Tackling Daughter Deficits in Tamil Nadu, India

A well-known demographic feature in several East and South Asian countries is the continuing decline in the proportion of girls to boys. In India, till recently, the skewed sex ratio was treated as a Northern and Western Indian phenomenon. However, analysis of the 2001 Census shows that some of the districts with the most unbalanced sex ratios lie in the Southern state of Tamil Nadu. Notwithstanding its recent addition to the list of states exhibiting daughter deficit, the state has pioneered initiatives to prevent daughter elimination and to measure daughter deficit. The availability of district-level panel data on infant mortality and sex ratio at birth covering the years 1996-1999 and 2003, periods which may be characterized by sharp differences in programs and initiatives to reduce daughter elimination combined with spatial variation in these programs, provides an unusual opportunity to identify the causal effect of interventions on both, pre- and post-birth daughter deficit. We find evidence of daughter deficit in at least half the state’s districts with a majority of the deficit (60 to 70 percent) occurring before birth, potentially due to sex selective abortion as compared to after birth due to female infanticide and neglect. The temporal analysis over the period 1996-1999 and 2003, shows a 46 percent decline in post-birth deficit, without a corresponding increase in pre-birth deficit. Our difference-in-differences estimates suggest that at least 79 percent of the decline in post-birth deficit may be attributed to the set of policy interventions pursued by the state and civil society actors.

What Is the Relationship between Domestic Violence and Dowry?

Dowry is one of the reasons that daughters are viewed as burdensome in countries like India. At the same time, access to and control over their dowries (and other forms of assets including land) can play a significant role in women's well being, for instance by reducing the level of domestic violence they experience.York’s Knowledge Mobilization Unit provides services and funding for faculty, graduate students, and community organizations seeking to maximize the impact of academic research and expertise on public policy, social programming, and professional practice. It is supported by SSHRC and CIHR grants, and by the Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation. This summary was prepared by Mary Choy. [email protected] www.researchimpact.c

The art and science of cosmic dance of shiva - the nataraja (Lecture)

Dr Sharada Srinivasan presented an illustrated lecture, elucidating and exploring the aesthetics and technique of South Indian bronze casting and perceptions of the cosmos. Her talk tackled three unresolved issues concerning the Nataraja bronze

Mirrors: Metal mirrors from India

Metal mirrors have a long antiquity in various parts of the old world and Asia. Mirrors have had considerable magico-religious and aesthetic significance in parts of Asia, for example in China and India. The English word 'speculation' comes from the Roman words meaning magic for telling the future by looking in a mirror (speculum), and mirror divination is still taught in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. The motif of the celestial maiden, deity or dancer admiring herself in a mirror is an enduring one in Indian sculpture, as exemplified by a Kushan sculpture of a Yakshi or tree nymph from Sanghol (first and second century CE)

Preliminary insights into the provenance of South Indian copper alloys and images using a holistic approach of comparisons of their lead isotopes and chemical composition with slags and ores

An attempt is made to gain greater insights into probable sources of copper alloys images and artefacts from south India by comparing lead isotope ratios and elemental analyses with those of ores and slags

Goddess worship and the dancing form: exploring ritual in Indian prehistory and south Indian antiquity

The Indian subcontinent has been one of the regions of the world where the worship of goddesses has been amongst the most longstanding. The seminal work of Marija Gimbutas on the Neolithic and Copper Age settlements of southeastern Europe and particularly her explorations into the feminine forms of the period as possible expressions of Goddess worship have implications for the material culture of the Indian subcontinent in ways that have perhaps not been adequately addressed. Equally, insights into some of the surviving trajectories of rituals and iconographies of goddess worship might serve to throw more light on enigmatic aspects of archaeological finds including from the Neolithic, not just in the context of the subcontinent but elsewhere in antiquity. The paper also sets out to explore the place of the dancing form in ritual particularly with respect to goddess worship, which emerged as a more distinctive feature of Indian antiquity than in many other parts of the world

One Minute Interview

Sharada Srinivasan is Professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore. She has made pioneering contributions to the study of archaeology and history of art from the perspective of exploring engineering applications in these disciplines, i.e. archaeometry, archaeometallurgy and archaeological sciences. Her landmark contributions have included archaeometric characterisation of bronzes of South India using lead isotope analysis, archaeometallurgical studies on ancient mining and metallurgy in southern India, studies on wootz steel, and documenting artisanal technologies such as mirror making and bronze casting at Swamimalai. She is also an acclaimed performer of Bharata Natyam and has given numerous lecture-demonstrations such as the artistic and scientific perspectives on the Nataraja bronze