Sociology - Publications

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    A measure of truth :Proposals for a method-centred research pedagogy
    ( 2014-02-01) Hegde, Sasheej
    This investigation of the possibilities of pedagogy appropriate to and pertinent to "method" or "methodology" focuses both on those discourses that already pertain to method/methodology - whether philosophical, historical or even quite plainly "scientific" - and what it invites or evokes in terms of a discourse that approaches its own limits. Method/methodology, as a certain horizon of research possibility, appears to both disable and enable writing, a writing that would similarly test and yet be impelled by the adventure of competent thought and reflection.
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    A rapid appraisal of organization and influence of RCH camps in selected districts of Uttar Pradesh
    ( 2008-04-01) Gupta, S. B. ; Dabral, M. ; Dhingra, Reeta ; Piang, L. K. ; Tiwari, V. K. ; Adhish, Vivek ; Nandan, Deoki
    The key objective of the study was to assess whether RCH camps are being organised as per the set guidelines, the referral mechanism, follow-up activities and client satisfaction. It was an observational type of study in which the organisational activities of RCH camps were assessed through direct observation, in-depth interviews and exit-interviews of the beneficiaries in eight districts of Uttar Pradesh in the year 2007-2008. The study found that most of the CMOs/Dy. CMOs (87.5%) received guidelines from State but approximately half (37.5%) participated in State level training and organised district level training (25%). 75 per cent of Block Medical Officers I/c told that they had received guidelines and training to conduct RCH camps, and among para-medical service providers most (88.24%) received training to organise RCH camps. In majority of the places problem faced by para-medical workers was work overload (50%) and approximately half of the places lack of staff (33.33%) was the main problem. Approximately half of the places of CMO/Dy. CMO (37.5%) suggested that increase in manpower (medical and para-medical) especially surgeons is a must to improve quality of RCH camps. Increase in budget (25%) and re-orientation training of ANM, ASHA and other para-medical staff (25%) were other suggestions.
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    Antinomies of pluralism: Modulating conceptions of politics and agency in India
    ( 2013-07-01) Hegde, Sasheej
    Conceptions of pluralism and identity exert a powerful influence both on the process of politics and on the study of politics. They inform a wide range of ideals and methods and, more importantly, shape influential definitions of politics and political subjectivity and agency across national spaces. The article is an attempt to formulate an approach to pluralism that allows us to enrich accounts of political subjectivity and agency at the same time that it forces us to rethink our relation to political theory and political sociology. The context in question is India—indeed certain broad transitions in the social and historical landscape of modern Indian political thought and practice—which serves to complicate extant versions of the contending models of politics. The argument is certainly not for a new, extra-historical (or post-cultural) foundation for agency and for political claims, but rather to set up a heuristic for contending with the antinomies of pluralism as they articulate in the space of politics and agency in India. The ground traversed is an attempt to meet the constraints as much of historical sociology as of normative theory (or theorising).
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    Assessment of utilization of RCH services and client satisfaction at different level of health facilities in Varanasi District.
    ( 2009-01-01) Srivastava, R. K. ; Kansal, S. ; Tiwari, V. K. ; Piang, L. ; Chand, R. ; Nandan, Deoki
    OBJECTIVE: To assess the various factors influencing utilization and non-utilization of RCH services and extent of client satisfaction. METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted during October to December 2008 at two selected blocks of Varanasi district, Uttar Pradesh. Principal study subjects were 509 women having children less than 12 months old, selected through a multistage sampling technique. Data were collected through in-depth interview and Focus Group Discussions conducted among the beneficiaries of the services. RESULTS: The study revealed that utilisation of the RCH services in the government facilities was higher among the backward classes than the general category; higher the level of education the lower was the utilisation of government services. Over all, 16% of the respondents were not satisfied with government facilities. 25% of the SC category was not satisfied with the services in spite of being the main users. Among RCH services utilization was highest (89%) for antenatal care services (ANC). 41.6% respondents did not receive any Post Natal Care (PNC) after their most recent birth. About 30% deliveries were at home out of which only 10% received PNC whereas out of 70% institutional deliveries about 80% received PNC. Overall 16.3 % of the respondents were not satisfied with the services provided by government health facilities. Around 16% and 14% were not satisfied with the behavior of medical officer and the health workers respectively and non-satisfaction was highest among SC category. CONCLUSION: All health facilities need to be made functional according to Indian Public Health Standards (IPHS) of NRHM.
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    Awareness regarding risk factors, symptoms and treatment facilities for cancer in selected states of india
    ( 2012-01-01) Raj, Sherin ; Piang, Lam Khan ; Nair, K. S. ; Tiwari, V. K. ; Kaur, Harneet ; Singh, Bacchu
    Objective: To study the level of awareness and knowledge about cancers and associated risk factors among households in selected states of India. Methods: In the study 3070 households were interviewed from six states viz, West Bengal, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Mizoram. Results: Knowledge of cancers other than those related to tobacco was very low (prostrate 8%, colon 11 %) among the communities, with a poor awareness of warning signs and symptoms. The knowledge varied from state to state. It is found that the major source of information related to cancers was television (38%) followed by friends and relatives (36%). Only about 15 % of respondents had knowledge about cancer awareness camps organized in their districts but they did not have knowledge about the organizers of the camp. Findings suggested a strong need for strengthening of DCCP. Conclusion: It is important to create awareness among community through educational programs on cancer prevention, preventable cancer risk factors, benefits of early diagnosis, and availability of screening facilities. Integration of District Cancer Control activities with NRHM could be the most cost-effective strategy to prevent cancers and rural population.
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    Back to the Rough Ground of Rights: Pathways for a Historicisation of ‘Civil Liberties’ in India
    ( 2018-01-01) Upadhyay, Amit ; Hegde, Sasheej
    This article is directed at historicising the language and practice of ‘civil liberties’ in India, and it does so by addressing the specific contingencies that have marked its early twentieth-century trajectory that continue to resonate in our historical present. Of course, the immediate point of departure for the article is a methodological fixation with what has been termed as a ‘political approach’ to rights, whose limits set the terms for a more historically resonant and contextually determined approach to an appraisal of normative languages like rights and civil liberties in highly charged political contexts. In thus illustrating the argument that the political approach to rights has translated into a constriction of the space of our normative languages, the effort here is also to set in perspective the pathways for a historicisation of ‘civil liberties’ in India—one sensitive to its subterranean regulatory folds that served to constitute the inner and outer limits of protest across socio-political collectivities active in the historical fields of action germane to the twentieth century India. These regulatory folds have persisted and sustain themselves well beyond the contours of the Constituent Assembly (CA) that went on to make for a republican India (although this latter point is only being hinted at within the broad ground traversed by this article).
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    Batla house 'encounter'
    ( 2010-04-03) Fazal, Tanweer ; Farooqi, Farah ; Mehndi, Adil
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    'Being Muslim' in Contemporary India: Nation, Identity, and Rights
    ( 2014-02-01) Fazal, Tanweer
    This chapter endeavours to capture contemporary identity consciousness of the Muslim citizens of India, incorporating its various dimensions-cultural, instrumental, spiritual, and political-on the basis of narratives recorded in the city of Delhi. Muslim narratives recorded here refuse to tread a singular trajectory; and in doing so underscore the imperative to talk in terms of a plurality of Muslim subjectivities. The Muslims of contemporary India unequivocally renounce the idea of a Muslim nation in their endeavour to confront the stigma of Partition. On a similar note, the inventiveness of Muslim religio-political consciousness in dissociating from the theological bipolarity of darul-Islam and dar-ul-harb while adopting the idea of dar-ul-aman (a place of peace where Muslims are not constrained in religious practice) is noteworthy. However, the phantasmagoria of unity, uniformity and cultural homogeneity imagined in the narratives is punctured in varying degrees by the caste, gender or regional constraints.
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    Between identity and equity: An agenda for affirmative action for Muslims
    ( 2010-01-01) Fazal, Tanweer
    The Constitution recognises only three social categories for the purpose of reservation: Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBCs) or Other Backward Classes (OBCs). In operational terms, it is only in the category of OBC that Muslims can avail the benefi t of reservations. The Constitution (Scheduled Caste) Order, 1950 restricts the benefi ts accruing to the SC status only to the ‘untouchables’ from the so-called ‘Indic’ religions (see Fazal 2006). ST status, though theoretically open, does not hold much meaning given the miniscule percentage (0.03 per cent, Census of 1991) of those characterised as STs among Muslims. The Constitutional reference to the term ‘backward classes’ fi nds place in articles 15(4) and 16(4) wherein the state is empowered to make special provisions for SEBCs. However, the defi nition and identifi cation of the term has defi ed fi xity, giving rise to variegated legal and constitutional ambiguities.
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    Biotechnology and the industrialization of horticulture in India
    ( 2002-01-01) Raghava Reddy, C. ; Haribabu, E.
    This paper delineates changes in the organization of the production of horticultural plants as a result of the introduction of plant tissue culture techniques in India. Conventionally, horticultural plantlets have been produced in farmer-managed nurseries by using traditional plant breeding techniques such as grafting, budding, layering, seed propagation, etc. Over several centuries, the production process was organized as a craft, based on empirical experience. During the last decade, many multinational corporations and large Indian industrial companies have made substantial investments in horticulture by deploying tissue culture. In a comparative study of nurseries using conventional plant breeding techniques and plant tissue culture, it was observed that production processes had undergone several changes as a result of the introduction of tissue culture. In traditional nurseries the production process was organized according to the simple division of labour. In contrast, plant tissue culture technology was introduced within a complex organizational structure with a formal hierarchy similar to that of the manufacturing industry. Plant tissue culture has ushered in the industrialization of horticulture.
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    Bringing Back the ‘Classroom’: Feminist Pedagogy in a Sociology Classroom
    ( 2022-01-01) Wagh, Anurekha Chari
    The article interlinks sociology and classrooms through the lens of teaching gender studies. It argues that to address the challenges of teaching gender studies to students of sociology at a university department, of a state university, it has to be placed within the complex terrain of classrooms. It states that while there is a discussion on the challenges of framing feminist pedagogy and teaching gender studies in India, there is inadequate engagement with the issue of; one, the changing nature of the classroom and its relevance and impact in the structuring of the disciplinary theories, methodologies and pedagogy and two, the challenges of operationalising feminist pedagogy within classrooms.
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    Caste and ‘seeing double’ the challenge of aniket jaaware’s practicing caste
    ( 2019-10-26) Hegde, Sasheej ; Palshikar, Sanjay
    Aniket Jaaware’s Practicing Caste: On Touching and Not Touching is a unique and somewhat audacious rendezvous with caste as thought and rethought through the “operation of touch.” The effort here is to explore some possibilities internal to this work so as to bring newer resources of thought to our discussions of caste in India/South Asia. Rather than combing through the entirety of the work in question, it is essential to capture the sense of vision that constitutes a part of the challenge of Practicing Caste.
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    Caste in twenty first century india: Sociological reflections on university students’ perceptions in south india
    ( 2020-01-01) Gundemeda, Nagaraju
    Caste is a defining feature of Indian society. The progress of India to a large extent is determined by the extent of the abolition of the caste system. Indian society witnessed a wide range of protest movements across the ideological spectrum in different historical conjunctures but the caste system remains a hegemonic force in the social life of people from the time of birth to death. The current article aims to understand the role and relevance of the caste system in 21st century India. The paper worked with five hypotheses: modern India has eliminated the caste system; caste conflict is a major problem in India; it is acceptable to associate mostly with one’s caste group at a mixed social function; people should be free to marry whoever they want to regardless of their caste, and it is acceptable for people from different caste groups to spend time with each other as an unmarried couple. The study, based on a sample of 447 university students in a South Indian university, argues that caste as a system is losing its structural significance in the urban space. However, it remains a powerful social institution in the rural areas across states in Indian society. The study found that though the majority of the respondents felt that caste is changing, it still plays a key role in shaping social interactions and marriage choices both in rural and urban spaces. Thus the paper argues that caste plays a significant role in the 21st century despite colonial and post-colonial modernity and constitutional egalitarianism.
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    Caste, religion and recognition: Trajectories of pasmanda muslim movements
    ( 2019-01-01) Fazal, Tanweer
    The Pasmanda movement (PM) in this chapter broadly refers to various struggles for recognition, and resistance against elite hegemony being waged by the Muslim middle and low castes in different parts of the country. Though spread out in many states, I restrict my analysis of the trajectories adopted by the movement (or movements) to two states of India, namely Bihar and Maharashtra. Both state governments recognise Muslim castes (and not community) as units of social and material deprivation and have gone ahead with bifurcating the OBC into subcategories ostensibly to evenly distribute the benefits of quota. The movement privileges the question of caste differentiation among the Muslims of India, thus shifting from the community-centred theorisations. To an extent, the movement reverberates the politics of Mandal and Backward Classes that seized north Indian politics in the 1990s and much of southern India even prior to Independence. This chapter is an attempt to provide structural analysis of the PM movement in the two states. It explores the variegated history, ideological debates on the question of caste and religion, the Pasmanda–Dalit coalescence as well as schism, the caste–class conundrum and the question of middle class, and finally the recognition versus redistribution dilemma through an analysis of a comparative study of the movements in the two states.
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    Changing Climatic Conditions and Agricultural Livelihoods: An Impact Study in Jagatsinghpur District, Odisha
    ( 2021-06-01) Moharaj, Prasanta ; Rout, Satyapriya
    This article attempts to examine the negative impact of climate change on agricultural livelihood and human social life. Natural climatic variations have always been a challenge for human sustenance as they are predicated on a host of factors that include natural, human-made and unbalanced environmental conditions. India too, with its geographic zones such as mountains, small islands, wetlands, coastal areas, deserts, semi-arid lands and plains is exposed to challenges of climatic change. The impact of climate is particularly severe on the livelihoods of the rural poor. For instance, people living near coastal regions are constantly prone to severe floods. This study specifically focusses on coastal Odisha and the impact of floods which have been triggered by climate change. The study, looking at the effect on crop production and socio-economic conditions, has followed a two-pronged approach––conducting a field survey and collecting data from secondary sources.
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    Cognitive beliefs as a coping mechanism of drought
    ( 1997-12-01) Purendra Prasad, N.
    This study was conducted in all the 192 households of a single village covering with a holistic approach to find out the various strategies adapted by people of different socioeconomic strata in coping with drought. The findings revealed that despite inequalities in the social system, people belonging to all ethnic groups and social classes come together in performing the rituals associated with the 'Rain God' and the distinctions in terms of caste and class get temporarily suspended during crisis periods.
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    Collective Action for Sustainable Forestry: Institutional Dynamics in Community Management of Forest in Orissa
    ( 2010-12-01) Rout, Satyapriya
    The article examines the efforts for collective action of ten village communities in the state of Orissa to manage their local forest resources from an institutional perspective. It explores the differential levels of success in the collective action efforts of these communities, and the role of local level community institution therein, for ensuring sustainable resource use and management. The article concludes that only presence or absence of the institution is not always sufficient for sustainable resource management outcomes, despite being a necessary condition for it. The existing institution must be a robust one with strong rules for resource appropriation and good monitoring system. Institutional arrangements for sustainable resource management at the community level must be understood as a dynamic process, which involve a continuous interaction among the community members and the designed institution. The institution formulates the rules and expects the community members to comply such rules. The rule formation should necessarily be backed by a strong and efficient monitoring system to ensure that rules are complied, and accordingly the institution can accord positive incentive in the form of rewards to those who show conformity to rules and negative incentive through punishment to those who violate them. The institutional arrangements without such a strong monitoring system fail to restrict free-ride and hence, could not establish a well-defined property right regime over the resource, which is very much essential for ensuring successful collective action.
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    Community, Nation and Region: Shrimoni Akali Dal (SAD) and the Politics of Community Formation
    ( 2021-10-01) Fazal, Tanweer
    This article relies on a historical sociology approach to trace the shifting trajectory of community formation and the forging of boundaries through three discrete though corresponding imaginaries—panth (community), qaum (nation) and punjabiyat (regional identity)—in the Sikh political narrative. The emergence of each of these grand ideas of Sikh solidity has a history putatively inter-laced with the social make up and political economy of its time. The central object of enquiry for this article is the Shrimoni Akali Dal (SAD) and the attempt is to examine the shifting terrain of its religio-political goals and objectives. Since its inception in 1920, the SAD as a political organisation and Shrimoni Gurudwara Prabandhak Committee as the chief ecclesiastical authority, have been the principle bearers of the Sikh religio-political consciousness. The three constitutive imageries of community formation that SAD in particular and Sikh politics in general has fostered, do not betray a linear trajectory. Instead, there is a discernible simultaneity where each of these ideas co-exist, but subject to contextual operationalisation.