Women

Issues related to women's mental health in our country have not received much attention either from academia or from the women's movement. Viewing mental illness from the biomedical perspective, mainstream academic approaches have, by and large, ignored the impact of sociocultural factors. In an area such as women's mental health, it is necessary to consider the socio-cultural context of their health since it is being increasingly recognised that the stresses that differentially affect women because of their unequal social status have led to pervasive mental health problems. The present paper focuses on the gender-specific distribution of psychological disorders and construction of a socio-demographic profile of women affected by mental illness. Data from hospital case records of patients in two major psychiatric facilities in the city of Visakhapatnam formed the empirical basis for the study.

This paper examines the union budget 2001-2002 with a focus on its implications for women's empowerment. Changes in patterns of allocations to various women-specific schemes as well as to schemes of indirect benefit to women have been analysed. This preliminary analysis suggests that the standard perception of women's roles continues to be as mothers and caregivers, and has undergone little change. Investment priorities seem to reinforce this image, and do not reflect a commitment to women's empowerment.

This paper tries to show that the central methodology of Robert Putnam's Making Democracy Work can be fruitfully applied to the study of the Indian states. It reports some of the results of the author's replication of Putnam's Italian study for the states. While a clear relationship can be demonstrated between state government performance in development and levels of civic engagement, it is harder to replicate Putnam's findings concerning the crucial role of social capital. In the Indian context, levels of education are more important and the implications of this unexpected result are addressed.