India ranks among a handful of countries in West Asia, North Africa, and South Asia to have the lowest female labour force participation rates in the world. The LFPR has further been declining for women in India in the last two decades. The article focuses on the south Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka to understand the proximate causes for these shifts. We combine temporal trends from the Employment and Unemployment surveys of the National Sample Survey Office with the literature on agrarian studies in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka to explain the changes in rural women’s labour force participation and summarise the challenges in studying temporal trends in women’s work.
A widespread but underexplored aspect of the Covid-19 pandemic in India has been the prevalence of stigma and denial at different levels in the community mediated by state policy and actions. Based on a field study in three districts of Tamil Nadu between the two waves of the pandemic, this article explores the nature of stigma and denial and their consequence for health-seeking behaviour and access to healthcare. This is important not just to prevent further suffering of the affected people but also for formulation of more effective and equitable public health interventions in management of the pandemic.
This research has been made possible due to the financial support of the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF), through the COVINDIA project, which combines food distribution to villagers and a survey of villagers’ survival tactics and strategies. For more details, see https://odriis.hypotheses.org/projects#covindia. We sincerely thank Barbara Harriss-White, Judith Heyer, Solène Morvant-Roux, and Jean-Michel Servet for their helpful comments on an earlier draft.
Turbulent Transformations: Non-Brahmin Śrīvaiṣṇavas on Religion, Caste and Politics in Tamil Nadu by Katherine Young, Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan, 2021; pp 399, ₹736.
The implications of expanding government-sponsored health insurance schemes in India are analysed from a fiscal perspective. The experiences of two of the earliest and largest GSHI schemes of the country implemented in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are examined. The results suggest that the expansion of the GSHI schemes may skew expenditure away from primary and secondary care towards tertiary care if the fiscal space is limited. A competitive public health system may help in containing costs and the corresponding fiscal burden. The effectiveness of public spending through such schemes is ambiguous.
In light of the recent announcement by the minister for Hindu religious and charitable endowments for Tamil Nadu regarding the government’s willingness to facilitate resources and training for women who wish to be priests in temples, the article examines the debates regarding the right of women to Hindu religious realm by revisiting the political episode of women’s assertion of their constitutional right to enter the Sabarimala temple in the neighbouring state of Kerala as well as the gendered dimensions of situating the protests within the larger histories of the self-respect movement and navodhanam.
Tamil Nadu is a state that has ensured a simultaneous improvement in growth and human development. Innovative welfare interventions combined with economic dynamism have been a key feature of the state’s development. In the context of the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam coming to power on the back of a slew of promises on welfare and development, and the ongoing pandemic, the trajectory of growth and resource mobilisation efforts by the state is examined. The analysis points to an emerging disjuncture between growth and tax efforts of the state as well as a decline in central transfers.
The elections to the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly provide an opportunity to reassess the fault lines in the caste, religious and ethno-geographical identities in the state and their significance in electoral politics.
