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More details/abstract: Taking a historical perspective this paper explores the phasing out of 'bonded' labour in agriculture and its reappearance in the village-based powerloom industry in the Tiruppur region of Tamil Nadu, India. Focussing on a village outside Tiruppur, we trace the gradual transformation, and ultimate disappearance of forms of labour bondage in agriculture. In this region bondedness in agriculture changed in a number of significant ways, before giving way by about the 1970s to primarily casual and contract-based labour arrangements. Around the same time, small-scale powerloom workshops, which are highly labour intensive and increasingly dependent on migrant labour, began to mushroom in the village, leading to the reintroduction of bonded labour, but this time in the context of rural industrial employment. We explore how debt bondage was introduced and how it affects the working lives of both migrants and nonmigrants. The paper examines the differences and similarities between past agricultural and current industrial labour bondage, and how it is experienced and talked about by both employers and workers. This is a download from OpenDocs at the Institute of Development StudiesDe Neve and Carswell -Jan2011

Social protection has emerged as a key driver of development policy at the beginning of the 21 st century. It is widely considered a 'good thing' that has the potential not only to alleviate poverty and vulnerability but also to generate more transformative outcomes in terms of empowerment and social justice. Based on an ethnographic study of the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), India's flagship social protection policy, this article takes a critical look at what this policy's 'success' consists of. The study was carried out in Tamil Nadu, a state widely presented as a 'success' in terms of MGNREGA's implementation, and describes who participates in the scheme and how success is understood and expressed at different social and bureaucratic levels. In terms of MGNREGA's outcomes, we conclude that the scheme is benefitting the poorest households -and Dalits and women in particular -especially in terms of providing a safety net and as a tool for poverty alleviation. But the scheme does more than that. It has also produced significant transformative outcomes for rural labourers, such as pushing up rural wage levels, enhancing low-caste workers' bargaining power in the labour market and reducing their dependency on high-caste employers. These benefits are not only substantial but also transformative in that they affect rural relations of production and contribute to the empowerment of the rural labouring poor. However, in terms of creating durable assets and promoting grassroots democracy, the scheme's outcomes are much less encouraging.

This article focuses on practices and meanings of time and waiting experienced by poor, low-class Dalits and Muslims in their routine encounters with the state in India. Drawing on ethnographic research from Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, it presents experiences of waiting around queuing and applying for paperwork, cards, and welfare schemes, in order to examine the role of temporal processes in the production of citizenship and citizen agency. An analysis of various forms of waiting-'on the day', 'to and fro', and 'chronic' waitingreveals how temporal processes operate as mechanisms of power and control through which state actors and other mediators produce differentiated forms of citizenship and citizens. Temporal processes and their material outcomes, we argue, are shaped by class, caste and religion, while also drawing on-and reproducing-gendered identities and inequalities. However, rather than being 'passive' patients of the state, we show how ordinary people draw on money, patronage networks and various performative acts in an attempt to secure their rights as citizens of India.

This article asks how labour markets are changing in the context of wider transformations in the rural economy. Drawing on evidence from two villages in southern India, which are both close to, and deeply affected by, a major textile industry cluster, the article examines local labour markets, arguing that labour market segmentation is not simply caste‐based. While some Dalits from one village have gained access to jobs in export markets, the same group of Dalits from another village have not. Furthermore, different groups of Dalits have had very different experiences of accessing jobs in urban areas, and the article shows that barriers to entry are located more in the rural social economy than in the urban industry. It is argued that villages only a few miles apart have very different local labour markets because they are uniquely and variously embedded in local institutions that interact with economic transformations in contingent ways. The article shows that having an industry on your doorstep means very different things for different people.

Focusing on the area of Kigezi, in south‐western Uganda, this article examines land use change over a 50‐year period. It shows that Kigezi, an area long considered to be suffering the effects of overpopulation, has never suffered the environmental catastrophes that have long been predicted. Instead, research suggests that farmers have successfully managed their land and maintained productivity.

Drawing on research from southern Ethiopia this article presents evidence that non-farm and off-farm activities are carried out by a significant proportion of adults and make an important contribution to livelihoods. It shows that there is a high involvement of women in diversification and that the contribution of diversification activities to cash incomes is particularly important for poorer households. The single most important activity is trading, while labouring for others is also important. The paper also shows the need for greater historical depth in the understanding of livelihood diversification. In highland Wolayta non-farm activities (particularly trading and labouring for others) have a long history. In the case of the latter people worked as labourers as part of a set of arrangements that enabled them to gain access to key resources. These arrangements were deeply embedded in complex social relations. As these institutional arrangements have changed, so 'diversification activities' have become more visible. Consideration of the historical and social contexts is thus critical for a firm understanding of livelihood change and the changing role and importance of diversification activities. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This paper contributes to an empirical and theoretical understanding of democracy and political participation in India through an ethnographic study of the meanings attached to voting in rural Tamil Nadu. Based on a study of voting in a rural constituency during the 2009 national elections, the paper explores the variety of motivations that compel people to vote. It explores how voting is informed by popular understandings of rights and duties as citizens, programmatic policies and their local implementation, commitment to caste and party loyalties, and authority of charismatic leaders. The paper explores the roots of the political consciousness and rights awareness that underpin high levels of electoral participation. It suggests that elections form unique moments that allow ordinary people to experience an individual sense of citizenship and of democracy itself while at the same time allowing them to pursue projects of recognition, respect and assertion as members of communities. It is precisely this dual feature that makes voting so enduringly attractive to India's contemporary electorate.