Blog >> Social inequalities

Last night Diane and I went walking in Green Park, an upscale neighborhood in south Delhi. In addition to Deer Park, its main market boasts fine dining at Evergreen, A2B, Pizza Hut, Dunkin Donuts, Domino’s, and other restaurants intermingled with...Read More..

Aashish just had a paper published in EPW on the Old-Age Pension Scheme in Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. Take a look!...Read More..

Men benefit from patriarchy. And the environment loses.
- Topics: Environment, Pollution, Social inequalities
For the past seven years I have lived away from my parents, and visited them during vacations or work trips to Delhi. Seven years ago, I moved to Chennai to study, and for the last two years, I was working...Read More..

The Hindu discusses the “Bahus paper”
- Topics: Social inequalities
One of India's leading newspapers, The Hindu, today carried a piece called "Unequal status tells on Women's nutrition" discussing findings from Diane, Reetika and Dean's paper, "Women's status and children's height in India: Evidence from joint Rural households". Go read....Read More..

PEEPing around in UP
- Topics: Child health, Sanitation, Social inequalities
Hello. I am Aashish, and I have just started working for rice. I spent the most of May and June being an investigator for the PEEP Survey 2013 in Uttar Pradesh, and this first post for the rice-blog is about...Read More..

two posts about children’s height on Ideas for India blog
- Topics: Child health, Sanitation, Social inequalities
Check out two recent posts on the Ideas for India blog! Dean proposes that the "height gap" between Indian and African children may be due to a "toilet gap," that is relatively poor sanitation coverage in India, and Diane writes...Read More..

Two new working papers: Child height, women’s status, and sanitation
- Topics: Child health, Maternal health, Sanitation, Social inequalities
We've just added two new working papers to rice's research tab. The first, by Diane Coffey, Reetika Khera, and Dean Spears, "Women's status and children's height in India: Evidence from joint rural households" examines joint rural households in India to...Read More..

Right to Education Story in the WSJ
I just wanted to piggy back on Avinash's post and share this link to the Wall Street Journal blog. It is an interesting story about integration at an elite private school in Delhi....Read More..

Right to Education Act: India’s Brown vs. Board?
- Topics: Cognitive achievement, Social inequalities
The Parliament of India passed a Right to Education (RTE) Act in 2009. One of the key provisions of this Act requires private schools to enroll at least 25% of their students from socially and economically backward groups and not...Read More..

How small is too small? (part 3 of 3)
- Topics: Child health, Maternal health, Sanitation, Social inequalities
Over the last couple of days, we’ve thought about how small is too small from a population perspective. But, in my recent fieldwork in Sitapur, I found myself asking the question, “how small is too small?” on an individual level....Read More..

Enemies of the bad, enemies of the good?
- Topics: Decision Making, Social inequalities
Apparently, while I have been in Sitapur, a lot of people in the U.S. have started paying attention to the deaths of so-called “invisible children”: child soldiers in Uganda. I don’t know much about child soldiering in Uganda or elsewhere...Read More..

Shopping today in the market of Sitapur’s district capital city, I saw a man squatting next to a little table with sorted piles of money: stacks of change, stacks of paper bills. You might think he would be nervous about...Read More..

Help me: A bleg to my social psychologist friends
- Topics: Decision Making, Social inequalities
I’m in Delhi for a few days to present results from my Total Sanitation Campaign project at ISI tomorrow. Today I’m mainly at the Delhi School of Economics, and this morning I was chatting with Ashwini Deshpande, who has written...Read More..

Update: Amrita’s daughter
- Topics: Maternal health, Social inequalities
Today I went to Tapti and Amrita’s village, and sure enough, I got to meet Amrita’s new daughter. Too tired to tell me the story, Amrita deferred to her mother, who shared what had happened. Amrita’s mother was busy organizing...Read More..

A Valentine’s village: Local politics and latrines
- Topics: Employment, Social inequalities
Happy Valentine’s Day! This is a holiday that doesn’t really exist here in conservative, rural Uttar Pradesh. I was able to find a Valentine’s card in Lucknow last week, when I was visiting the state UNICEF office.The holiday was an...Read More..

A clean village with a messy pradhan
- Topics: Sanitation, Social inequalities
Starting from where we live in Sudamapuri, you get to the village of Terwa Chilaula by first taking a bicycle rickshaw into Sitapur, the district capital town. Near the main bus stand, turn north along the road to Lakhimpur, the...Read More..