'Self-help which ennobles a nation': development, citizenship, and the obligations of eating in India's austerity years

In the years immediately following independence, India's political leadership, assisted by a network of civic organizations, sought to transform what, how, and how much Indians ate. These campaigns, this article argues, embodied a broader post-colonial project to reimagine the terms of citizenship and development in a new nation facing enduring scarcity. Drawing upon wartime antecedent, global ideologies of population and land management, and an ethos of austerity imbued with the power to actualize economic self-reliance, the new state urged its citizens to give up rice and wheat, whose imports sapped the nation of the foreign currency needed for industrial development. In place of these staples, India's new citizens were asked to adopt ‘substitute’ and ‘subsidiary’ foods—including bananas, groundnuts, tapioca, yams, beets, and carrots—and give up a meal or more each week to conserve India's scant grain reserves. And as Indian planners awaited the possibility of fundamental agricultural advance and agrarian reform, they looked to food technology and the promise of ‘artificial rice’ as a means of making up for India's perennial food deficit. India's women, as anchors of the household—and therefore, the nation—were tasked with facilitating these dietary transformations, and were saddled with the blame when these modernist projects failed. Unable to marshal the resources needed to undertake fundamental agricultural reform, India's planners placed greater faith in their ability to exercise authority over certain aspects of Indian citizenship itself, tying the remaking of practices and sentiments to the reconstruction of a self-reliant national economy.Accepted manuscrip

REDEFINING THE ROLE OF ASHA WORKERS IN INDIAN HEALTHCARE

Community health professionals are critical in filling the gap between traditional healthcare systems and marginalized populations. Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) workers have been an important workforce in providing essential healthcare services to rural and marginalized communities. ASHA workers have emerged as a cornerstone of India\u27s healthcare system, playing a pivotal role in bridging the gap between rural and marginalized communities and formal healthcare services. There is a need for expansion of the working of ASHAs to utilize them more efficiently. Through enhanced training, technological integration, and policy support, ASHA workers can transform into empowered agents of change, ensuring equitable healthcare access for all. Mobile applications for data collection, telemedicine for remote consultations, and AI-powered tools for diagnosis can enhance their capabilities and improve the accuracy of healthcare services. Reimagining the role of ASHA workers requires supportive policies and increased advocacy efforts. Adequate compensation, formal recognition, and regular skill upgradation should be integral to their roles. Engaging with policymakers and stakeholders can ensure that their voices are heard at the policy level. This review article aims to critically examine the existing role of ASHA workers, analyze their challenges and successes, and propose innovative strategies to reimagine their role in the Indian healthcare sector. By synthesizing current literature and drawing insights from various sources, this article highlights the potential for ASHA workers to contribute significantly to community-based healthcare delivery, health education, and disease prevention

Markets, Democracy, and Ethnicity: Toward a New Paradigm for Law and Development

It is by now a commonplace that we are living in a period of radical global transformation. Particularly in the developing world, this transformation has had two watchwords: markets and democracy. Indeed, the reascendant teleology of free-market democracy has redefined the very concept of underdevelopment-a term that has shed its exclusively Third World trappings and today joins in a single embrace countries from Algeria to Azerbaijan, from Pakistan to Poland. Marketization and democratization each have been the site of massive Western legal intervention in the developing world. Legal work on marketization ranges from structuring international project finance to drafting market-oriented laws to developing legal regimes that facilitate the transition from command to market economies. Work on democratization includes not only writing constitutions but also grappling with formidable issues such as the transplantability of Western social and political institutions and postcommunist state building

A Mindful Environmental Jurisprudence?: Speculations on the Application of Gandhi’s Thought to MCWC v. Nestlé

We attempt to engage modern legal reasoning with Gandhi’s thought. We hope to speculate on what jurisprudence would look like if it were more mindful of the concepts central to Gandhi’s thought. By using Gandhi as an intellectual anchor, we hope to take a step toward creating a more “mindful jurisprudence” that implicitly incorporates into its reasoning the needs of environmental stewardship, disempowered populations, and the poverty-stricken. Because Gandhi’s thought has been discussed at length in environmental justice campaigns, we begin this effort by examining the relationship between environmental law and Gandhi’s thought. Given Gandhi’s commentaries on exploitative and oppressive social relationships, we focus on the intersections of law, environment, and economy. We use the recent suit, Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation v. Nestlé Waters North America, Inc. (MCWC), as a case study to which we apply themes from Gandhi’s thought. Applying Gandhi’s thought to MCWC is useful for two reasons. First, MCWC contains several core legal doctrines that appear regularly in environmental cases (and in case law more broadly). As a result, our applications of Gandhi’s thought directly apply to other environmental cases. Second, the case involves a defendant-corporation’s encroachment onto a stream used by local plaintiff-civilians. Environmental justice campaigns often involve similar factual circumstances in which local people resist large outsider organizations. Therefore, using Gandhi’s thought, we examine the legal reasoning in MCWC to identify taken-for-granted assumptions about environment and society that favor outside parties over local residents

T for Toilets: The case for sanitation in schools

Across India, 4,19,092 toilets need to be built or repaired to ensure 100% sanitation coverage in schools. Better school sanitation increases attendance in schools by 11%. Dasra's whitepaper, T for Toilets, outlines the rationale for better school sanitation, highlights government initiatives that foreground sanitation as a national priority, and draws a roadmap for private sector investment in the sanitation sector

2019 India Think Tank Forum

Observer Research Foundation, in collaboration with Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program (TTCSP), Lauder Institute, University of Pennsylvania, organized the third India Think Tank Forum on 7 January 2019, at the Taj Mahal Hotel in Delhi. The forum brought together a diverse representation both of regional, national and international think tanks, for an informative and productive exchange on key policy issues. The role of think tanks in civil society and the challenges faced by them, formed a key part of the conversations that took place at the conference. Some of the broad themes in discussion were ‘India and the World’, ‘Economy and Growth in India through a Gendered Lens’, ‘Strategies and Operations Challenges faced by Think Tanks’, ‘Think Tanks and SDGs’, ‘Think Tanks in the Digital Era’, among others

A Thematic Literature Review on The Impact of Covid-19 Pandemic on Indian Real Estate

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the world badly. Almost all activities were suspended, and thus it severely impacted the economy, including the real estate sector. This ongoing pandemic has pushed the sentiments of the sector to their all-time lowest. This research aims to analyze the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the real estate industry in India, as well as to determine the most impacted segments. Report achives from eminent property consultants including Knight Frank, Coldwell Banker Richard Ellis (CBRE), and Cushman & Wakefield were reviewed in this study. The qualitative analysis done to the reports and literature shows that both the residential and commercial segments have been impacted badly. However, the residential market has recovered to its pre-COVID level after the first lockdown. Meanwhile, in the case of the commercial market, the pandemic led to many innovations in the office segment, such as hybrid working, portfolio growth, and the hotelization of office spaces. Such innovations were also found in the retail segment, such as reinventing the experience, use of new-age technology, omnichannel strategy, realigning the retail formats, and so forth. Hence, they have boosted these segments and accelerated the recovery. Amongst all the segments, the hospitality segment was the worst-hit segment. It was the first to fall and is last to rise. Due to the fear of getting infected and travel restrictions, tourism has effectively stopped, and this has greatly impacted the hotel segment