The Role of Access Mechanisms in Effective Rehabilitation of Displaced Farmers Due to Development Projects

This paper provides an access based explanation of why institutional arrangements of compensation provision for land acquisition often fail to effectively rehabilitate displaced farmers in a developing country context like India. Farmers have a right to claim compensation in case of land takings, which specifies two methods of claim: consent method and arbitration method. Literature indicates that farmers’ choice between the two methods has a significant impact on the compensation they receive. Using a binary response model on a primary dataset of 199 displaced farmers from Upper Krishna Irrigation Project, India, we analyse the determinants of this choice. We validate ‘access based’ hypotheses in choice of compensation and test whether in addition to allocated property rights, benefits actually depend on the ‘access mechanisms’ farmers have. Results suggest that the choice is governed by access to social identity and information. Therefore, farmers lacking these fail to get resettled despite the presence of a policy framework aimed at their rehabilitation.     

Global South rhetoric in India’s policy projection

While an on-going statist project tries to portray India as a ‘rising power’ in world politics, the fact remains that India’s global projection continues to be heavily fashioned by the Global South rhetoric. Such rhetoric is inclusive of irredentism and contestation with western norms and ideals along with cooperation leading to a complex process of interactions shaping up the global order. For countries like India being claimant to the status of ‘civilisational state’, the strong urge for autonomy along with the self-perception of national and cultural greatness is shared by the elite along with a sense of strategic importance. Such identity formation, however, reduces and sometimes obliterates the gaps between ‘internal’ and ‘external’, bringing into academic scrutiny the whole range of policymaking and to what extent it matches the state rhetoric.     

Water out of fire: Novel women,national fictions and the legacy of Nehruvian developmentalism in India

In the post-independence period in India popular fictions present a paradox: they represent the corruption of the era as well as the desirability of its modernity. In the work of overwhelmingly successful writers such as Shankar, the path of Nehruvian development is a double sign. It represents the corruption of the 'licenced raj' as well as the desirable lifestyle and possessions of the educated elite. The more the nation modernises, the more corrupt and desirable it becomes. All the noble social goals of the Nehru era - education, women's emancipation, progress - become transactional: things to be exchanged for wealth, Western technology and status. There is no room for integrity here; integrity is possible either in the past or in the West. These fictions tell the story of the 'deferral' of Western modernity in the imaginary of the postcolonial nation. Women, in these fictions, are especially ambiguous; though modernised and educated, they also retain their traditional roles and conventional gender relationships are valorised. This flawed representation of the modern nation also embodies its tragedy. This article concludes that the failure of the post-independence Nehruvian development project and its noble social goals has created a space that allows economic liberalisation and religious fundamentalism to flourish.     

Legal Protection Against Domestic Violence in India: Scope and Limitations

This paper deals with the scope and limits of legal measures to curb domestic violence against women in India. The Indian state has enacted several laws in the past to address the issue and recently a new comprehensive law is added to the list. The new law has become an alternative to many urban victims. Yet, a review of the performance of the old and new laws on domestic violence proves that legal measures to curb domestic violence have serious limitations. They could neither guarantee any reduction in the extent of such violence, nor could they expedite the justice delivery system in India. Much remains to be done to ensure gender justice in a patriarchal society. Discussion here is based on secondary data and supplemented by field data collected through qualitative research informed by feminist epistemology in the district of Burdwan, West Bengal.     

Characterization of TP53 microsatellite locus among selected ethnic populations of India

POPULATION: A total of 253 individuals belonging to five ethnic populations of India were analyzed for pentanucleotide microsatellite TP53. These included Konkanasthas and Marathas (from Maharashtra, western India) representing Indo-Aryan lineage and Ezhavas, Nairs and Muslims (from Kerala, southwest India) representing Indo-Dravidian lineage. To the best of our knowledge, allele frequency data at TP53 microsatellite locus exists only for German Caucasians (1,2), Northern Portuguese (3) and West African from S. Tomé e Príncipe (4); the present study is the first report on Asian populations.     

Allelic variation at ACTBP2 microsatellite for two Indian tribal groups

POPULATION: Two tribal populations, Bison Horn Maria ( N =49) and Muria ( N =52) from Bastar district in Central India.     

An unusual case of cranial image recognition

We encountered an unusual practical case of craniofacial identification recently. The peculiarity of the case was that the skull itself was not available for examination unlike other such common cases. The supplied material exhibits were, a nearly front view photograph of a skeletonized face and a front view face photograph of the suspected victim. Further, the condition of the skull during taking its photograph was such that its lower and the upper jaws were not in a normal closed condition. The procedure involved in dealing with such a complicated craniofacial identification problem would be quite interesting from a forensic investigator's point of view, since standard methods of skull identification like photo/video superimposition techniques were not at all applicable here. As such, the present case report provides the details of the multiphase procedure adapted by us in dealing with this abnormal case. A solution to this unprecedented craniofacial identification problem was worked out by appropriate exploration of a newly introduced digital image processing technique that is based on craniofacial symmetry perception. The procedure leads to the reconstruction of a superimposable cranial image with upper and lower teeth in normal closed condition for establishment of its identity in usual way.