Delays in project implementation and the attendant cost overruns have been a regular feature in the electric power sector in Kerala. Almost all the public projects, including the prestigious major hydroelectric project of Idukki, have been the unfortunate victims of time and cost overruns on...

This paper examines the evolution of the institution of `Welfare Funds' for informal sector workers in the State of Kerala in India. The Kerala experience, which is now thirty years old, reflects what the workers in the informal sector could achieve in countries like India given the contemporary...

This is an attempt to understand the characteristics of private hospitals and the equity in accessing their services, using secondary data available for the period 1986-2004. The data indicates that private hospitals did not expand in numbers but a strong consolidation by large hospitals has...

This research report is aimed at three aspects of return emigrants in Kerala - their occupational mobility, utilisation of their human and material resources in Kerala's development and their rehabilitation. It describes their demographic, social and economic characteristics before emigration,...

This study examines the impact of agrarian distress on the different socio-economic groups, the strategies of livelihood adopted by households and the local institution in shaping these strategies. The study is based on the data collected from in-depth socio-economic enquiries conducted in...

This paper is about the financial lives of poor households. It examines the different sources of income and expenditure of the poor households residing in a coastal settlement in Kerala. The method of financial diary for data collection is adopted for the study. The sample size is 13. The study...

The article explores the early transformation of Ayurveda into a) a system of medicine, which has two components, one, a knowledge base and two, institutionally recognized professionals b) an industry, producing traditional medicine and related products for the market, in which one, the...

This paper examines the factors and process underlying agrarian distress in Kerala by undertaking the case studies of three villages situated in Wayanad and Idukki districts namely, Cherumad, Kappikkunnu and Upputhara. The impact of distress on household livelihoods and indebtedness and how they...

Panel studies based on the same set of sample households or individuals at two points of time 5 or 10 years apart are time consuming and are relatively rare in social science research. Such a method, however, was used in the South Asia Migration study (SMS) conducted by the Centre for...

This paper examines the household livelihood strategies under agrarian distress in Pulpalli Panchayat of Kerala. It also looks at the relationship between household assets and livelihood strategies. The negotiations of institutions by the marginalized and depressed sections of the society were...