Colonial judges and jurists interpreted matrilineal customs in terms of a theory of matrilineal law, which they shaped in the process of interpretation, rather than on the basis of existing practices. This paper analyses critically the process of interpretation of customs or what is referred to...

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,...

Ever since plantation agriculture initiated by European capital and enterprise became an important form of exploitation of resources in the colonies, small holdings and small holders in the plantation sector were considered a separate category. There were a number of European proprietary...

This Working Paper is about Videsha Malayalikal, or Non-Resident Keralites (NRKs). It provides the size, trend, geographical distribution, socio-economic composition of migrants, and remittances sent back by the migrants. The situation with respect to migration in 2004 is compared with that in...

The Sennian capability approach has facilitated to capture poverty in its multi-dimensional incidence and thus to raise a new aggregate poverty index - the UNDP's Human Poverty Index (HPI). The UNDP has found power mean of order   1 as possessing some of the most desirable properties in...

The paper examines the question of food security viz-a-viz food availability and self sufficiency in production. Given the cropping pattern in Kerala it is unrealistic to expect food self-sufficiency. However, through a pro-poor public policy regime, Kerala has been able to enhance food security...

Banking sector reforms, which is a major component of Macroeconomic Adjustment Programme in India, has changed the trends and patterns of banking over the last six to seven years. This paper seeks to analyse the trends in credit deployment by industry, by bank group, by rural and urban areas,...

The East Asian crisis of 1997-98 and the Mexican crisis of 1994 generated much concern among policy analysts regarding the role of macroeconomic policies in the management of capital inflows. A series of economic reform measures including liberalization of foreign capital inflows were initiated...

The present paper attempts at a contribution to peak load pricing, in both theory and application. The general result from the traditional theory that charges the off-peak consumers marginal operating costs only and the peak users marginal operating plus marginal capacity costs, since it is the...

Migration has been the single most dynamic factor in the otherwise dreary development scenario of Kerala in the last quarter of the past century. Migration has contributed more to poverty alleviation and reduction in unemployment in Kerala than any other factor. As a result of migration, the...