Village

This ethnographic study of Dalit women from the villages of Allahabad district assesses their identification with Dalit politics, the impact that the Bahujan Samaj Party has had on their political and social aspirations, and what makes them identify with Mayawati.

Tribal villages are usually perceived to be the egalitarian counterparts to villages in India that are ruled by hierarchical caste structures. Taking the case of Ao Naga villages, clan rank and class are found to be important for understanding the changing structures of inequality. Today, these villages are deeply integrated into the larger milieus: politics, administration, education and the market economy. The social mechanisms responsible for inequality are now to a large degree centred outside the village, and living in a village has become almost identical with a lower social status. One result of this process is that instead of clan ranks, the access to outside resources forms the basis of social inequality within the village. Based on secondary sources as well as original fieldwork, an account of how this integration leads to class differentiations at the village level is presented.

With the recent announcement delinking medical colleges from the newly-founded Maharashtra University of Health Sciences (MUHS), an ill-planned exercise plagued by petty politics has come to a costly end. But this might just be the opportunity to create relevant training and educational resources for village/slum level health care through the MUHS and bring about a radical change in the health sector.