Maharashtra

While the repertoire of erotic performance of lavani has developed largely for male consumption, the recent emergence of women-only spectators of lavani is unusual and puzzling. How has lavani missed the moral outrage over the articulations of female sexual desire that pervades the public domain? This paper discusses how the possibilities for transgression of heteronormative desire in this phenomenon are complicated by caste and class divisions, the work–leisure binary, and the politics of the folk. It seeks to uncover the contested process of stigmatisation of lavani as vulgar and its simultaneous celebration as the folk which is embedded in the formation of lavani audiences.

The reluctance of the ruling state government of Maharashtra to conduct an empirical inquiry into the backwardness and refusal of the union government to share the Socio Economic and Caste Census data of 2011 has resulted in a conundrum over the Other Backward Class es reservation in the local self-governance bodies. The responses of the ruling state government and the opposition to the retention of the OBC reservation are explored. The impact of this decision on the OBC politics is also analysed.

The present paper relies on the census survey of the suicide-affected farmers’ households from the two most vulnerable districts of Maharashtra from 2014 to 2017 when the largest number of farmers’ suicide cases was reported after the 2008 farm debt waivers. A complex mix of social, economic, and psychological factors
play their role in translating into farmers’ suicide. The study covers the districts of Usmanabad from Marathwada and Yavatmal from the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra, respectively. 

Gail Omvedt widened the horizons of scholarship on caste, class, and gender by probing into hitherto unexplored areas and inspired fellow scholars and activists to pursue new inquiries. A fellow traveller on the path of transformative theory and praxis looks back on these intertwined journeys.