Economic and Political Weekly最新文献

Despite the overall achievements, Kerala's handling of its first case of community transmission in the coastal village of Poonthura came under severe criticism. In this article, the potential pathways to the resistance raised by the fisherfolk in Poonthura are explored, thereby placing their responses as historically and politically embedded ones.

Since October 2014, the Government of India has worked towards the goal of eliminating open defecation by 2019 through the Swachh Bharat Mission. Since October 2014, the Government of India (GOI) has worked towards the goal of eliminating open defecation by 2019 through the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM). In 2014, several of the co-authors reported on a survey of rural sanitation behaviour in North India (Coffey et al 2014) conducted by the Research Institute for Compassionate Economics (r.i.c.e.). Different statistical methods produce slightly different numbers, but results from a wide range of approaches used concur that approximately 40% to 50% of rural people in these states defecated in the open in late 2018. The 2014 survey used a multistage sampling strategy to select households: first, districts were purposively selected to match the state-level trend in rural open defecation between the 2001 and 2011 Censuses; second, villages were randomly drawn using proportional-to-size sampling from a frame taken from the Government of India's District Level Health Survey; third, households were selected using an in-field randomisation technique similar to that used for Pratham's Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) survey.

Survey evidence from rural North India showing persistent solid fuel use despite increases in liquefied petroleum gas ownership is presented. Although three-quarters of survey households in these states had LPG, almost all also had a stove that uses solid fuels. Among those owning both, almost three-quarters used solid fuels the day before the survey. Household economic status, relative costs of cooking fuels, gender inequality, and beliefs about solid fuels were important contributors to high solid fuel use. To realise the full health benefits of the LPG expansion, attention must now be turned towards encouraging exclusive LPG use.

An analysis of child height-for-age using the newly released data from the National Family Health Survey-4 indicates that the average child height increased by about four-tenths of a height-for-age standard deviation between 2005 and 2015. Although important, this increase is small relative to India's overall height deficit, and relative to economic progress; children in India remain among the shortest in the world. It is unsurprising that the increase in height-for-age has been modest because none of the principal factors responsible for India's poor child height outcomes have substantially improved over the last decade. Familiar patterns of regional, sex, and caste disadvantage are reflected in child height in 2015.

In India, 59% of urban slums are "non-notified" or lack legal recognition by the government. We use data on 2,901 slums from four waves of the National Sample Survey spanning nearly 20 years to assess the relationship between a slum's legal status and the severity of deprivation in access to basic services, including piped water, latrines, and electricity. Our analysis reveals a progressive reduction in deprivation the longer that a slum has been notified. These findings suggest that legally recognizing non-notified slums and targeting government aid to these settlements may be crucial for improving health outcomes and diminishing urban disparities.