Arup Maharatna

Aping the ‘Awful’? Recent Trends in India’s North–South Sociocultural Divide

India’s enormously diverse sociocultural landscape has fed into her perennial quest for the core common characteristics eloquent, purportedly, of the country’s unity or a sort of essence. The caste system has been serving for long as one such unifying category in much of the Indian social science discourse and sociological theorising.

Population, economy and society in West Bengal since the 1970s

Abstract  West Bengal, a major state of eastern India, is conspicuous not only for being ruled by an elected Leftist coalition since 1977 (often described as sound ‘political stability’), but also for its widely acknowledged successes in fertility transition, execution of redistributive land reform and political decentralisation programmes. Ironically, however, the state, in almost all comparative assessments of social, human and infrastructural developments occupies a lagged position vis-à-vis many other states, especially in the south and even against all-India records. This paper seeks to examine this paradox by comprehensively evaluating West Bengals relative performance in demographic and socio-economic transformations. A well-disciplined grassroots political mobilisation network, and the machinery of the Left Front parties, have been highly instrumental for comparatively fast declines of fertility and population growth and for lasting political stability in an otherwise ‘laggard’ development regime. However, a government geared to ensuring mass electoral support overwhelmingly via a grassroots mobilisation network but, with a relative neglect of social movements, economic infrastructure and human development, is likely to suffer adverse consequences in the longer term.

On the Demography of India’s Broad Social Stratification

Social stratification in some way or other perhaps has remained nearly inextricable in the entire post-primordial human history and civilisation. In fact, the role played by social hierarchy and/or inequality in humanity’s relentless march towards material, scientific, and technological progress sounds pretty intricate, controversial and of course inconclusive. However, in the ultimate analysis social stratification turns out to be more of an ideological and/or ascription-based construct than an inevitable fallout (as is sometimes thought) of physical, biological or genetic diversities of humankind. What this, thus, implies is that the linkage between social differentiation and its demography is not exactly unidirectional. The former can, as just noted, have ramifications for the latter, which can generate, in form of somewhat chain reactions, further implications for the former, with a resultant dynamics between the two. In fact, demographic underpinnings of, and their interactions with, social stratification are, of late, gaining prominence in both sociological and demographic research. This has given rise to a (relatively) new and growing academic field, namely, the demography of race and ethnicity or the demography of social stratification. Indeed the chief object of the present chapter is to capture the salient features of the long-term trends in India’s demography of social stratification, with a view to delineating their wider ramifications and key policy insights for the days ahead.

What is Meant by ‘Changing Times’ After All?

‘Times’ have been changing—of late rather fast. This is so much of a commonplace that anybody’s doubt about it could easily evoke an alarm of one’s possible infliction with insanity. However, even at a risk of being so stigmatised, I would propose that a thoughtful dissection of this pervasive perception is worth undertaking. In fact, the evocation of ‘changing times’ too often serves as a non-violent instrument for putting a quick full stop or sometimes even ‘cold water’ to many seemingly intractable and inconclusive debates/discussions pertaining to many important social/cultural issues.

India’s Family Planning Programme: A Muddle Extraordinary

‘Family planning’ in the sense of an individual couple’s conscious thought and actions regarding regulation of family size and reproductive behaviour has perhaps always existed in the history of human civilisation. But ‘family planning programme’ (hereafter FPP for short) as a state-level initiative and policy intervention towards lowering a country’s overall birth rate is relatively new, and it is indeed a post-World War phenomenon restricted mainly to the developing world.

Understanding Modern Hindu Mind Resurrecting Ashok Rudra’s Reading

There is no dearth of people who are readily vocal, critical, and sceptical of the Hindu caste practices and its associated hierarchical and exclusive nature of social stratification. But there are not many who are perceptive, secular, and objective enough to see the deep adverse influences of the popular Hindu lines of thinking on the formation of a unique and obdurate mental make-up of the majority Indians. The late Ashok Rudra, who passed away utterly untimely and quite unwarrantedly in 1992, was one of those few.

‘Who is Civilised?’ On the Tribal Traditions, Society, and Culture

There can be little dispute that the sociocultural norms, practices, and rituals in the mainstream Hindu tradition subsume a deep ideological repugnance towards gender equality. But this contrasts—rather sharply—with the overall features of tribal culture and society of the country. Indeed, the latter, which has ever been exterior to patently patriarchal and caste-hierarchical Hindu sociocultural orbit, is traditionally characterised by high degree of gender equity with its many admirable demographic concomitants (e.g. lower infant and child mortality and fertility, balanced sex composition of the population).

Quarrelling with Indian Perceptions

There are always some people born with an innate proclivity for forging an uncommon, or indeed often just the opposite, stance on nearly all debates, discussions, and conversations in life—mundane or otherwise.

Reforming Babu’s World View

The question as to why some states in post-independent India have lagged far behind many others in terms of key socio-economic indicators has posed a challenge to the social science profession, administrators, and policy makers alike. It has become increasingly clear that a deeper understanding of these differentials calls for looking beyond typical economic parameters.

India’s Social Stratification: Demography and Dilemmas

Social stratification as a specific configuration of distinct social groups identified on some criterion or other has been almost inextricably linked to the post-primordial human history and civilisation. Notwithstanding ominous haziness about the role played by social inequality per se in humanity’s progress, it is clear enough by now that social stratification, in an ultimate analysis, is an ideological, and/or ascription-based, construct. Despite physiological (e.g. genetic/racial) differentials being held by some quarters to be the key to racial stratifications, the latter inescapably boil down to socially formed constructs and/or social ascriptions.