On 20 May 2011, Mamata Banerjee was sworn in as the first female chief minister of West Bengal, bringing an end to thirty-three years of CPI(M) rule. 'Poriborton!' screamed the morning papers, echoing Trinamool Congress's catchphrase for bringing in change. A decade later, amidst allegations against the TMC of political violence, syndicate rule and institutional corruption, the Bharatiya Janata Party has sent out a new war cry. Ahead of what promises to be a historic state Legislative Assembly election, Deep Halder met and spoke to Bengal's biggest stars-turned-politicians, refugees who want to become permanent citizens, and travelled as far as the Bangladesh border to gauge the mood of the people. Bengal 2021 looks at an electrifying election, unfolding in the times of Covid-19.

The Curious Trajectory of Caste in West Bengal Politics: Chronicling Continuity and Change critically engages with the political dynamics of caste in West Bengal and explores the reasons for the relative insignificance of caste as a political category in the state.

This book analyses the status of women in Bengal, India, by examining the versatile everyday living conditions of women, and how they are represented as individuals and as a category in the media. Contributors to the book start their discussion from the point that women in India have a varied experience of living, thinking, and acting specific to the regional cultural context. Caste ideology specified privileges and sanctions according to innate attributes, differ by sex as well as ethnicity, class, caste, minority status, and marginal position intersect lives and render unique life experiences. With a focus on women and their lived experiences, performances by them and performances imitating women’s roles, the book offers a complex and rich analysis of the reality of women’s lives based on research and reflections by 25 scholars. Organised into two sections, the book presents women in reality, their living conditions, struggles, and women as represented in films, stories, framed in plots sometimes by women and sometimes by men. The chapters provide insights on how institutionalised gender distinctions create subordination and marginality of women and their struggles to survive in a society dominated by heteropatriarchal ideology and its practice. This book improves our understanding of various dimensions of gender and transgender relations in India. It will be of interest to researchers in Gender Studies, South Asian Culture and Society, and Studies on India.

Natural resources not only contribute to overall growth of the economy but also help reduce poverty by providing employment and food security to populations on the continent, and is thus the most inclusive growth sector of the economy of Asian countries. Global weather and climate studies are also increasingly being considered a vital source of information to understand the earth’s environment, in particular in the framework of weather and climate studies, land use transformation and human influence across these areas. Satellite earth observing systems provide a unique tool to monitor these changes. This book includes significant and up to date contributions in the field of sustainable natural resources conservation across the globe. While the range of applications and innovative techniques is constantly increasing, this book provides a summary of key case studies where satellite data offers critical information to help understand the causes and effects of those environmental changes, allowing us to reflect on how to minimize their negative impacts. This book is of interest to researchers and practitioners in the field of remote sensing, geographical information, meteorology, and environmental sciences. Scientists and graduate to post-graduate-level students in environmental science will also find valuable information in this book.

This book reiterates pluralism as the basic feature of the Indian social sphere. It highlights challenges to the continuity of the plural fabric of India’s society and culture. Acknowledging that socio-political concerns on women’s issues do not always find adequate representation in social science texts, the book explores issues and policies related to gender. It locates the roots of feminist fundamentalism, studies the reactions to it, and brings forth the demands relating to new agendas and strategies for feminism. The authors also present empirical studies on issues faced by minority communities in India. An important contribution, this book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of sociology, political sociology, gender studies, exclusion studies, South Asian studies, Affirmative action, and political science.

This Data Note describes the trends for a set of key nutrition and health outcomes, determinants, and coverage of interventions. The findings here are based on data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 3 (2005-2006), 4 (2015-2016) and 5 (2019-2020). In addition to standard prevalence-based analyses, this Data Note includes headcount-based analyses, aligned to the POSHAN Abhiyaan monitoring framework and using data from NFHS- 5 to provide evidence that helps identify priority districts and number of districts in the state with public health concern as per the WHO guidelines.1 The Data Note includes a color-coded dashboard to compare the coverage of nutrition interventions across all the districts in the state. It concludes with key takeaways for children, women & men and identifies areas where the state has potential to improve.

This volume is devoted to compiling recent advancements, methodological improvements, new processing techniques, integration methods and rigorous applications associated with conceptual techniques on the conservation and monitoring of forest resources for a scientific audience, with a focus on cases and applications in India. The primary objective of the book is to advance the scientific understanding of the recent trends and technological improvements in forest conservation, management and related research themes in forest resources and human-wildlife interactions. The book is organized into five sections: (I) Forest Conservation Ecology (II) Forest Conservation and Society (III) Forest Management (IV) Forest Monitoring using GIS and Remote Sensing and (V) Human Wildlife Conflicts. It covers various research themes related to forestry, wildlife, habitat fragmentation, forest management and human-wildlife conflict research, and therefore will be beneficial to a diverse range of researchers, scientific organizations, wildlife scientists, biologists, ecologists and planners in the fields of wildlife and forestry. The book will further be of use to post-graduates, PhD research scholars, professors, geospatial experts, modellers, foresters, agricultural scientists, biologists, ecologists, environmental consultants and big data compilers.

Flawed Democracy and Development: A Jamaica Case Study takes a critical look at the discourse on democracy and development in Jamaica and analyzes some of the core features and practices that have historically impeded economic growth, created a political culture of mistrust of government, and motivated political apathy among the electorate, especially the youth. The contributors in this book interrogate how flawed democracy is played out in the historical as well as the political and economic institutional set up of Jamaica. The contributors also address how political participation is impacted by the heightened perception of public corruption, the lack of accountability and transparency in government decision making, and the way election campaigns are conducted by the two main political parties: the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the People’s National Party (PNP). The book addresses not just the economic and political issues normally associated with flawed democracy discussions but also includes discussion on social and cultural issues, including identity, language, and the cultural influence of geography. The contributors agree that the challenges faced by Jamaica, a small island developing state, are not irreconcilable but they require an engaged electorate and a overhaul of the political system to move the country away from a flawed democracy tag.