Review of The Social and the Symbolic edited by Edited by Bernard Bel, Jan Brouwer, Biswajit Das, Vibodh Parthasarathi, Guy Poitevin; Sage, New Delhi; 2007, pp 481, Rs 895.

The question of matriarchate as female dominance, remains unresolved. While non materialist anthropologists dismissed it outright, socialist scholars accepted it as a stage in social evolution. If matrifocal clans or collective mothering oncet provided power and assistance for raising a human...

The paper provides an analytical structure to endogenize the optimal gestational surrogacy contract in terms of a simple moral hazard framework. The study shows that altruistic surrogacy is optimal only if the surrogate has lower outside option and is sufficiently altruistic. Otherwise...

This paper, examines the possibility of adopting Oil- to- Cash scheme in Iraq. Here, a new opportunity is identified which aims for direct distribution of Iraqi oil rents in the planned production expansion over the next five years. This could yield a meaningful per capita dividend even while...

General economic growth (resulting in higher living standards), improved infrastructure, and greater child immunization coverage will be essential in lowering infant and under-five mortality rates in the country. However, these general policies will not be enough. Special attention will need to...

This study analyses the changes in prevalence of undernutrition between the 1980s and 1990s at the national and sub-national levels in India and focuses on the rural-urban comparisons. The study exploits the demographic information available in household surveys to derive a household-specific...