Search results

After being forced to flee their respective home countries, Sri Lankan Tamils and Rohingya refugees resettled in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. This study attempts to explore the extent to which the state has provided means for integration in the absence of refugee protection laws and citizenship.

A qualitative research approach was used, including in-depth interviews (IDIs) and focus group discussions (FGDs) with participants from both refugee groups between 2019 and early 2020. A representative sample of male and female Sri Lankan Tamils, living in or outside government camps, in urban and rural areas, was included (total number = 75). Similarly, a representative sample of the Rohingya refugee community was included for this study (n = 44).

Despite constraints imposed by inadequate infrastructure, the study finds that Sri Lankan Tamils and Rohingyas both show to be progressively integrated in local society and have been capable of fulfilling some important basic livelihood needs, especially with regards to education. Some areas for improvement are identified as well, most urgently in terms of health and accommodation.

Other states in India, as well as in similar low-income countries (LICs), could learn from the current case study with regards to administering workable policies for small groups of refugees.

With minimal state facilitation and within the context of limited legal backing, refugee groups have somewhat managed to re-built their lives. This study identifies the threshold of requirements that make this achievement possible and suggests what more could be done to further advance the current state.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the structure of employment in the most urbanized state in India during the period 1983-2010. The paper also analyses the determinants of growth of farm employment in urban areas in the state of Tamil Nadu.

The paper compares trends in employment in Tamil Nadu with that of the country as a whole. In order to see whether there is evidence of Lewisian labor transfer, the study examines labor transfer between sectors and percentage distribution of workers in the rural and urban areas.

The paper finds that employment in the entire non-agricultural sector slowed down in 2009-2010 compared to 2004-05 in Tamil Nadu. The share of employment in primary sector in urban areas increased more sharply, experiencing slow economic transformation in the post-reform years. The analysis reveals that rapid rural-urban transformation could be one reason for more people in the primary sector in urban areas.

Studying the employment structure at the district level, for which analyzing the district-level data collected and published by state’s Bureau of Economics and Statistics is required, would be helpful to discern a deeper influence of urbanization on structure of employment.

The results suggest that the issue needs further examination with analysis of the district-level data. Policy reforms should, therefore, be suitably oriented toward tapping the employment potential of both unorganized and organized segments in manufacturing, trade and services sectors. It is also necessary to ensure robust economic growth that creates decent jobs for all young educated people in the state.

The study explains the domination of farm employment in urban Tamil Nadu. Tamil Nadu is considered to be the most urbanized state in India. The reason for an increase in the share of primary sector employment in urban areas of Tamil Nadu is due to high urbanization in the post-reform periods.

Describes the results of a research survey conducted at the Department of Library and Information Science, University of Madras, Chennai, India which examines features provided in online public access catalogues (OPACs) in Tamil Nadu. OPACs are recent developments in libraries in India in general and Tamil Nadu in particular. A review of the literature reveals that only a few studies on OPACs in India have been conducted and there is no comprehensive study about the OPACs in Tamil Nadu. A sample of 50 libraries in Tamil Nadu were selected at random, out of which 36 responded. The analysis of the data represents the state‐of‐the‐art of the libraries in the summer of 2002. The major findings of the survey reveal emerging trends in OPAC.

The need for continuing professional education (CPE) for librarians is discussed. The libraries and educational institutions in Tamil Nadu are briefly examined and attempts at CPE programmes in India are traced. A draft plan for CPE for librarians in Tamil Nadu is presented and the New Education Policy of the Government of India and role of the UGC and staff colleges are highlighted. Obstacles to CPE are listed.

The purpose of this paper is to assess congestion as the simultaneous occurrence of desirable health output (e.g. maternal admissions) along with undesirable output (e.g. still births (SB)), in emergency obstetric care settings of public hospitals in Tamil Nadu.

The study is based on a cross-sectional data set of 97 public hospitals collected by the statistical cell of Tamil Nadu Health Systems Project for the year 2013–2014. The study uses three inputs – beds, doctors and nurses; three desirable outputs – maternal admissions, neonatal admission and live births; and four undesirable outputs – SB, intra-uterine deaths, neonatal deaths and maternal deaths. Congestion analysis, a variant of the data envelopment analysis (DEA) method and slack analysis, has been applied to detect an excessive use of some inputs or a shortfall in some outputs across these hospitals. Furthermore, the association between congestion and some contextual factors has been examined.

On an average, the hospitals in our sample can increase the total amount of outputs by 62.8 percent by improving overall efficiency, and about 34.2 percent of this inefficiency can be attributed to congestion. Analysis of sub-samples showed that government hospitals at the taluk level have higher congestion than district headquarter hospitals. Congestion seems to decrease with greater hospital volume up to a limit; beyond that, it increases in obstetric care settings.

Hospital-based efficiency studies in the Indian context, so far, have estimated relative efficiency among hospitals using the classical DEA method, but ignoring adverse health outcomes. Congestion analysis, an advance in the DEA method, considers how much the desirable outputs can be increased as also how much undesirable outputs affect efficiency.

Domestic violence is the manifestation of gender and power within intimate and family relationships. How women make sense of their experience of violence may be influenced by the presence or absence of collective hermeneutical resources. In spaces where feminist interpretive resources are not available, women’s authentic experiences tend to be erased, misunderstood, and misrepresented even in institutions that are meant to protect them. This chapter critically examines one such institution – survey research. While surveys show the extent of a social problem, it is essential to examine whether surveys highlight or erase the various ways in which women struggle with violence. This leads to the questions: What hermeneutical resources do women have to make sense of their experience of violence? How do surveys erase or enhance collective understanding of women’s experience of violence? This chapter juxtaposes the findings about women’s attitudes toward domestic violence as measured by the Tamil Nadu National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 2016 with ethnographic data gathered from rural Tamil Nadu, India. In the survey, more than 70% of the women justified domestic violence against women. In contrast, analysis of ethnographic data revealed that women rarely justified violence but rather struggled with violence in three ways – subverting violence, calibrating violence, and collaborating against violence. Where there were organizing structures, such as a union, women resorted to collaborative action. Thus, surveys that measure women’s attitudes toward domestic violence as static mind-sets erase how consciousness is an outcome of political organizing that provides marginalized groups with liberational interpretive resources.

This study aims to provide a methodology for constructing farm household-level adaptation metrics for agriculture and water sectors. The livelihood of farm households is at risk now and in the foreseeable future, as both agriculture and water sectors are vulnerable to climate variability, particularly in developing nations. Adaptation is critical to protect their livelihood. Vulnerable farmers have adopted various adaptation mechanisms to counteract negative impacts of climate variability, though the extent varies temporally and spatially.

It is, therefore, imperative to understand current adaptation practices for successfully implementing them. A few studies have emerged so far in this context, investigating different issues associated with micro-level adaptation strategies related to agriculture and water sectors, e.g. output and cost-effectiveness, and constraints related to farm, household and institutional levels.

While such analysis is critical to enhance micro-level adaptation measures, there is a felt need to formulate adaptation metrics that can investigate the underlying factors in an integrated manner. For empirical assessment, 146 farmers were interviewed from different agro-ecological zones of Tamil Nadu, India, regarding seven adaptation measures, such as micro-irrigation, rainwater harvesting, resistant crops, use of bio-fertilisers, crop insurance, income diversification and community-based efforts.

These adaptation measures were evaluated through an Analytical Hierarchy Process using four criteria: effective awareness, economic viability, individual and institutional compatibility and flexibility and independent benefits.

The present study provides a methodology to identify barriers that limit implementation of adaptation measures, and enable target-oriented policy measures to promote appropriate adaptation strategies at the local level.

The tsunami that swept the shores of Sri Lanka on December 26, 2004, killed over 30,000 people regardless of their ethnic or religious affiliations. This article deals with a different conflict – one fashioned by human beings, which has caused the loss of an estimated 70,000 lives. The vast majority of the lives lost have been from the minority Tamil population. The basic argument of this article is that the desire to uphold a unitary state in Sri Lanka established by the British colonial rulers in 1833 has really been the desire to establish Sinhala hegemony over the minorities, particularly the Tamil minority.

This study analyzes the impact of COVID-19 on agricultural production in South India by evaluating the influence of market channels and socioeconomic conditions on the production decisions of farmers during two key cropping seasons. We base our analysis on primary data from 200 marginal, small and medium farmers, primarily focusing on the key seasonal crops, namely paddy and black gram.

We studied the downstream supply chains of paddy and black gram crops in the district of Villupuram, situated in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Using a Bi-Probit model, we analyzed the production decisions of marginal, small and medium farmers engaged in paddy and black gram cultivation. Various factors are considered, including farmers’ socioeconomic characteristics, gender, market channels accessed and the coping strategies employed.

After the easing of lockdown measures in June 2020, our research revealed substantial disruptions in agricultural production during the critical Kharif and Rabi seasons. Most farmers refrained from returning to their fields during the Kharif season; those who did produced millet as the main crop. Factors such as choice of market channels in previous seasons, economic status, access to all-weather roads, labor availability, gender and coping strategies played an important role in the return to production in the subsequent Kharif and Rabi seasons.

Our data revealed several interesting threads related to price volatility, irrigation and access to markets and their impact on food security. The role of intermediaries and market channels in providing liquidity emerges as an important aspect of farmers' choice of markets. The pandemic impacted all these factors, but a detailed analysis was beyond the scope of this study.

We also find that resilience to economic shocks varies not only by economic status but also by gender and social groups. Farmers with female members are more likely to be resilient, and marginal and small farmers primarily belong to social groups that are economically less developed.

This study contributes to the literature on factors influencing farmer choice and decision-making and provides nuances to discussions by analyzing crop-specific supply chains, highlighting the critical role of socioeconomic factors. It also highlights the role of demographics and infrastructural factors like access to all-weather roads and access to markets that influence farmers’ production decisions.

This chapter examines the manner in which a disaster-affected population of artisanal fishers relocated inland to new sites following the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 experienced and adapted to problems of water quality, scarcity, sanitation, and drainage. While numerous studies of conflicts over water tend to focus on issues of equitable access (see Anand, 2011), this chapter seeks to link the problem to the contested priorities driving land and resource use and access. I show how inland relocation negatively impacted households, making it harder to sustain livelihoods due to distance from the coast, while imposing new costs including that of commodified and scarce water, locational deficiencies, and the structural weaknesses of new housing. Placed in a historical context, the problem of water can be seen as an aspect of the long-term problem of ecologically unequal exchange pitting local artisanal fisher communities against an aggressively state-supported commercial fishery sector. The continuity I seek to hone in on is the pattern of imposing costs on fishers while enabling the alienation and privatization of coastal resources. Taking water not only as a vital substance presenting questions of access and quality but also as a problem of drainage and effluence enables a fuller consideration of how the unequal distribution of costs on poorer populations became legitimized in the name of recovery. At the same time, the chapter also highlights the manner in which fishers refused to remain docile subjects of power and used their agency and autonomy in adapting to and sometimes refusing the terms of relocation.