Intergenerational Transmission of Gender Attitudes: Evidence from India

This paper examines the intergenerational transmission of gender attitudes in India, a setting with severe discrimination against women and girls. We use survey data on gender attitudes (specifically, about the appropriate roles and rights of women and girls) collected from nearly 5500 adolescents attending 314 schools in the state of Haryana, and their parents. We find that when a parent holds a more discriminatory attitude, his or her child is about 11 percentage points more likely to hold the view. We find that parents hold greater sway over students’ gender attitudes than their peers do, and that mothers influence children’s gender attitudes more than fathers. Parental attitudes influence child attitudes more in Scheduled Caste communities and student gender attitudes are positively correlated with behaviours such as interacting with children of the opposite gender.     

Impact of trade and investment on income surge in Bangladesh: Evidence from trade liberalization regime

Trade and investment are crucial drivers of economic growth. Successful execution of trade and investment policy can elevate a developing country to a sustained growth path and make it self-reliant. Bangladesh implemented a trade liberalization policy in the 1980s, deviating much from its conservative trade policy. This article assesses the impacts of trade, investment in physical as well as human capital, and a few trade policy variables on income surge for the liberalized regime. The econometric analysis finds that export, import, and domestic investment stimulate income. The impact of foreign investment is not conducive. Public spending on education also contributes to the income surge. Among the policy variables, trade openness and currency depreciation produce a beneficial impact. Population growth retards economic growth. The baseline results hold in the estimations involving several specifications of variables and testified as robust. The article views that a comprehensive approach to trade and investment policy would ensure the comparative advantage of trade and the well-being of Bangladesh.     

The Indian economic experiment

The aim of this paper is to study the effects of land tenure on agricultural production. This is an econometric study of production functions for the Ferozepur district of Punjab using Farm Management Studies data for 1968/69 and 1969/70. After a brief review of the theoretical literature, production functions are estimated to test for differences between small and large farms and for the relative inefficiency of tenants (on an inferior production function) relative to owners. We get slightly ambiguous results on the farm size issue but we find that the more land leased in by a farmer the less efficient he is.     

Climate agreements and India: aligning options and opportunities on a new track

The Climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December 2009 witnessed the emerging power of Brazil, South Africa, India, and China (BASIC). Although still focussed on domestic development goals, BASIC countries have made important steps toward a greater engagement in the global climate agenda. For India, the shift was marked by a voluntary, but conditional, target of reducing emission intensity, away from the past normative position based on “equal per capita,” emissions entitlements. The new track aims at finding cost-effective mitigation strategies that align national development goals and climate actions. This paper examines the mitigation potential of a domestic sustainable development policy using a suite of integrated assessment models. The long-term goal is to keep temperature increase below 2°C. This article shows that it is possible to match domestic development goals and climate mitigation. Win–win options exist and side benefits—in terms of energy security and local pollution—are important. However, development policies are not sufficient to achieve the desired emissions reductions. We find that it is necessary to introduce a constraint on the carbon budget. The price of carbon that emerges is however much lower than in a conventional mitigation scenario. Finally, this paper proposes to shift the negotiations away from the current climate-centric focus toward “development,” in order to reduce conflicts and deliver greater global and national benefits.     

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.