Social inequality, reproductive health and child development : a Chhattisgarh village study

India’s gains in reproductive health and child development have been slower than anticipated, and significantly the country continues to bear a disproportionate share of the global undernutrition burden. Indian children do particularly poorly in the foundational foetal stage and in the first three years, and public programmes are especially ineffective in reaching this group. While it is recognised that reproductive health and child nutrition is determined complexly, having biomedical and social roots, positions from a policy perspective are oftentimes competing – on whether key barriers are primarily economic or essentially cultural. Additionally, an argument explaining the South Asian nutrition ‘enigma’ emphasises the mediating role of female power, often measured as female decision-making autonomy. I discuss based on research in a village in the rice-growing plains of Chhattisgarh the complex and interrelated cultural, economic and gender-based variables as they bear on reproductive health and nutrition for the different social groups in the village. I argue that this under-researched geography at the confluence of Indo-Aryan and Dravidian cultural streams has interesting insights to offer for social theory into the determinants of female power. Important elements of northern kinship based on exogamous principles, theoretically less favourable for female autonomy than ‘southern’ kinship systems, counter-intuitively go alongside relatively egalitarian gender relations, also evidenced by sex-ratios, and other telling indicators. Furthermore, not fitting with mainstream discourse on female autonomy’s positive demographic and health implications, relatively egalitarian gender relations and sex-ratios go alongside poor performance on other demographic, health and nutrition outcomes. For caste groups in the village, elements of northern kinship appear to bear on son-preference, and undermine a woman’s independence in fertility related decision-making. However, beyond an influence on fertility the influence of gender-inequality on reproductive and child development outcomes could not be read off from observations or expressions of decision making power. I argue that it may be useful to broaden the gender-lens beyond a narrow conceptual focus on decision-making autonomy to include structural dimensions such as rigidities in gender division of labour. Behaviours and practices relevant to reproduction and childrearing vary significantly from biomedical recommendations. These reveal both economic and cultural roots. Judged against biomedical norms, health and childcare behaviours shaped by ideational beliefs are at greater variance for the post-partum stage than during pregnancy. Cultural food proscriptions have little relevance during pregnancy, implying that concerns of ‘eating down’ in pregnancy for its influence on foetal growth are of little consequence for this geography. I argue that there are important economic barriers that place limits on diet quality in pregnancy, yet there is some scope for health-facilitating resource reprioritisation. Health and childcare behaviours in the post-partum stage diverge to a greater extent from recommended biomedical practice, and could be damaging to nutritional status of the mother and child. While these practices have a clear ‘ideational’ element, they are also rooted in fear of both ill health and economic distress, deriving perhaps from the historical experience of communities in a poor health environment. I discuss from the curious case of the nutritionally vulnerable Pardhi tribe, and their rejection of the public works NREGA programme that there are iterative cultural and nutritional factors that influence poverty for this community, notwithstanding oppressive social and political relations. Productive activity perceived to involve high energy expenditure, while seemingly economically attractive can be rejected in contexts where communities aim to preserve ‘body-capital’. Further conventional classifications of what is considered routine unskilled work under NREGA may be rejected because of cultural unfamiliarity and unfamiliar body techniques. The wider marginalisation of the community and oppressive social relations may further contribute to Pardhi rejection of public programmes. In addition, entrenched local political rivalries work against public interest to mediate the everyday welfare state and implementation of reproductive health and nutrition programmes such as the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS)

Would the People of Chhattisgarh Prefer Cash Transfers instead of Foodgrain?

The overwhelming and consistent preference for grain over cash is striking, especially since this preference was expressed by both men and women, irrespective of class, age, or community. It is useful to examine reasons for this sharp preference for grain over cash against the background of national debates about cash transfers

Pathways to Stronger Futures in Haiti: the role of graduation programming in promoting early childhood development

British Academy Early Childhood Development programme, Global Challenges Research Fun

Maternal and child nutrition in rural Chhattisgarh: the role of health beliefs and practices

Commonwealth Scholarship Commission; Foundation for Urban and Regional Studies; Parkes Foundatio

Women's agricultural work and nutrition in South Asia: From pathways to a cross-disciplinary, grounded analytical framework

Copyright © 2018 The Authors. In this systematic review, we aim to examine the impact of women’s work in agriculture on maternal and child nutrition in South Asia. Building on previous reviews supported under the Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA) consortium, and recent published literature, we include findings from new LANSA research. While mapping literature onto the gender-nutrition pathways linking agriculture to nutrition (Kadiyala et al., 2014), we also point to conceptual and methodological directions for further exploration emerging from our work. Key amongst these are a focus on seasonality, poverty, and gender relations, moving beyond both an exclusive focus on women as a unified and homogenous group, and agriculture as an unchanging and common set of activities and production processes. Our analysis suggests the need for a more contextualised approach, and for a richer cross-disciplinary framework for effectively addressing the ways in which women’s work mediates agriculture’s role in improving child and maternal nutrition in South Asia.This article is part of the research generated by the Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia Research (LANSA) research consortium, and is funded by UK aid from the UK government

Implementation of the ICDS in Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh (India): a systemic study:LANSA Research Briefing

The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme – India’s flagship social welfare prescription for children (0–6 years) has achieved mixed implementation success. Considerable inter-state variation in the quality and reach of programme services remain. This study examines processes in ICDS implementation from research in two states – the densely populated Uttar Pradesh, and the newly created Chhattisgarh in central India

India’s sex ratio patterning and gender geography:the curious position of Chhattisgarh

From an interpretation of gender relations in the Chhattisgarhi plains of central India, this paper contributes to theoretical debates on the regional geography of female autonomy and its economic or cultural underpinnings. It seeks to unpack the multi-layered dynamic of gender relations in Chhattisgarh that defy easy generalisation. Kinship systems for non-adivasi groups follow important ‘northern’ or exogamous principals, which are argued, by Dyson and Moore’s thesis, to be unfavourable to female power or autonomy. Counter-intuitively, gender relations are relatively egalitarian when judged by indicators such as sex ratio, and attitudes towards female sexuality or remarriage, while son-preference in the family composition finds a sharp expression. Whereas Chhattisgarh displays unique cultural characteristics, the dependence on women’s labour in the state’s rice-based agrarian economy may make women’s position less susceptible to subordination, and conceivably mitigate the predicted unfavourable-to-women effects of exogamous marriage