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Gender-differentiated role obligations, constraints and dependencies affect food security dynamics across peri-urban and rural areas. This paper aims to understand how periods of crisis disproportionately exacerbate hardships for female populations in such areas and endeavours to assist agro-food policymaking in formulating support initiatives more effectively.

A feasibility/pilot survey was conducted through face-to-face semi-structured interviews in public settings and sought to understand and analyse the differentiated impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on rural and peri-urban food insecurity through the experiences of 50 women from across various districts in West Bengal.

The study found that women play multivarious roles regarding food security in rural and peri-urban households, extend these obligations to their female children and encounter deficiencies in financial autonomy to access and use food resources. It concludes that while women seem to contribute the most to household and community food security, they are also most vulnerable to food insecurity. These vulnerabilities were exacerbated during the pandemic.

This feasibility/pilot study may serve as a springboard for a larger, more comprehensive survey exploring the dynamics of gender inequality, food insecurity and the Covid-19 pandemic amongst women across peri-urban and rural areas in West Bengal. This may bolster pandemic vulnerability analyses and impact assessments in the State.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, no other study implemented in West Bengal explores the interfaces between gender inequality, food insecurity and the Covid-19 pandemic in rural and peri-urban areas.

The purpose is to outline and illustrate the economic theory of parental self‐interest and its implications for the entitlements of children according to their gender, and using empirical data, to determine the extent to which the theory is reflected in discrimination of parents against female siblings in different communities in eastern India.

Using economic analysis, this paper outlines and illustrates the basis of the economics of parental discrimination against female children and structured questionnaires are used to collect data from village rural wives in the Santal tribal belt of West Bengal and in Orissa in Kondh‐dominated village to determine the extent to which economics explains parental discrimination between daughters and sons. The selection of the areas has been done on the basis that their different cultural dimensions may affect parental attitudes to female children. The statistical significance of differences in responses between the West Bengal sample and that from Orissa is tested using the chi‐squared test. Implications of the results for theory of parental discrimination between siblings according to their gender are outlined.

It is found that parental discrimination in favour of boys and against girls is much more marked in the Santal‐dominated belt of West Bengal than in the Kondh‐dominated villages of Orissa, where it is absent or virtually so. This is the case despite similar economic conditions and the fact that all the sampled villagers are relatively poor. Differences in cultural values seem to explain the difference.

Results could be strengthened by using a similar questionnaire to survey wives in additional villages in the Santal tribal‐belt of West Bengal and in more Kondh‐dominated villages in Orissa, as well as in other cultural contexts. Furthermore, families in these areas are patriarchal. It would be interesting to obtain results also from Indian communities that have matriarchal families as in parts of Meghalaya.

The findings support the view that the behaviour of parents towards children (according to their gender or otherwise) is a combined result of personal parental goals, social structures and cultural values. Economic theories of the family are likely to be too narrow and may be misleading in their predictions unless they take into account the institutional and cultural contexts in which families exist.

The purpose of this paper is to find the determinants of participation and targeting efficiency of the following safety net programs in West Bengal: Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), self-targeted program; National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM), subsidy based livelihood program; Indira Awaas Yojona (IAY), targeted cash transfer program and Public Distribution System (PDS), targeted in kind transfer program.

The study is based on a household survey comprising 900 households across three Districts: Murshidabad, Nadia and Burdwan.

Benefits from MNREGA and PDS are not substantial, whereas financial benefits are substantial from NRLM and IAY. This paper shows that poor people have higher likelihood of participation in MNREGA and PDS. But, non poor get disproportionate benefits from IAY and NRLM both have been designed for the poor. Therefore, targeting cannot remove elite capture altogether. Socially down trodden section have higher participation in MNREGA and PDS, whereas people who are at upper tier of social hierarchy enjoy the benefits of IAY and NRLM. However, it cannot be said that these programs miss their target completely.

The study suffers from the usual limitations of sampling.

Programs targeted for the poor are being appropriated by the non poor. If there is better targeting money will be channelized to the desired beneficiaries and welfare will be enhanced.

The study has unearthed the underlying reasons behind why some safety net programs have better targeting and some safety net programs have poor targeting.

This paper examines the importance of property rights in women’s empowerment in rural India. Arguments justifying the need for granting property rights to women are presented and the distinction is made between legal (formal) and customary (informal) rights. The ineffectiveness of legal right in absence of customary rights has been discussed. Customary rights also become ineffective due to other institutional impediments. These impediments have been discussed. The results of extensive field work in rural West Bengal and Orissa have been presented to illustrate the pattern of development process that poor rural women want and in which the property right is only one component, not the only component.

The aim of this paper is to develop a theory of organizational forgetting in the context of local governments from the paradigmatic lens of existing research orchestrated in management literature. The paper empirically explores how and why local governments forget and discusses the role of local politics in promoting memory loss in organizations.

The authors do an ethnographic study in a Village Panchayat, the lowest tier of the local government in rural India, in West Bengal, a state in eastern India. Data are collected through participant observation and informal interviews.

The paper argues that the existing framework on modes of organizational forgetting developed in the management literature is not sufficient in understanding the types of knowledge loss that occur in local governments. It shows that as a consequence of “memory decay” and “failure to capture,” local governments involuntary lose past knowledge and critical sources of expertise. The study also acknowledges the role of politics in deliberately endorsing organizational forgetting in local governments to eliminate failure and ethical lapses of elected representatives.

By exploring the phenomenon of organizational forgetting in local governments in the context of grassroots politics, this paper contributes to the ongoing discussion of organizational forgetting in a hitherto understudied area of how, and under what circumstances, public organizations such as local governments undergo forgetting, unlearning or loss of knowledge.

Public Sector Management.

MBA or postgraduate program courses in public policy and management. MBA or postgraduate program courses on social innovation, social entrepreneurship and public or collective entrepreneurship. Management development programs for public policy professionals, non-governmental organizations and social enterprises.

Despite several country-wide campaigns to improve sanitation levels, India continues to be the country with the highest number of people, over 600 million, practicing open defecation. This case outlines the Sabar Shouchagar Project (Toilets for Everyone) undertaken by the District Administration of Nadia District in West Bengal that transformed the region into the first open-defecation-free district in India. The case begins with providing the context of the problem of open defecation, why it has been hard to eliminate and how undertaking a project to eliminate open-defecation-free practices has myriad institutional and economic challenges. The case then details the conceptualization and execution of the complex Sabar Shouchagar Project which involved a loose coalition of various state programs and civil society organizations. The case ends with questions on the continuity of this project beyond the tenure of the current District Magistrate and on the replicability of such an ambitious project in other parts of the country. The setting of this case, a government agency, is different than most cases and provides an opportunity for students to talk about a state agency and its interstices with civil society. This case explores how to create change through large government machinery and allows the student to explore aspects of social mobilization, social change and social innovation. If taught within a postgraduate or MBA program, the case would serve well to dispel stereotypes and biases about government bureaucracies (such as slow timelines, limited efficacy of projects and so on).

After discussion and analysis of the case, students will be able to: appreciate how administrators within a large government bureaucracy address an ambitious and complex public health issue in a developing world context. Understand the on-the-ground challenges that arise when a change agent pursues a worthwhile goal. There are difficulties such as getting resources beyond what a government office has access to, getting alignments between different key actors within the local community and forging coalitions. Understand initiatives for social transformation within a developing country context. Specifically, the case unpacks the cultural, political, economic contexts that determine how social innovations may be pursued. Understand capacity-building and change management. Evaluate efforts required to sustain social change efforts and the challenges and pathways with respect to replication of successful social change projects in other geographies. Appreciate the design of civic engagement practices in public policy implementation.

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CSS: 10: Public Sector management.

In general, the return from participation in MNREGA will be highest for those women whose mobility and social interaction is least impeded by conservative social norms. However, if any intervention enhances knowledge base, or challenges traditional norms of gender, then return from that intervention may be highest for those women impede most by conservative social norms. It may be interpreted as non-monotonic effect of restrictedness across caste and religion. The purpose of this paper is to examine non-monotonicity hypothesis of social restrictedness for the intervention MNREGA.

Using primary data from three districts of West Bengal, the paper has tried to see whether there exists any non-monotonic effect of restrictedness on household’s “expenditure on consumption,” “expenditure on temptation good,” “expenditure on women’s health” and “expenditure on children’s education and health” across castes and religion. The sample is relatively homogeneous in terms of socio economic status, but differs in affiliation to castes and religion.

As a result of participating the labor force through MNREGA, the contribution of women to household earnings increases, which may potentially increase their bargaining power within the household. The conventional notion is that women who are least fettered by social norms should get maximum benefits of participation in MNREGA. However, the analysis shows that women of upper caste (UC) community have been able to exercise the highest level of agency in allocating household resources compared to the women of scheduled caste community. It substantiates the non-monotonicity of restrictedness of social norms across castes and religions. Agency of Muslim women has not increased significantly compared to the UC women.

The study suffers from usual limitations of sampling.

There is hardly any study deciphering MNREGA from the perspective of caste, religion and gender.

The authors study the effect of access to smartphones on the socio-economic well-being in the case of rural base of the pyramid (BoP) women. While smartphone access may have its benefits, the paper suggests augmenting access with a sociotechnical intermediary (STI) that facilitates training and online community building to enhance the well-being outcomes.

The authors conducted a survey from three groups of women from rural West Bengal (India) – (1) who do not own smartphones, (2) who have their own smartphones and (3) who receive smartphones and STI support (over two years). The authors evaluate the effect of access to smartphones and STI support on social well-being (including structural social capital and empowerment) and economic well-being (including entrepreneurial intent and subjective economic well-being).

The analysis results suggest a high relationship between smartphone ownership and higher structural social capital, empowerment (in terms of freedom of movement) and entrepreneurial intent. The authors further find these effects to be enhanced amongst women who received smartphones and support from STI.

The authors attribute this enhanced well-being amongst women with smartphones and STI support to peer-learning and cultivation of virtual role models facilitated by the STI through creation of intra-community online groups. The results have significant policy implications for socio-economic well-being of rural BoP women.

This paper aims to provide an overview of recent research on accountability of local and state governments in India.

The Downsian theory of electoral competition is used as a departure point for classifying different sources of government accountability failures. Subsequent sections deal with each of these sources in turn: limited voter participation and awareness; ideology, honesty and competence of political parties and electoral candidates; capture by elites; clientelism and vote-buying. Each section starts by explaining the relevant departure from the Downsian framework and then reviews available empirical evidence in the Indian context for each of these possible “distortions”, besides effects of related policy interventions. The final section summarizes the lessons learnt, and the fresh questions that they raise.

The paper describes a range of possible reasons that limit the effectiveness of elections as a mechanism inducing governments to be accountable to their citizens and reviews the evidence available from the Indian context concerning each of these.

The contribution of the paper is to provide an overview and perspective of recent literature on political economy problems affecting performance of state and local governments in India.

Notes the unfavourable female‐male ratio in India and its declining trend. In addition, the convergence of this ratio for the scheduled castes towards that of the general castes is noted as well as the slight decline in this ratio for scheduled tribals. A reason for this trend is suggested. Gender inequality is explored by summarising the results of survey of wives in the Midnapore area of West Bengal. Wives in four villages were interviewed so as to include tribals (Santals), and non‐tribals, all of whom were Hindus. The socio‐economic characteristics of those interviewed are first summarised and general information provided about the survey. The results are then used to consider several aspects of inequality in relation to sons and daughters, to gauge the influence of wives on the welfare of their children and to compare the socio‐economic status of wives in comparison to husbands. Comparisons are made between Santal and non‐Santal gender preferences and socio‐economic behaviour.