Archives

The Institute for Development and Communication (IDC) is a premier autonomous research, training and evaluation organisation of North-West of India.

Gender Studies Unit

1993-94

Objective of the Mahila Mandal programme is to introduce the spirit of voluntarism and provide an integrated thrust to the services provided by a number of agencies. Findings of the report have been paucity of funds, untrained staff, ad hoc nature of programmes etc. Stresses the need for evaluating the programme in totality. Recommends reformulation of area specific activities, provision of corresponding trained human resource input and support of the programme with adequate material resources.

Punjab has the lowest female work participation rates in the country, particularly within tertiary sector. Female participation is negligible in areas of high growth such as transport and communication and trade and commerce. Work for compulsion for subsistence or to augment family income are the major trends uncovered by a survey of the four industries- Textile, Hosiery, Sports and Rubber. The report concludes that majority of the female workforce are unskilled or semi-skilled and engaged in the unorganized sector.

1994-95

Book deals with atrocities on women, rapeand its legal provisions; rights of women; with Village Panchayats and their rights; Shaamlaat Land and Panchayats and women and their physical body.

1996-97

Policy plan for women reflects the first systematic effort of the state government to formulate and implement programmes relating to women; aims at sensitizing women and the community to issues related to gender justice and women’s development, to provide women with qualitative access to education, skills, health and other infrastructural benefits, to create conditions for women to have access to higher education, to check the spread of HIV especially among women, victimization of women and to ensure productive participation of women in employment and developmental activities.

Serves as a guide book for Daie Trainer, deals with what precaution supposed to be taken at the time of pregnancy, delivery (prenatal, natal and postnatal) issues.

1997-98

Questions the basis of patriarchy in order to highlight the need for a change in conditions responsible for gender injustice and women’s under-development; the basic assumptions and devise strategy to transform the conditions of patriarchy; focuses more on gender justice rather than logical or political quality of genders; highlights need for identifying the interventions or strategies, which promote the framework of justice; prepares to sensitize the youth to need for having a holistic perspective on gender justice.

2004-05

Covers aspects like gender audit of the selected NGOs and departments, capacity building, mainstreaming gender into organizational activities of the departments and NGOs, bridging activities, building momentum on gender concerns, and area and target specific campaign against female foeticide.

2004-05

Culls out the factors that impinge on reproductive health, pertaining to the Muslim community. Thus, a communication strategy for the underserved Muslims areas of the reproductive services be evolved by using culturally sensitive approach for advocacy; thrust on regulator fertility, population control, and, women reproductive health with focus on the adolescents (especially, girls); a benchmark survey in three selected districts of Ahmedabad (Gujarat), Mewat (Haryana) and Mandi (Himachal Pradesh), has been conducted by selecting the rural and urban sites respectively.

Assesses the communication needs of the stakeholders of SJVN and RHEP projects particularly to evaluate the communication capacity of the SJVN and RHEP, especially, with reference to the communication needs of the stakeholders; make recommendations regarding communication strategy; systems, tools and products for ensuring effective interaction with the different stakeholders.

2006-07

Looks into the reproductive health, beliefs and practices of the adolescents in the Muslim Community; addresses the issue of reproductive health within a cultural content, discuss the life of the gateways; identifies the communication strategies that can be effectively implemented for intervention into the reproductive health behaviour of a particular cultural group.

2007-08

Scope of this project is not to detail all the factors that impinge on reproductive health but to cull out those that pertain to the Muslim community based in the different regions of the country. Muslim organizations recognised these cultural specificities and the role of the small families, particularly, in the context of the rights of the children to good health and decent upbringing, and the need for concern for the women’s health were articulated; culturally sensitive communication strategy for the underserved Muslim areas of reproductive services to be evolved for advocacy; needs for an advocacy plan and its action strategy so as to reach out to the underserved populations; focuses on the adolescents (especially girls) since they are the worst victims of apathy and ignorance.

Envisages the creation of a Gender Empowerment Committee in the Cooperative Department with the aim of providing its women members with economic sustenance, and to promote women’s development and gender justice; proposes that the women groups in the cooperatives (existing or to be created) be registered as NGOs and institutionalised through the existing administrative structure; provides the groups sustainability with the policy planning, management, integrative mechanisms with other sections of the department, linkages with the market, credit and technical skills for income generating ventures. At the village level, the women cooperative groups be the recipients of the resources generated by the department and utilise these for a product creation. At the block level, the gender empowerment committee will function as an implementing agency, while the district committees would perform the role of coordination. The State body would provide the policy initiatives.

In Punjab, the perspectives on policing have responded to the growing global ascendancy of the rights approach, irrespective of the gender, and have attempted to shift from overarching repressive state machinery to a more service-oriented functional organisation; the police are now expected to implement the citizen’s rights and discharge its responsibilities with the collaboration of the community; the police has been inaccessible to women and, as such, protecting women’s rights is challenging in the context of enforcement-oriented mechanisms and practices; women’s representation in the police force, the nature of their work, promotions, and division of the status, etc., need to be addressed; document contextualizes the gender issues in policing that need to be confronted to protect women from gender violence, and mainstreams the gender concerns within policing.

Punjab represents one of the most unfavourable conditions for the females; in 2001, the child sex ratio of 793 provided visibility to what was a common practice – sex determined pregnancy; every fifth girl child is missing or has not survived because of the gender bias; the increasing masculine sex ratios at one year of birth and at 5 years of age that reveals the cultural neglect; the girl child faces and results in higher mortality of the girl child in comparison to the male child. Combating Female Foeticide: A Perspective Plan maps the historical neglect of the girl child and of the missing numbers, evaluates the measures undertaken by the government departments to address the declining number of the girl children; suggests a life cycle approach to address the issues of gender deprivation and discrimination.

2008-09

Gender differentiation is a forefront concern that has been shaping the agenda of government policies, research and other social interventions. Holistic understanding of gender to evolve an interventionist strategy for combating gender violence and evolving gender justice needs to be placed in socio-cultural context to uncover the construction of gender subjectivities in its local flavours; project provides tools for assessing gender responsiveness of organizations working on gender justice; highlighting the gaps in intervention to combat violence against women; provides an overview of an action plan to equip organizations to intervene in the community by building stakeholder ownership and provides tools for mobilization and contact-specific intervention.

Aims to collaborate with a multi-sectoral platform of police and community partnered NGO, institutionalized as the Community Policing Resource Centres (CPRCs) at the Punjab state and district levels to address violence against women (VAW); have yet to incorporate the provisions of the Domestic Violence Act. The project is being undertaken in a three phased process; an evidence-based documentation to evolve training instruments that would be used by boundary partners ‘Phillaur Police Training Academy’ and district CPRC bodies to build gender sensitive capacities of police and health personnel’ disseminate information for the community on gender-friendly support services and the provisions of the Domestic Violence Act for women.

Project is a third in the series of a 15-years programme to map the extent and nature of Violence Against Women in Punjab; measure the gender gap in addressing violence against women by various stakeholders and to subsequently strengthen systematic efforts to promote gender justice.

2009-10

Aims to collaborate with a multi-sectoral platform of the police, and the community-partnered NGO, institutionalised as the Community Policing Resource Centres (CPRCs) at the Punjab State and District levels to address Violence Against Women (VAW); but yet to incorporate the provisions of the Domestic Violence Act. The project is being undertaken in a three-phased process. A gender analysis of CPRC and functionaries of the delivery system contextualised in the backdrop of the Domestic Violence Act would form an evidence-based documentation to evolve training instruments that would be used by the boundary partners, ‘Phillaur Police Training Academy’, and district CPRC bodies to build gender sensitive capacities of the police and health personnel.

Project is third in the series of a 15-year programme to map the extent and nature of Violence Against Women in Punjab; effort is to measure the gender gap in addressing violence against women by the various stakeholders, and to subsequently, strengthen systematic efforts to promote gender justice.

2010-11

Provides an overview of the State’s commitment to address the gender based violence; examines the concepts and key principles relating to gender based violence and refers to international obligations to protect women’s rights and human rights; highlights the role and responsibility of the police staff in different placements of policing related to gender; explores the procedures and protocols that protect, prevent and redress violence against women; deals with the specific forms of gender violence and their operational protocols devised to provide remedy to the gender victims; provides functions of key institutions providing supportive aid to gender based violence; provides for inclusion of the new methods to address gender violence and incorporate good practices.

Police stations have to be gender sensitive; women groups and human rights votaries have to be made stakeholders in the police station reforms. It is with this aim that the Altus Global Alliance Police Station Visitors Week (PSVW) 2010 had the gender theme. In 2010, citizens from 21 countries visited their local police stations to assess the police facilities and identify strong practices. In all, 2,584 women participated, constituting 42 per cent of the citizens. Women formed the largest number in Asia with 962 women among the threshold of the police station – in a socio-cultural milieu where women’s entry to the police station is generally shunned – ‘Women from the respectable families’ do not visit the police station, and that is the common refrain in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Nepal. Study has been pointed out that in the highly gender unequal societies and the societies with gender-typed roles, women lack community protection. In countries of South Asia, the police stations lack in human resources, they are insensitive to the gender needs and lack facilities to deal with, for instance, rape victims under trauma. India is better placed on the legal and constitutional commitments and has created adequate space for political gender-sensitive movement. During these visits to the police stations, it was found that in gender aware societies like, United States, women rights were politically and socially accepted, but in the police stations, gender discriminatory practices are still prevalent. The study mentions that most of the countries, excluding Russia, are attuned to provide progressive gender laws.

2005-06

Vision of the Swayamsidha, an Integrated Women’s Empowerment Programmes (IWEP) scheme is to bring about economic uplift of the rural women, specially the poor; a baseline survey under Swayamsidha was conducted in seven blocks of five districts (Amritsar, Ropar, Ludhiana, Faridkot, Muktsar) of Punjab to explore their employment, literacy level, health status, level of awareness regarding the government development and income generating schemes, gender issues and to capture their access to the minimum needs, such as, sanitation, safe drinking water, school, etc.

2011-12

Gender sensitive approach is integral to the safety and security of women. Women-related crimes are viewed outside the role of the police. Punjab police is also faced with peculiar gender concerns. Guide provides an action plan for checking violence against women. The programme is divided into two sections, i.e., development of the capacity building material, and sensitization of the police. The themes of gender sensitization are – Legal literacy and role of women’s cells, awareness regarding the forms of violence, labour laws and various other schemes. Reducing the incidents of violence against women and increasing the reporting of crime and responsibilities towards the women victims.

In Punjab, the social development index resonates with the most adverse child sex ratio in the country (793), sex-selective abortions, and reversals in infant mortality rate, and for the children under 5 years; the IMR and CMR are found to have increased between the period 1993-94 and 1999-2000 in contrast to the rest of India, where these rates have improved. This programme on Gender Justice that comprises of Creation of Gender Resource Centres at the grass roots level to guide all the gender activities at the village level with an aim to address the following: unfavorable gender status in Punjab, three sub-programmes to run through the Gender Resource Centers, to initiate economic and/or micro credit activity among women members, and, to increase use of the development services and promote gender rights; three programmes to address the violence against women (VAW) were also started; aimed at creating improved access and quality of health and education services programmes, improvement in the utilization of women-specific programmes and poverty reduction; also help to map the different forms of violence against women in accordance to the life stages, social placement, and different sites.

2002-03

Underlines the need for intervention to ensure that a girl child not only gets the right to birth, but also the right to a dignified life; raises the question, whether the decline in sex ratio can be attributed to easy access to technology or to the social practice of patriarchy; reveals that adverse sex ratio is accompanied by other unfavourable gender indices like wife beating, rape, bigamy, sexual abuse and dowry abuse. The districts which recorded an adverse sex ratio, also registered a higher incidence of violence against women. The child sex ratio declined sharply from 1980 onwards; infers that the era of terrorism, growth of religious fundamentalism, complete absence of political intervention, lack of gender sensitivity in planning, and failure to launch any social reform movement are some of the major factors which have contributed to the negation of a dignified life to the girl child in Punjab.

2020-21

Corporate healthcare has rather become an expensive consumable commodity of the market in India and Punjab; the public health infrastructure in Punjab is grossly inadequate and limited to meet the rising demand; corporate health system has brought a substantial burden, especially for the middle and poor households, particularly on women; report highlights some of the major issues which need urgent attention. Privatization affected all sections of the society, especially affected are the weaker sections, who in the dearth of public facilities have to depend on private providers; women face additional challenges; women’s healthcare need is an urgent call.  Women face several disadvantages in India and particularly in Punjab. Sex ratio and birth and child sex ratio are highly skewed in the country, and Punjab; sharp decline of sex-ratio from 1991 to 2001 (875 to 798 respectively) has improved to 846 in 2011, but it is still way below to substantiate the term balanced sex-ratio. The focus on reducing various forms of inequities in India has mostly concentrated on rural-urban inequities and income-based inequities, focus on gender has been missing both in research or empirical study and policymaking. Women lack access to and control over resources; looks into various aspects of the privatization of the health sector, its impact on households in general and women in particular and the diseases that affect women in particular in the state of Punjab. It also examines certain crucial issues pertaining to trends in different disease burden in Punjab with respect to gender the role of public and private sectors in healthcare provision. Brought out certain pressing issues in the heath sector in Punjab that need to be addressed to meet the needs of the population; health expenditure of the government has declined which has an adverse impact on the coverage of primary healthcare; finds that Punjab has progressed on several women and child-related health indicators; rural-urban differential and gender differential is also significant in the state; the proportion of ailing people is higher in rural than urban Punjab; report highlights areas need urgent attention: strengthen health infrastructure, lack of awareness on health programmes, high prices of medicines and overall healthcare cost, quality of medical care primarily in the rural areas.

2014-15

Gender in Indian elections continues to remain under-represented in numbers and ideological persuasions; elections echoed with issues, such as, girl child education, maternal health, job opportunities for the qualified, and protection from sexual abuse. Objective: to map the mandates for gender safety, development and rights in the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. Findings: women were projected as part of an inclusive growth model; 658 women candidates entered the electoral fray; 2014 elections had the highest (1.2); voters had increased options to elect women candidates in these elections; trend of increased women participation is also reflected in most national party candidatures; shift from a descriptive representation of women drawn from the family-based political strongholds to personal leadership took place in 2014; Indian elections for the first time provided for political inclusion of the third gender; sexual violence protests (Nirbhaya incident 2012) reflected shared concerns across the citizens, but provided a unifying electoral agenda; in the gender domain, these elections were about women safety; principal voice was protecting women from sexual violence; Modi proclaimed that, ‘Unless women are empowered, the country cannot develop’, or ‘women are equal partners in development’; politics of sanitation led by BJP was the other face of development agenda for women; Toilets were used as a symbol of denial of the basic rights; sexual abuse of dalits was acknowledged and the vulnerability of women with lack of sanitation options were promised toilets; political discourse remained more progressive and rights-based than the electoral articulations

2015-16

Book explores the new paradigm which has equipped the society and the governments to understand, predict and effectively intervene in different areas of human interaction – economic, social and political.  Behaviourism that was popular in the first half of the 20th century was based on the factually wrong assumption that our mind is a ‘blank slate’, and all human behaviour is a product of environment. It is now generally agreed that (a) while many human traits are heritable, human behaviour is far from being determined by genes, (b) humans may be rational but are cognitively limited, c) cognitive biases, heuristics and limitations play a major role in shaping the actual behaviour, judgement and decision making. New paradigm is yet to be internalized by most of those concerned with the making of public policy. UK, USA have set up special units to incorporate a behaviourally informed approach in public governance. Book inquired and explored the potential of this approach in respect of the basic and need based services concerning approvals, certification and documentation (birth and death registration, permits and licences) in India.

Punjab has the highest per cent age of dalits (30%) among the States. Agricultural labour is the largest rural worker category, accounting for 30.5 per cent of the total workforce, and a majority of this is of the dalits. the gap in the average monthly per capita consumption expenditure between the agriculture labour households and other rural households has increased.  This point to the deteriorating economic conditions of the dalit households in the rural Punjab over time; invisibility of the women labour and their extremely low labour participation, make the agricultural women insignificant in the agrarian sector debates; proposed research is look into overall agrarian crisis debate and to explore, through the available data and intensive field work, the nature of social conflict, the social, political and economic alliances that are emerging and the dalit women’s location within these

2016-17

Gender inequalities gap is large, despite economic gains in the State. Punjab has the lowest per capita expenditure on the social sector; a dearth of civil society initiatives that rest the onus for change and gender rights on the government. Found need for Evolve Gender as the Inclusive domain; focus on Institutions and processes; make gender change part of public discourse; focus on change and opportunities rather than doles and welfare; gender responsiveness/ sensitization at decision making levels to be mainstreamed; create gender segregated database; generate local resources through social capital; create private public partnership at different levels; Focus on Punjab specificities of gender inequalities. Recommendations: Needs a gender policy highlighting the gender perspective and an approach specific to issues related to Punjab; need to create a separate gender department; human capacity building and facilities be demarcated from gender facilities and resource creation; expenditure for Schedule Castes and minorities generic to the group be excluded from gender budgeting; increase allocations (proportion) to overcome gender constraints; all programmes to have gender responsive delivery systems and policy planning. Gender thrust from scheme level be incorporated at that of department rather than at India schemes level. Gender segregated data for target population and beneficiaries are work in progress in the departments

Gender in Punjab is characterized through the two landmarks – missing girl child phenomenon and identity based Khalistan movement – both manifest the pervasive nature of gender based violence(GBV). Unreported and changing forms of violence are captured to argue for a shift away from a form centric, women focused and, identity neutral claims to unbound the gender equality dynamics.

2017-18

Unfavourable child sex ratios with sharp declines in the past century. Objectives:to capture the variations across different populations in female deselection, cultural neglect and forms of gender violence and map the interconnection within the forms; explore the interconnection between social capital and shaping of male child preference in Punjab; explore the factors through which social capital can be mobilised and revitalised to examine practices and values that promote violence against women.Findings: social and the material conditions of groups manifest in female deselection. It is not a region in totality that deselects the girl child; Jat peasantry and scheduled caste populations exhibit different child sex ratios; Malwa in Punjab has registered the most adverse child sex ratios. Contrary to popular belief, the girl numbers are not rising due to concerted efforts of save the girl child campaigns but with changes in living patterns; poverty alleviation schemes such as the Atta-dal, health services and cash transfers are a support to the poo; girl survival is a byproduct of changing socioeconomic processes, not a vanquishing of the ‘mindset’ for a male child;  in peasant societies of Punjab – securing a son at any cost to battle a farm squeeze and enable the running of the family economy is now a failed cause for large numbers; demand for inheritance rights has legitimized dowry as share rather than a burden; lower income group, with no assets to transfer, the male child continues to be a crisis cover in times of need; daughter’s life chances are boosted with enhanced health and childcare services, buttressed with survival doles for parents including Shagun, Atta-Dal, NREGA schemes. In growing middle class, a male child preference is eclipsed. Reveals that boy numbers remain high in landowning and business families in the region; sons continue to provide parental care, dowry lavishly given as a parental choice, sexual commodification of women is rampant. Patriarchy is supported by the same processes that are providing survival conditions to daughters. More girls are being born, but gender violence in homes and public spaces is growing; backlash in homes with daughters and wives asserting for rights and dowry exchange is escalating; daughters in law (and sons) are now targeting the mothers-in-law and fathers-in-law with significant violence targeted at older couples.

Aimed to develop a policy document to redress and prevent VAW in public spaces; a framework to analyse, and tools to measure the delivery of justice for gender. The project involved two separate activities: to evolve indicators to monitor different public forms of gender violence for improved access to and subsequent delivery of justice; activity related to preparing a social audit instrument to mobilise stakeholders and citizens; aimed at building stakeholder capacities and citizen engagement with security services to advance protection of women. Objectives: to suggest measures to check violence against women in public spaces; to suggest measures to improve access to relief-redressal and resolution mechanisms for gender based violence; to evolve indicators to monitor different forms of gender violence to strategies for justice delivery mechanisms; to develop a framework for outreach activities to prevent gender based violence; to design a community mobilisation strategy to strengthen community stake holding in social institutions providing services for women safety and gender justice.  Findings: Gender based violence is part of the social processes and structures which makes the delivery of justice difficult, needs to be addressed at three levels. Criminal justice system needs to be geared to service delivery rather than law enforcement; social institutions need to be geared to provide protective measures to check GBV and preventive strategies to address the gender hierarchy and differentiating gender practices need to be initiated. Gender stakeholders need to be engaged at these three levels of change; need is to take measures to promote safety and promote conditions that do not allow the occurrence of abuse; strategies to combat gender violence needs to be broad based; three tiered approach is suggested for provisional justice for victims, the implementations of safety measures and protocols and a preventive programme. An additional proxy variable of the social acceptability rate is suggested to compute the GBV index. States and Districts are ranked on the basis of the index developed –categorizing into high, medium and low acceptance zones. The GBV index computed at the district level from macro data available from Crime in India is particularly useful in identifying districts unsafe for girls. This index and social acceptability rate can be used to map and mark unsafe sites. Indicators have been developed and compiled as baskets of indicators to measure different dimensions of GBV and access to justice. Indicator baskets are a list of indicators capturing a specified issue

Aimed to generate and strengthen alternative knowledge to understand and address female deselection and cultural neglect from a historical and human rights based life cycle approach. Dominant approaches to redress the adverse child sex ratios and female feticide have purported a form-centric analysis. Phase one to prepare evidence-based mapping of the extent of female deselection and cultural neglect across variation of populations and sites to explore the interconnections between social capital and shaping of male child preference; phase two aims to identify the gaps in state policy efforts with the causal factors affecting the missing girl. Findings: three interlinked factors that in combination generate a differential worth for male and female child; the intergenerational interdependency of the relations of patrilineal exchange and the politics of identity.Most affluent groups which reflect the worst child sex ratios and the poorest that have the healthiest demographic ratios in the 0-6 category; belies the popular notion that poverty discriminates on the basis of gender and prosperity promotes gender equality. NSSO data on monthly per capita consumption and expenditure from 1993 to 2012 reflects the upper-income groups of the richest and rich have highly unfavorable child sex ratios. Data indicate that the two lower bands (poorest and poor) in terms of income categories show higher survival of the girl child. The child sex ratios analysis according to land holding and landless from 1993 to 2011-12 in NSSO surveys show that girl child survival is higher in the landless categories at all three points of time in comparison to the landed peasants. Available data for two points of time of 2005-06 and 2011-12 shows that the among trader category the trend in child sex ratios have declined during this period in contrast to the upsurge in girl child numbers in the regular salaried service sector. Improvement in child sex ratios in the state of Punjab and Haryana are analyzed in their specific socio-economic and political contexts. Improvement in sex ratio can be attributed to securing girl child health and care in groups where cultural neglect of the girl child was affecting her survival such as in the landless group and scheduled caste populations. Schemes of health, nutrition, cash transfers and expenditure on basic needs such as education being shared by the government seems to have taken away the trigger of life deprivation, though male child preferences continue.Policy efforts have been selective and ad-hoc in transcending the divides of gender with the social relations and economic structures of these social positions not challenged. The study has explored the unequal life chances of boys and girls in families placed in various population groups, regions, and kinships. Need for a conceptual coherence in the definitions of gender within the policy domain; need for culturally relevant frameworks and methodologies for gendering governance

2018-19

By blocking gender from discussions on the formation of separate Dalit identity in Punjab, this literature on Dalit has rendered the Dalit women invisible and precluded the possibility of Dalit women being the locus of a different resistance. Punjab has the highest percentage of Dalit among the states of India, comprising over 30 percent of the total population. Agricultural labor is the largest rural worker category, accounting for 30.5 percent of total workers. A majority of this is Dalit and they continue to be at the bottom of social and economic ladder. The aim of this study is to investigate how Dalit women are located in the political economy of agrarian transformation in Punjab; explore the changing agrarian political economy of the state and contestation over village commons; the changes in production relations as a consequence of land acquisitions, land use transformation and competing claims over village commons; and how a Dalit woman’s livelihood options is conditioned by these changes. Findings are:Punjab has the highest percentage of Dalits among the states of India, comprising over 31.9percent of the total population, and their share in total population has been steadily increasing in the state over time. While it was 24.7 percent in 1971, it rose to 28.3 percentin the year 1991 and further increased to 31.9 percent, a rise of 3.63 percent, in 2011.According to Labour Bureau survey of 2015-16, only 94 out of 1000 found work in Punjab. The unemployment rate of rural women is 167 out of 1000 as compared to 47 all India. Analysis of secondary data also showed that between 2001 and 2011, the proportion of agricultural laborers in rural Punjab has increased by close to 2 per cent predominantly at the cost of the cultivators’ share. A relatively much higher share (34.6%) of working Dalit population in Punjab worked as agricultural labor. Data from the National Sample Survey also returned or reflected? 76.08% of all the households in 2009-10 that were engaged in agricultural labor belonged to the Scheduled caste category. The largest rural worker category, agricultural labor, is Dalit and they continue to be at the bottom of social and economic ladder. According to official data, the economic condition of Dalit households in rural Punjab has deteriorated over time. The 2011-12 NSSO consumption expenditure data, used as proxy for income to assess the economic condition of households, found that 86 percent of agricultural laborers’ in rural Punjab are Dalits and their average monthly per capita consumption expenditure is just two thirds of the average rural per capita consumption expenditure in the state. The field work confirmed that land signifies a critical resource for laboring families in Punjab. Over the years, following the green revolution and land becoming a highly precious resource, upper class landowners’ control over land has significantly stiffened and lower caste landless laborers’ rights over commons have slowly slipped away. The high caste landowners with social, political and economic clout, leverage their position to gain control over the commons. This control over a productive resource not only enhances landowners ‘returns, it simultaneously increases the vulnerability of the landless as they become more dependent on landowners for employment, fodder for their cattle, and for the use of fields for relieving themselves as a large majority of Dalit households still have no toilets. In the field study, the connections between limited access to land and land use change and sexual safety, harassment and caste-based violence, discrimination and exclusion were uncovered raising critical questions for social economic upliftment of Dalits. A large majority of agricultural laborers are Dalits and they do not own any land and hence neither end up taking up additional farm operations when leave nor do they get employment in farms which is vacated by the males. In fact, if anything, it is leading to what can be termed as ‘de-feminization’; here is thus more of ‘masculinization’ of farm employment and operations and, not feminization.

2023-24

delved into the pressing issue of anemia among women and girl children, particularly prevalent in the state of Punjab; sheds light on the often overlooked but significant impact of anemia, emphasizing its gravity beyond severe cases. Objectives are to assess the prevalence of anemia among women and children in Punjab; understand the impact of anemia on the health of women and children in Punjab; gauge women’s knowledge regarding various aspects of anemia; to put forth suggestions to the state government for the improvement of anemia prevention and management among women and children. Observes limited awareness among grassroots health workers, underscoring the necessity for comprehensive interventions. Thus, the present study advocates a thorough situation analysis to bridge information gaps and inform targeted strategies. While existing data from NFHS and HMIS offer insights, a deeper understanding of causative factors and awareness levels is imperative; strongly advocate for the continuation of education for antenatal attendees. This is particularly crucial as the data suggests that some women may forget or overlook certain concepts and need for further research in this area; side effects of iron tablets, such as gastric problems, stomach pain, weight gain, and nausea, were reported as deterrents by women and adolescent girls; suggests urgent need for educational campaigns to dispel misconceptions; lack of formal education, discrimination, and cultural practices are also associated with the development of anemia, study suggested that nutrition practices need to be promoted.

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