Geography and You - Issue 142 - 143, 2020

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The 142-143, 2020 issue of G’nY, titled 'Caste class in India’ (Double Issue)

This issue titled, 'Caste and Class in India' takes up the highly sensitive Indian issue of caste and class-based discrimination. Leading authorities on the subject take the reader through the myriad manifestations of this endemic bias in our day to day lives. We request the readers to sit back and read and try to comprehend the magnitude and impact of this entrenched mindset.

Understanding Caste and Class - Categories and Measurement

The caste has been a unique social institution in India. It has also emerged in a new form after the mandalisation of caste in the early 1990s resulting in the extension of reservation to Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in government jobs and also in admissions to colleges and universities. The relative size of population of various caste groups particularly of the OBCs is also a matter of debate. Census does not provide population data on OBCs, however, it is possible to assess it from nationally representative sample surveys. Further, the correspondence between caste categories and class has been a matter of debate. This paper presents an assessment of class within caste categories based on data from nationally representative sample surveys.

7 mins

Social Diversity, Hierarchy and cultural Heterogeneity Among Muslims of India

Though the media and other journalistic literature in recent years have projected Muslims as socially ‘monolithic’ and with the same ‘identity’ of ‘Muslimness’, Muslims in India, are as diverse and as disparate as ‘Hindus’. The religion as a thin veneer is spread over a block of diverse social practices and conceptions of sub-continental origin like caste, community, kinship, race, gender, language and food habits. This is why, Muslims in India have largely remained unaffected from social and political movements among Muslims elsewhere.

9 mins

Caste and Class in INDIAN AGRICULTURE

The study reviews varying perspectives on the debate of caste and class in Indian Agriculture. It evaluates the emergence of caste and class differentials from the colonial to post independence period. It brings out that class differentiation in Indian agriculture has become vivid since the initiation of Green Revolution. Taking case studies of two villages from agriculturally developed and backward states of Haryana and Rajasthan respectively it concludes that caste and class are not exclusive social categories in rural India. In both cases the middle castes have emerged as dominant castes and unlike eastern India, agrarian societies have dispersed inequality. But division of agrarian classes and inequality in distribution of land are very sharp in Haryana but quite blurred in Rajasthan.

9 mins

Identity And The Political Economy of Agrarian Change

Despite significant changes in the agrarian structure and affirmative action in various spheres, caste-based exclusion and discrimination continue to be widely prevalent. In the rural, agrarian economy in India, both social exclusion and adverse inclusion—in terms of assets and access to markets and institutions, act as the basis of caste-based discrimination. as a result of historical biases in ownership of and access to resources, including information and institutions, both structural discrimination in asset-ownership and wealth and its manifestations in the market transactions point to the various ways unequal opportunities shape the trajectories of rural transformation in contemporary India.

9 mins

The Antiquity and Continuity of the Caste System In India - Dalit Perspective

Why has the caste system survived in India for more than millennia is a question that baffles many. In order to understand it one may have to look into its past and how it was transferred generation after generation. People in denial at most profess to believe that it plays a role only in marriages. Is endogamy not the single most factor for the maintenance of the caste system? There is therefore a need to revisit factors that have kept this system alive and how it is being nurtured even today. Manifestations of the caste system and the inequality and violence it entails are quite broad.

7 mins

The Middle Class - As the Class of No Class

An attempt to understand some of the ambiguities around what it means to be middle class in India has been made in this paper. It also discusses the influence that the middle class supposedly has on Indian politics despite these uncertainties.

8 mins

Health & Nutrition in INDIA - A Caste and Class Perspective

The intersectionality of caste, class and gender shapes multiple dimensions of social life in India. The interplay of these factors has a major effect on the health and nutrition status of children and women of marginalised sections. Moreover, women are exploited by the trilogy of caste, class and patriarchy. This feature underscores that women and children of disadvantaged groups continue to be denied the fruits of general improvement in health indicators brought about by the increase in the country’s economic growth.

7 mins

Caste, Class and The power of Water

The Socio-Political Ecology of Drinking Water in Rural India

10 mins

Inequalities in Access to Academic Spaces

Experiences of students from the socially excluded groups in higher education in India

8 mins

CITY & SEXUALITY

An Auto-Ethnographic story telling of caste, class and Queerness in Delhi

8 mins

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Geography and You Magazine Description:

G'nY or Geography and You, is a semi-scientific research based magazine that is being published from New Delhi for 15 years now. One of its kind in the nation, the magazine deals with issues that are pertinent to south Asia, and India in particular. The editorial coverage encompasses people, places, environment, science and technology , with an emphasis on human involvement in a climate change scenario. Major topics include nature, ecology, economics, data and its interpretation, GIS based studies, extreme events, geographical thought, and more. G'nY today is appreciated and valued in India and abroad for its lucid in-depth factually correct articles, which is accompanied with vivid and large photographs.