COVID-19 led to increased economic distress, which is usually associated with an increased justification of domestic violence. Through causal methods of survey experiments, the reasons for justification of domestic violence are evaluated. The hypotheses are tested using a survey experiment set in Ahmedabad, Gujarat with 500 participants (men and women) around the time of the first wave of the pandemic. The results show that hardships from the COVID-19-related lockdown were associated with increased support for domestic violence across genders. We also find that women justified domestic violence more than men.
Gujarat, Cradle and Harbinger of Identity Politics: India’s Injurious Frame of Communalism by Jan Breman and Ghanshyam Shah, New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2022; pp 388, `1,200.
This article presents a comparative analysis of poverty reduction and pro-poorness of growth in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu during the post-reform period. We use the unit-level data of the Consumer Expenditure Surveys of the National Sample Survey Office to estimate the poverty ratio for both rural and urban areas of these states. The first period (1993–94 to 2004–05) recorded a slow poverty reduction, but the second period (2004–05 to 2011–12) witnessed a faster reduction in poverty in rural and urban areas in both the states concerned.
In the early 20th century, when K M Munshi was making a name for himself in the literary and cultural sphere of Gujarat, he was both intervening in and departing from the past. Curating elements of the past that suited his equally curated modernity, Munshi exemplifies many connections that become evident of Gujarat in the subsequent years. In this paper, we ask: “What was Munshi’s past?” In other words, whom was he responding to from the 19th century? The period of our inquiry in Munshi’s life is the one that witnessed the famous Patan trilogy. The questions are situated in both cultural history and literature.
The GST issue in isolation would not have had a significant impact on the Gujarat election, but in tandem with high anti-incumbency sentiments and an overdose of irrational development, it could lead to negative traction against the BJP.
The Gujarat Government's efforts to push for the Dholera Smart City and other Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) projects have resulted in lopsided policies. These policies prove that agriculturists have no representation in the state’s legislative processes.
Studies on militarisation and borders in South Asia have often remained focused on zones of spectacular conflict such as Kashmir, or Punjab during the partition. This article tracks the production of a discourse on borders by those charged with border security such as the police and other senior bureaucracy in the decades following the partition. It suggests that the “border question” evolved gradually out of a series of everyday concerns over local criminality that finally coalesced into the more abstract category of “national security.” It examines bureaucratic debates on police reorganisation in Kutch between 1948 and 1952 to suggest that contemporary discourses on nation and borders were arrived at through intra-bureaucratic negotiations with the far less abstract categories of village, locality and region.
