Journal of Social and Economic Development

Transcription

1 Journal of Social and Economic Development Vol. IV July December 2002 No.2 Articles Spatial Poverty Traps in Rural India: An Exploratory Analysis of the Nature of the Causes 123 Amita Shah Time and Cost Overruns of the Power Projects in Kerala 148 N. Vijayamohanan Pillai and K. P. Kannan Economic and Environmental Status of Drinking Water Provision in Rural India 170 M. Ravichandran and S. Boopathi The Politics of Minority Languages: Some Reflections on the Maithili Language Movement 199 Manish Kumar Thakur Primary Education and Language in Goa: Colonial Legacy and Post-Colonial Conflicts 213 Afonso Botelho Inequality and Relative Poverty 235 N. Sreenivasa Iyengar Book Reviews Peter Ronald desouza (ed.). Contemporary India Transitions. 243 Carol Upadhya S. Mahendra Dev, Piush Antony, V. Gayathri and R. P. Mamgain. 244 Social and Economic Security in India M. Thangaraj Niraja Gopal Jayal and Sudha Pai (eds.). Democratic Governance in India: Challenges of Poverty, Development, and Identity 249 Anand Inbanathan

2 Naila Kabeer. Bangladeshi Women Workers and Labour Market Decisions: The Power to Choose V. Gayathri 251 K. P. Kalirajan, G. Mythili and U. Sankar. Accelerating Growth Through Globalization of Indian Agriculture 253 D. M. Diwakar Oliver Morrissey and Michael Tribe (eds.). Economic Policy and Manufacturing Performance in Developing Countries 258 N. S. Siddharthan Ronaldo Seroa da Motta (eds.). Environmental Economics and Policy Making in Developing Countries Current Issues 260 K. N. Ninan Ranjani K. Murthy (ed.). Building Women's Capacities: Interventions in Gender Transformation V. Gayathri 262 Books Received 264 Referees 265 Index 266 ISSN Website:

3 Spatial Poverty Traps in Rural India: An Exploratory Analysis of the Nature of the Causes Amita Shah * Analysis of the regional pattern of poverty in India reveals a number of spatial poverty traps, characterised by low levels of geographical capital and social-political marginalisation. Prima facie, these include vast tracts of dryland regions in the westernsouthern regions, and forest-based economies in the central-eastern regions. Apparently, poverty as reflected in the official statistics, depicts a rather contrary scenario with dryland regions having lower incidence of poverty despite their adverse agro-climatic conditions vis-à-vis forest-based regions. This could be largely due to the relatively more diverse and developed market economies, out-migration as an important livelihood strategy and the favourable agrarian conditions with better rights over land and other natural resources. Apparently, all these factors are missing in forest-based economies. This paper analyses the nature and causes of chronic poverty in the two sets of regions in a comparative framework. * Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Gota, Ahmedabad gidrad1@sancharnet.in The author is grateful to Aasha Kapur Mehta, Kate Bird and Karne Moore for their comments on the earlier drafts.

4 Time and Cost Overruns of the Power Projects in Kerala N. Vijayamohanan Pillai* K. P. Kannan** Delays in project implementation and the attendant cost overruns have been a regular feature of the electric power sector in Kerala. Almost all public projects, including the prestigious major hydroelectric project of Idukki, have been victims of time and cost overruns owing to several avoidable factors, labour disputes being singled out as the prime villain. This paper analyses the cost of inefficiency involved in the time and cost overruns in the power projects of KSEB, and their possible causes. Quite obviously it came up through the waste, Rejects through ignorance or apathy That passage back. The problem must be faced; And life go on - Rou Fuller ( The Image ) * Associate Fellow, Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram. vijayamohan@cds.ac.in ** Fellow and Indian Planning Commission Chair Professor of Development Economics, at the Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram. He is currently working as an Expert Member of the Secretariat of the World Commission on Social Dimension of Globalisation at the ILO, Geneva. kpkannan@vsnl.com

5 Economic and Environmental Status of Drinking Water Provision in Rural India M. Ravichandran* and S. Boopathi** Drinking water, a renewable natural resource with no substitute, is a basic human necessity. Despite the efforts of the Centre and the states, at least one-fifth of the rural population is still deprived of this facility. Even where it is provided, the socio-economic and environmental issues still persist. This paper attempts to take stock of the economic and environmental status of drinking water supply in India over the last decade. It emphasises the need to take cognisance of economic and environmental consideration at all the three stages, viz., planning, implementation and maintenance of the source, to achieve sustainability. * Reader, Department of Economics, Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli. ** Research Scholar, Department of Economics, Bharathidasan University, Tiruchirappalli.

6 The Politics of Minority Languages: Some Reflections on the Maithili Language Movement Manish Kumar Thakur * Post-Independence India has witnessed varied mass mobilisations over the issue of language. Such mobilisations have taken place at three levels: (1) the national where the question of Hindi versus English has exercised great many minds and led to intense conflicts; (2) the regional where the vernacular languages were projected and then made the basis of politico-administrative organisation of Indian states and, (3) the intra-state, which happens to be the provenance of minority languages and where attempts are being made by the speech communities concerned to get legal-constitutional recognition for their langages. Against this backdrop, the present paper examines the chequered career of the Maithili Language Movement as an instance of the politics of minority languages, and attempts to explain its waxing and waning. Overall, it offers a critical assessment of the movement in order to underline its future potentialities and constraints. * Lecturer, Department of Sociology, Goa University, Goa , India.

7 Primary Education and Language in Goa: Colonial Legacy and Post-Colonial Conflicts Afonso Botelho * Languages are a privileged means of social, economic and political mobility. In multilingual countries, like India, they are functionally distributed and the relationship among the different language categories, viz., official language, mother tongue, etc., is hierarchical. Mother tongue languages evoke strong emotions. However, socially less prestigious mother tongues are often discarded in favour of languages useful for social and economic advancement. The language shifts at home, school and other spheres are determined by the social, cultural and political contexts. This paper examines language shifts in the context of primary education and language in colonial and post-colonial Goa. The language shifts and the consequent controversies in Goa are manifestations of two opposing forces: the instrumental draw of language assimilations and the primordial pull of language preservation. The latter regard language shift as pathological and ubiquitous; the former view it as perfectly normal. * Senior Lecturer, Department of Sociology, Rosary College of Commerce and Arts, Navelim, Salcete, Goa