The missing girls in India are not a new phenomenon. The British passed an Act to check female infanticide more than 100 years ago. Since 1960, India’s birth sex ratios have progressively declined from 994 to 910, implicating life-affecting gender violence. Backed by extensive field research, data and interviews, this book explores girl child deselection through cultural neglect, female infanticide and foeticide, and the role of caste and religion. The book spans critical socio-historical contexts and examines the practice of selective right to life. It views the effects of militancy and khaap panchayats, and studies women’s rights discourses and protective legal reforms. The gender imbalance is mapped globally and analysed in the specific conditions of the Indian states of Punjab and Haryana. The book examines the inter-linkages of gender hierarchies with male child preference and warns that theoretical analyses limited to female foeticide alone cannot address gender inequalities or change the cycle of violence. This will be valuable to scholars and researchers of gender and women studies, sociology, politics, and population and demographic studies. It will also be indispensable for women’s rights activists, NGOs, policy makers, government bodies, and those studying health and family planning.

Siddharth KaraÕs Sex Trafficking has become a critical resource for its revelations into an unconscionable business, and its detailed analysis of the tradeÕs immense economic benefits and human cost. This volume is KaraÕs second, explosive study of slavery, this time focusing on the deeply entrenched and wholly unjust system of bonded labor. Drawing on eleven years of research in India, Nepal, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, Kara delves into an ancient and ever-evolving mode of slavery that ensnares roughly six out of every ten slaves in the world and generates profits that exceeded $17.6 billion in 2011. In addition to providing a thorough economic, historical, and legal overview of bonded labor, Kara travels to the far reaches of South Asia, from cyclone-wracked southwestern Bangladesh to the Thar desert on the India-Pakistan border, to uncover the brutish realities of such industries as hand-woven-carpet making, tea and rice farming, construction, brick manufacture, and frozen-shrimp production. He describes the violent enslavement of millions of impoverished men, women, and children who toil in the production of numerous products at minimal cost to the global market. He also follows supply chains directly to Western consumers, vividly connecting regional bonded labor practices to the appetites of the world. KaraÕs pioneering analysis encompasses human trafficking, child labor, and global security, and he concludes with specific initiatives to eliminate the system of bonded labor from South Asia once and for all.

Study of mainly rural agrarian and land revenue system of the Haraoti Region of Rajasthan during 18th cent.