughly the same as children of parents who are not related or are related more distantly. In contrast, domestic work is somewhat reduced for the offspring of first-cousin parents. Daughters of consanguineous parents are less likely to have received vaccinations, although this effect is weaker in the sample of school-aged children than adult children.

Abstract: What concepts are best suitable to describe the individual and collective experience of power? Leveraging primary empirical data collected over a decade, the study dwells on the idea of empowerment and puts it in perspective with competing vernacular terms such as tāqat or shakti [‘power’ in Urdu and Hindi]. The study relies on a case study of one woman, a resident of an informal settlement in Patna, India, who experienced a stellar political rise and an equally spectacular fall. The analysis illuminates the multidimensional character of power—one may enjoy a strong exercise of power at one scale and relative powerlessness at another. The ensuing reflection reveals that the concept of empowerment fails to capture the multi-sidedness of power. In contrast, alternative vernacular terms provide an avenue to grasp the contextuality of power. Yet they feature a limitation common with the idea of empowerment(s)—they are conceptually fluid and therefore subject to normative reinterpretations.

Abstract: Recognizing that the political environment that once fostered a global culture of top down, conditionality-driven aid delivery is no longer in place, this theoretically informed study provides insight into the emerging ‘aid and/or development effectiveness’ narrative. By exploring a case study of Bangladesh, it offers a nuanced analytical perspective on the role of donor agencies in managing development partnership at the country level. It interweaves a critical review of the concept of country ownership, the historical role of three major European donors, namely FCDO, DANIDA, and GIZ, and the conversation with select stakeholders to illuminate the ineptness of the ‘development effectiveness’ narrative in guiding our efforts aimed at creating a new aid architecture. In particular, our research findings call into question the assumption that donors are committed to the principles of country ownership. Contrary to the claims of the Global Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation (GPEDC), our study observes that the new language of development effectiveness and/or country ownership did not create a positive space for Bangladesh to manage its own development agenda. Instead of demonstrating their desire to promote self-reliant development, donor agencies and countries appear to have leveraged the development effectiveness rhetoric for advancing their own sociopolitical interests.

Abstract: When children are able to progress beyond their parents’ education level, that is, when there is upward intergenerational education mobility—they are more likely to have better opportunities and access than their parents in terms of jobs and income. For any nation, it is important to understand the trajectory of intergenerational education mobility and ask: Has it been increasing? In the case of Bangladesh, our study is the first to use nationally representative household survey data to explore the trend of intergenerational education mobility. We compute intergenerational education mobility separately for three different years—2005, 2010 and 2016, and find that intergenerational education mobility has, from 2005 to 2016, significantly decreased in terms of fathers’ education. This is surprising given that the expansion of education has been a target both policy-wise and action-wise—for Bangladesh over the last few decades. The finding in terms of mothers’ education—that intergenerational education mobility has significantly increased from 2005 to 2016—makes more sense given the focus on female education expansion in Bangladesh over the years. Moreover, our results indicate that daughters, in general, have been progressing better compared to sons in terms of intergenerational (father–child) education mobility and that children of fathers with higher education levels progressed better than children of fathers with lower education levels. We suggest policies accordingly and emphasize the need to investigate the reasons behind the father–child education immobility over time in Bangladesh.

Abstract: Accumulation of technology has largely been acknowledged as an important factor determining productivity of the manufacturing firms. However, there are different domestic and foreign means of technology spillover that lead to its accumulation leading industry specific technological complexity. In the past, researchers have examined the process of technology accumulated through various channels and also their impact on productivity of the manufacturing sector. Nevertheless, there is a dearth of literature for a detailed industry specific analysis in this direction. In an attempt to fill this gap, the present study provides a detailed micro level analysis regarding the impact of various channels of technology accumulation on productivity of the manufacturing firms especially taking into consideration their technology intensity. It was found that at the aggregate level, the impact of stock of embodied and disembodied imported technology is positive on productivity of the manufacturing firms whereas the impact of domestic technology is found to be negative and significant. However, results at the disaggregated level depict inter sectoral variation regarding the impact of various channels of technology accumulation on the productivity of the different manufacturing firms.

Abstract: Pankaj Sekhsaria. 2020. Nano Scale: Society’s Deep Impact on Science, Technology and Innovation in India. Delhi: Authors UPFRONT, 182 pp., ₹495. ISBN: 9789387280700 (hardback).

Abstract: In this study, we investigate Indian anti-dumping (AD) duties imposed on eight products (Harmonized System classification) from Bangladesh over the period 1998–2020. Using the Poisson pseudo-maximum likelihood method, panel regression analysis is applied to examine the relationship between Indian AD duties and goods imported from Bangladesh. Our results provide weakly suggestive significant evidence of trade destruction in the full sample, though statistical significance is enhanced for all product groups other than lead-acid batteries at the product-level investigation. We also provide suggestive evidence for trade diversion from AD duties. Overall, our results show Indian AD duties to be correlated with a decrease in imports from Bangladesh, and an increase in imports of goods from other, unnamed countries. This suggests that India’s protectionist measures may have been ineffective in protecting local producers, as any adverse effects of protectionism on Bangladesh may be offset by import diversion to other foreign suppliers. We also discuss the policy implications of these findings.

Abstract: Sujata Patel, D. Parthasarathy and George Jose, Mumbai/Bombay: Majoritarian Neoliberalism, Informality, Resistance, and Wellbeing (Routledge, 2022), 257 pp., £32.39. ISBN: 9781003293651.

Abstract: This article proposes a framework for understanding why slum residents are particularly vulnerable to economic downturns. We centre evidence from Bihar’s capital city, Patna, to examine how downturns are experienced more severely in some cities and slums than others. We argue slums are zones of pervasive informality, remaining largely disconnected from formal institutions and dependent on discretionary supports. But the extent of informality, and vulnerability, varies within and across cities. Relative to those in the cities we compare to, Patna’s slum residents are poorer, less upwardly mobile and have weaker property rights and shallower institutional connections. We argue this makes them particularly vulnerable to downward shocks and we present evidence from the case of the coronavirus pandemic to show that they experienced this disaster particularly severely. Our results have important policy implications: in general, slum residents require greater policy and institutional support, but there is important variation in their vulnerability and needs within and across cities. Moreover, while most research on slums focuses on mega- and first-tier cities, we emphasize the urgent need for more attention to second- and third-tier cities—where the degree of informality, and consequently, the vulnerability to downward spirals, can be greater.

Abstract: Drawing on the ecologically unequal exchange theory, we assess whether palm oil exports from peripheral nations to India are related to increased forest loss in the peripheral nations in the context of petty and grand corruption, which has not been done before. We go on to build upon previous cross-national work by examining if petty and grand corruption interacts with the ecologically unequal exchange of palm exports from peripheral nations to India. We test this hypothesis using ordinary least squares regression for a sample of 78 peripheral nations and find that palm oil exports to India are related to more forest loss in peripheral nations with higher rather than lower levels of petty and grand corruption. We conclude by discussing the theoretical, methodological and policy implications that follow from our findings.

Abstract: Srila Roy. 2022. Changing the Subject: Feminist and Queer Politics in Neoliberal India. Durham and London: Duke University Press. 280 pp., $26.95 (Paperback). ISBN 978-1-4780-1888-9.

Abstract: This article examines capital–labour relations within location-based gig work in India, with a focus on the COVID-19 pandemic. The crisis of the pandemic exacerbated unemployment and created opportunities for platform services to expand, as consumers relied on digital platforms for their needs. This article assesses conditions across three gig services—food delivery, ride hailing and beauty work—based on interviews with 23 gig workers in the Delhi–National Capital Region in India and five organizers of gig worker collectives. The article discusses how workers’ incomes were cut even as they were exposed to higher risks to health and safety, and was accompanied by higher control exerted over their labour ostensibly for the safety of consumers. This control—both algorithmic and bodily—over workers derived its legitimacy from social hierarchies of caste and class between workers and consumers, and between workers and the platform. The article reveals a remarkable similarity in how workers fared across sectors, despite different classifications as essential or non-essential services. It establishes the significance of the pandemic to amplifying processes of labour commodification and labour control in gig work, ultimately contributing to antagonism between platforms and workers and to an emergent class politics of gig workers.

Abstract: Mohammad Mozahidul Islam. 2023. Why Nations Fail to Feed the Poor: The Politics of Food Security in Bangladesh. New York: Routledge. ISBN 9781003341451 (ebook); pp. 318, $38.99, ISBN 9781032376943 (hardback); $120.

Abstract: Gunjan Sharma. 2021. Schooling and Aspirations in the Urban Margins: Ethnography of Education in the Indian Context. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-003-02801-7 (ebook); pp. 157, £31.19, ISBN 978-0-367-90365-7 (hardback); ₹1295.00, ISBN 978-1-032-00478-5 (paperback).

Abstract: Bhaswati Bhattacharya and Henrike Donner (Eds.), Globalising Everyday Consumption in India: History and Ethnography (London and New York: Routledge, 2020), 246 pp., ₹36.99, ISBN: 9781032024356 (Hardbound).

Abstract: We study the association between social connections of Muslim households and their access to welfare benefits distributed by local governments in rural West Bengal. Using household data from selected villages in West Bengal, we find that Muslim households with higher outdegree centrality are associated with 2 percentage points probability of receiving a higher fraction of benefits from the local government than Hindu households with similar networks. This association is positive and significant for the benefits under housing and toilets. However, for the allocation of work under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, Hindu households with larger networks obtain more benefits. The results show that poorer Muslim households with a larger spread of network are associated with receiving more benefits.

Abstract: Uninhibited drafting and plummeting groundwater levels have entailed a slew of eco-environmental and socio-economic crises across vast swathes of South Asia, leading to social turmoil over the demand-supply gap in the irrigation sector. We adopted a mixed-method approach, combining systematic bibliometric assessment with contextual analysis, to highlight to the regional water authorities (RWAs) the core tenets of groundwater markets (GWMs), already operating in various capacities and forms in different parts of South Asia, as a potential option to address the crisis. GWMs, occurring along a farmer-water-irrigation continuum, have mixed impacts on groundwater-dependent socio-ecologies, ranging from beneficial to counter-productive. Given the dire projections of groundwater depletion in the near future and the inadequacy of the state machineries to meet surging irrigation demand, a critical policy question that we approached in this narrative was: Can GWMs be institutionalized as a regulatory tool for ‘supply-side’ management of irrigation resources? To that end, we helped RWAs grow a deeper understanding of the complexity and interdisciplinarity associated with the vast network of actors and agencies interlocked within GWMs. By the same token, we urged the RWAs to consider a collective space—potentially in the form of a groundwater users’ association (GWUA)—as a prerequisite to imagining GWMs in an institutional mould. We present a critique of current world experiences with GWUAs and reflect on the socio-environmental barriers of establishing a functional GWUA. We outline tentative means for RWAs to build credibility and increase acceptability of GUWAs at the grassroots, including capacity building, value-based standard operating procedures and harnessing solidarity and social responsibility. In conclusion, we offer RWAs a simple system of a ‘reality’ check, to evaluate the ground conditions and feasibility of contemplating GWMs in the first place.

Abstract: Jelle J. P. Wouters (Ed.), Vernacular Politics in Northeast India: Democracy, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), 413 pp. ₹1,795, ISBN: 978-0-19-286346-1 (Hardback).