The expert committee for Evolving a Composite Development Index of States—headed by Raghuram G Rajan, governor of the Reserve Bank of India and the former Chief Economic Advisor submitted this report to the government. It recommends a new mechanism for allocation on the basis of composite development index for states. According to this, Odisha and Bihar are the least developed states.

The Reserve Bank of India has directed all banks to maintain "no-frills accounts" - a bank account at zero balance - for 100% fi nancial inclusion so as to include all households under the ambit of the formal fi nancial sector. This study conducted in 2008 in Hooghly district of West Bengal reveals that the scheme has been largely unsuccessful in the fi nancial inclusion of excluded categories such as the scheduled castes, scheduled tribes, Other Backward Classes and those who are less educated.

This paper provides an ethnographic account of the changing facets of marginality for the Musahars of Uttar Pradesh. It takes a close look at how their identity is shaped by the resistance of those at the margins, by politics, and by interventions on the part of external agencies. The research deconstructs (i) the everyday resistance of the Musahars, as evident from their songs and poetry; (ii) the talk of state officials and state policies about Musahars; and (iii) the discourse of social activists, organisations and donor agencies.

Questioning the thesis that foreign direct investment in retail will have a favourable effect on the fl edgling class of dalit entrepreneurs in India because processes of capitalist modernisation automatically undermine the significance of social identities like caste, creed and race, this article argues that only a minuscule section of dalits has benefi ted from globalisation while the majority, being "uncompetitive", has been pushed to suffer ontological insecurities and existential uncertainties.

Exercises to identify households living below the poverty line have taken place three times, and a fourth one is under way. Though the latest method aims to improve upon previous methods, its empirical implications and precise justification are not yet clear. This paper empirically examines the Socio-Economic Caste Census methodology and compares it empirically with alternative proposals to show the choice of a particular methodology matters.

India’s Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) is the largest public works employment project in the world. Its most direct poverty reduction pathway is through boosting employment and income for the poor.

Using ward-level data from Census 2001, this paper finds high levels of residential segregation by aste in India's seven largest metro cities - Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Hyderabad. In each of these cities, residential segregation by caste is more prominent than the level of segregation by socio-economic status. It offers some preliminary explanations for the observed differences in the level of residential segregation by caste across cities and highlights areas for future research.

This annual issue of Rural Development Statistics, the 22nd in the series is a compilation, analysis and presentation of data on selected key socio-economic and demographic parameters of people living in rural areas.

Landless dalits and adivasis have occupied parts of a corporate rubber plantation at Chengara in Kerala for five years. Despite being pressurised in various ways, they have held out, sticking to their demand of land for them to pursue livelihoods. None of the agreements so far reached with the state government has been satisfactorily implemented. Yet, the issues raised by the Chengara struggle have a social and economic significance that no government can afford to ignore.

Much of the scholarship associated with the “urban turn” in south Asia has focused on the upper middle class or the poor. This study examines social change through the lens of interstitial places and populations. In particular, it focuses on young men who find themselves “in-between” in multiple senses: between youth and adulthood, the rich and poor, and the rural and urban.
This “in-betweenness” shapes how they navigate a changing economic and institutional landscape. It also shows how the forms of enterprise they engage in stitch together the rural and urban in new ways.

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