State, social policy and subaltern citizens in adivasi India

Abstract

Abstract

Social policy with tunnel vision: problems of state efforts to curb adolescent pregnancy in post 1988 Brazil

“…(In)visibility and what about a citizen is made legible by the state has repercussions for the access to rights and resources (Scott, 1998;Brown, 2009;Hildebrandt & Chua, 2017;Chemmencheri, 2015). If an aspect of a citizen's life remains invisible to the state, it cannot be addressed by policy (Brown, 2009;Chemmencheri, 2015;Hildebrandt & Chua, 2017). The concept of rhetorical silence is helpful in understanding the link between legibility and redistribution: the absence of someone's identity from government data does not mean that it is not there, but that it is being ignored (Brown, 2009).…”

“…Following that, affirmative action and universalist policies aiming at improving the nonwhite populations' access to health care have been considered (Caldwell, 2017). However, visibility does not necessarily translate into redistribution (Chemmencheri, 2015). In the case of residents of the peripheries of São Paulo, for example, despite the recognition of Brazilians' universal rights in the 1988 Constitution, this recognition did not translate into equal access to urban spaces, practically denying the rights of the urban poor to the city (Holston, 2009;Fausto & Fausto, 2014).…”

“…This laid the foundation for the construction of adolescents' sexual citizenship and the extent to which any sexual and reproductive health policy could take structural inequalities and adolescents' various realities into account. Employing the concept of rhetorical silence, it is clear that the absence of concepts such as race and gender from these policy documents has a meaning in itself: these aspects of adolescents' realities, which are not purely medical or merely based on income, cannot be addressed by policy (Caldwell, 2017;Brown, 2009;Chemmencheri, 2015). By not recognising these social factors, health policy makers working on the PROSAD, did not take into account possible social factors that would hinder adolescents from following governmental guidelines to prevent them from reproducing (Chemmencheri, 2015;Hildebrant & Chua, 2017;Horta & de Sena, 2010).…”

“…The planning of pregnancies was only enquired about in the 2010s and fathers remained invisible, for example (DATASUS, 2008a;SIAB, n.d.-a;n.d.-b;n.d.-c;Ripsa, 2000Ripsa, -2012. This disconnect between one government body's discourse about adolescents, and others' indicators about them illustrates how fragmented states can be and that awareness about subjects' intersecting identities does not necessarily translate in their recognition (Rose & Miller, 2008;Chemmencheri, 2015). In the case of adolescents in the 2000s, it is clear from the comparison between the policy directories of the SPE and the health indicators of the same time period, that while some state officials had one image of the group, others did not.…”

Sustainable Community Development or Voluntourism: Sustainable Housing in Rural Maharashtra

“…The recovery of wildlife and flora in Yawal has been the result of a combination of efforts between the scheduled tribe (ST) located in the area and the Forestry Department backed by the Foresttry Rights Act (2006) (See Sharma 2017) and other institutions, e.g., the Forestry Department. The FRA is seen by some as a tool for a reconfigured relationship between tribal (adivasis) and government (Chemmencheri 2015). However, there have been efforts to relocate five villages in the area-including the focus of this study on the assumption of misuse of forest by tribals-leading to further uncertainties and underlying the tenuous issues of property rights.…”