Rural India (rural + india)

Distribution by Scientific Domains


Selected Abstracts


GENDER DISCRIMINATION, INTRAHOUSEHOLD RESOURCE ALLOCATION, AND IMPORTANCE OF SPOUSES' FATHERS: EVIDENCE ON HOUSEHOLD EXPENDITURE FROM RURAL INDIA

THE DEVELOPING ECONOMIES, Issue 4 2006
Nobuhiko FUWA
D12; D13; D63; D64 Data collected from rural India was used to examine the rules governing intrahousehold resource allocations. Testing for gender-age discrimination among household members using Deaton's (1989) method, results suggest a general bias favoring boys over girls in allocation of consumption goods, however, the findings are not always statistically significant. Intrahousehold resource allocation rules are then examined to see if such discrimination is based on the unanimous decision of parents. The novelty in our test on allocation rule are: (1) use of grandparental variables as extra-household environmental parameters (EEPs) in expenditure estimation, (2) derivation of a test of the unitary model that only requires EEPs, and (3) semi-formal use of survival status of grandparents in testing collective models. It is interesting that spouse's father characteristics are importantly correlated with greater mother and child goods expenditure shares, and smaller father goods shares. Their survival status matters, and this is stronger evidence for a collective as opposed to unitary model. [source]


CHILD LABOR AND SCHOOL ENROLLMENT IN RURAL INDIA: WHOSE EDUCATION MATTERS?

THE DEVELOPING ECONOMIES, Issue 4 2006
Takashi KUROSAKI
J22; I21; I31; O15 This paper empirically analyzes the determinants of child labor and school enrollment in rural Andhra Pradesh, India. A village fixed-effect logit model for each child is estimated with the incidence of child labor or school enrollment as the dependent variable, in order to investigate individual and household characteristics associated with the incidence. Among the determinants, this paper focuses on whose education matters most in deciding the status of each child, an issue not previously investigated in the context of the joint family system. The regression results show that the education of the child's mother is more important in reducing child labor and in increasing school enrollment than that of the child's father, the household head, or the spouse of the head. The effect of the child's mother is similar on boys and girls while that of the child's father is more favorable on boys. [source]


Inter-State Disparities in Health Outcomes in Rural India: An Analysis Using a Stochastic Production Frontier Approach

DEVELOPMENT POLICY REVIEW, Issue 2 2005
Vinish Kathuria
In an era of reforms in the health sector and with the role of government in health provision diminishing, emphasis is shifting to making the sector efficient. This article analyses the performance of the rural public health systems of 16 major States in India, using stochastic production frontier techniques and panel data for the period 1986-97. The results show that States differ not only in capacity-building in terms of health infrastructure created, but also in efficiency in using these inputs. There is scope for health systems to re-orient their strategies in order to provide the best health in the most efficient way or at the lowest possible cost. [source]


Maternal Mortality in Rural India: A Hospital Based, 10 Year Retrospective Analysis

JOURNAL OF OBSTETRICS AND GYNAECOLOGY RESEARCH (ELECTRONIC), Issue 4 2001
Dr. Kavita Verma
Abstract Objectives: To estimate the maternal mortality ratio (MMR) in Ludhiana, a city of Northern India in order to determine the causes associated with MMR and to suggest ways to reduce it. Methods: Retrospective analysis of the mortality records of obstetrics cases in Christian Medical College, Ludhiana, India. Results: The mean MMR for the 10 year period was 785 per 100,000 live births. Of the total 116 reported maternal deaths, 44 (41.9%) were due to induced septic abortion. The reasons were unwanted pregnancy in 22 (50%) and 11 (25%) were female feticide. Conclusions: In our hospital based analysis, MMR was very high. Most maternal deaths are preventable by intervention at the appropriate time and it is important for health professionals, policy makers and politicians to implement the introduction of programs for reducing maternal mortality. Special emphasis should be placed on antenatal care, the establishment of a registration system and measures to abolish illegal abortion. [source]


Development without Institutions: Ersatz Medicine and the Politics of Everyday Life in Rural North India

CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY, Issue 3 2004
Sarah Pinto
In north India, unregulated medical practice is considered by many to be a sign of the failure of institutional rationality and "backward" quality of rural life. However, the work of self-made doctors can also be seen to engage key elements of institutional rationality as it is interwoven with the structure and ethos of development. This article explores what these practitioners and their work suggest about the imagination of institutions in rural India and the kinds of power this invokes. Through mimesis of key practices (namely, forms of talk and use of injections), self-made doctors tap into the authority of legitimate institutions to occupy lacunae in state health structures and redress (even as they reproduce) effects of privatization and repeated temporary health measures. At the same time, everyday elements of these practices demonstrate that institutional legitimacy can only be borrowed by those already in positions of authority (on the basis of caste status and political leadership), challenging ideals of equality that underlie health-related development efforts. [source]


A mixed logit model of health care provider choice: analysis of NSS data for rural India

HEALTH ECONOMICS, Issue 9 2006
Bijan J. Borah
Abstract In order to address the persistent problems of access to and delivery of health care in rural India, a better understanding of the individual provider choice decision is required. This paper is an attempt in this direction as it investigates the determinants of outpatient health care provider choice in rural India in the mixed multinomial logit (MMNL) framework. This is the first application of the mixed logit to the modeling of health care utilization. We also use the multiple imputation technique to impute the missing prices of providers that an individual did not visit when she was ill. Using data from National Sample Survey Organization of India, we find the following: price and distance to a health facility play significant roles in health care provider choice decision; when health status is poor, distance plays a less significant role in an adult's provider choice decision; price elasticity of demand for outpatient care varies with income, with low-income groups being more price-sensitive than high-income ones. Furthermore, outpatient care for children is more price-elastic than that for adults, which reflects the socio-economic structure of a typical household in rural India where an adult's health is more important than that of a child for the household's economic sustenance. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Agriculture and ,Improvement' in Early Colonial India: A Pre-History of Development

JOURNAL OF AGRARIAN CHANGE, Issue 4 2005
DAVID ARNOLD
The doctrine of ,improvement' has often been identified with the introduction , and presumed failure , of the Permanent Settlement in Bengal in 1793. Although recognized as central to British agrarian policies in India, its wider impact and significance have been insufficiently explored. Aesthetic taste, moral judgement and botanical enthusiasm combined with more strictly economic criteria to give an authority to the idea of improvement that endured into the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Concern for improvement also reflected dissatisfaction with India's apparent poverty and deficient material environment; it helped stimulate data-collection and ambitious schemes of agrarian transformation. A precursor of later concepts of development, not least in its negative presumptions about India and the search for external agencies of change, improvement yet shows many of the false starts and intrinsic limitations early attempts to transform rural India entailed. This article reassesses the significance of improvement in the first half of the nineteenth century in India, especially as illustrated through contemporary travel literature and through the aims and activities of the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India. [source]


Poverty decline, agricultural wages, and nonfarm employment in rural India: 1983,2004

AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS, Issue 2 2009
Peter Lanjouw
Poverty; Agricultural labor; India; Nonfarm employment Abstract We analyze five rounds of National Sample Survey data covering 1983, 1987/1988, 1993/1994, 1999/2000, and 2004/2005 to explore the relationship between rural diversification and poverty. Poverty in rural India has declined at a modest rate during this time period. We provide region-level estimates that illustrate considerable geographic heterogeneity in this progress. Poverty estimates correlate well with region-level NSS data on changes in agricultural wage rates. Agricultural labor remains the preserve of the uneducated and also to a large extent of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. We show that while agricultural labor grew as a share of total economic activity over the first four rounds, it had fallen back to the levels observed at the beginning of our survey period by 2004. This all-India trajectory also masks widely varying trends across states. During this period, the rural nonfarm sector has grown modestly, mainly between the last two survey rounds. Regular nonfarm employment remains largely associated with education levels and social status that are rare among the poor. However, casual labor and self-employment in the nonfarm sector reveals greater involvement by disadvantaged groups in 2004 than in the preceding rounds. The implication of this for poverty is not immediately clear,the poor may be pushed into low-return casual nonfarm activities due to lack of opportunities in the agricultural sector rather than being pulled by high returns offered by the nonfarm sector. Econometric estimates reveal that expansion of the nonfarm sector is associated with falling poverty via two routes: a direct impact on poverty that is likely due to a pro-poor marginal incidence of nonfarm employment expansion; and an indirect impact attributable to the positive effect of nonfarm employment growth on agricultural wages. The analysis also confirms the important contribution to rural poverty reduction from agricultural productivity, availability of land, and consumption levels in proximate urban areas. [source]


Supporting the poor but skilled artisans by making assets available to them: an empirical investigation in rural India

JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 1 2005
Arindam Banik
Large amounts of investments are made by developing countries in designing and implementing poverty alleviation programmes. Many of such programmes are also targeted at well defined beneficiaries. This paper attempts to analyse if some segments of beneficiaries are more likely to benefit from these programmes vis-à-vis other beneficiaries. From an econometric analysis of primary data collected from the SITRA programme in India it was found that the socially and economically disadvantaged sections of beneficiaries were more likely to have benefited from the programme, under which improved toolkits were provided to poor rural artisans at ninety per cent subsidy. The conclusions have important policy implications as they lead to possible win-win situations as narrower targeting of the same poverty alleviation programme on more disadvantaged sections could achieve higher growth as well as greater reduction of poverty. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Tenant characteristics and the choice of tenurial contracts in rural India

JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT, Issue 2 2001
Ananish Chaudhuri
Existing theoretical models of land tenancy predict that more experienced workers will be offered tenancy contracts while the less experienced ones will be offered wage contracts. Using data from three Indian villages we map from the set of agent and plot-level characteristics to the set of contracts offered on each plot. We find that tenants are older than wage labourers. In the set of tenants, older workers tend to be cash renters. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]


Universal electrification: will the new electrification programme succeed in India?

OPEC ENERGY REVIEW, Issue 2 2006
Subhes C. Bhattacharyya
To redress the problem of poor electricity access in rural India, even after 50 years of sustained electrification effort has proved to be a challenging task. And in order to address this problem, India launched a massive rural electrification programme in April 2005 with an objective of achieving universal household electrification by 2012. This short paper discusses the issues facing this programme and suggests that unless the risks are carefully mitigated, the programme may not succeed in achieving its principal objectives. [source]


GENDER DISCRIMINATION, INTRAHOUSEHOLD RESOURCE ALLOCATION, AND IMPORTANCE OF SPOUSES' FATHERS: EVIDENCE ON HOUSEHOLD EXPENDITURE FROM RURAL INDIA

THE DEVELOPING ECONOMIES, Issue 4 2006
Nobuhiko FUWA
D12; D13; D63; D64 Data collected from rural India was used to examine the rules governing intrahousehold resource allocations. Testing for gender-age discrimination among household members using Deaton's (1989) method, results suggest a general bias favoring boys over girls in allocation of consumption goods, however, the findings are not always statistically significant. Intrahousehold resource allocation rules are then examined to see if such discrimination is based on the unanimous decision of parents. The novelty in our test on allocation rule are: (1) use of grandparental variables as extra-household environmental parameters (EEPs) in expenditure estimation, (2) derivation of a test of the unitary model that only requires EEPs, and (3) semi-formal use of survival status of grandparents in testing collective models. It is interesting that spouse's father characteristics are importantly correlated with greater mother and child goods expenditure shares, and smaller father goods shares. Their survival status matters, and this is stronger evidence for a collective as opposed to unitary model. [source]


Mobile technology in the village: ICTs, culture, and social logistics in India

THE JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, Issue 3 2008
Sirpa Tenhunen
Mobile technology is currently emerging as the first extensive form of electronic communication system in many regions of Africa and Asia. This article analyses the appropriation of mobile phones in rural India by exploring what new social alternatives mobile phones enable and how these new social constellations relate to culture and cultural change. The ethnographic description relates phone usage to other communication patterns and ongoing processes of transformation. The article shows how the appropriation of phones draws from the local cultural and social context, but also that phones facilitate new patterns that show great similarity with social processes in other places where phones have been introduced as the first form of communication technology, such as the increased multiplicity of social contacts and the greater efficiency of market relationships. I argue that mobile technology amplifies ongoing processes of cultural change but does so selectively, so that it brings about the homogenization of ,social logistics'. Résumé Dans de nombreuses régions d'Asie et d'Afrique, la technologie mobile apparaît aujourd'hui comme la première forme étendue de communications électroniques. L'auteur analyse ici l'appropriation de la téléphonie mobile en Inde, en explorant les nouvelles alternatives sociales que le téléphone portable rend possibles et les liens entre ces nouvelles constellations sociales, d'une part, et d'autre part la culture et le changement culturel. La description ethnographique fait le lien entre l'utilisation du téléphone et les autres modes de communication et avec les processus actuels de transformation. L'article montre comment l'appropriation du téléphone s'inscrit dans le contexte culturel et social local, tout en mettant en lumière la similarité entre la façon dont le téléphone facilite de nouveaux schémas de communication et les processus sociaux qui se déploient dans d'autres lieux où la téléphonie a été introduite comme première forme de technologie de communication : multiplication des contacts sociaux, efficacité accrue des relations de marché. L'auteur affirme que la technologie mobile amplifie les processus actuels de changement culturel, mais quelle le fait de manière sélective, en induisant ainsi une homogénéisation de la « logistique sociale ». [source]


Is social support sometimes a mixed blessing?

CHILD: CARE, HEALTH AND DEVELOPMENT, Issue 3 2005
D. K. Pal
Abstract Background, Child behavioural problems in epilepsy originate from a poorly understood interplay between intrinsic, family and social factors. Methods, We re-analysed data from a randomized controlled trial of antiepileptic treatment in rural India, using regression analysis to find risk factors for behavioural problems. Results, Parental satisfaction with social support was positively and independently correlated with child behavioural problems (P = 0.03). Conclusion, Our findings suggest parents' interactions within their informal social support network, contrary to expectation, may increase risk for behavioural problems in their children. We suggest a possible explanation for this correlation as well as follow-up studies to investigate the social support-as-risk factor hypothesis. [source]