Although sugar cooperative societies in Maharashtra state are known for their excellence, the conditions have deteriorated due to non-availability of sufficient sugarcane after the introduction of economic liberalization policies in the 1990s. At the same time, there are cases of success where stability of the society members and management is achieved by setting up a divisional office (Regional Agricultural Center) and trying to fulfill the needs of society members. This article illustrates the validity of this strategy by analyzing a successful case and comparing it with another case where no such measures were adopted.
Adoption of such strategy has led to three outcomes: ‘improvement in productivity’, ‘reduced transaction cost’ and ‘effective control and arrangement of laborers’; and it is clearthat these are the main factors in the stabilization of society members. This analysis also indicates that for Indian farmers producing raw material, technical guidance, financial support, and support for reducing production cost are important. Constructing a system to provide such support is necessary.

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Recent studies on contemporary community-based natural resources management demonstrate that the policies which intend to restructure the resource management regime or redistribution system actually facilitate the reproduction of power relationships in the community and protract inequality in resource redistribution. On other hand, some studies argue that the policies create political arenas for struggle over resources and sometimes enable disadvantaged people to claim their rights to productive resources.
In this paper, I describe the process of Participatory Action Plan Development and formation of Village Conservation Groups. First of all, I show how fishermen claim to implement the principle of fishery law which is “the right to water bodies is to be given to people having fishing gears” in the context of environment conservation. On the one hand, fishermen who are disadvantaged in their communities due to lack of capital lay claims that businessmen who utilize large nets with organized waged labor exploit water resources unsustainably; on the other hand, legitimize small scale fishermen to be entitled the right to access to the water bodies by insisting that only “people having fishing gears” know sustainable use of water resources; thus, the lease to water bodies should be given to fishermen who have fishing gear. After confrontation and collaboration with businessmen, NGO staff, village leaders, large fishermen and small fishermen, the participants of the project have come up with an idea of equally allocating membership of Village Conservation Group to the lineage groups in the village so that the people can have access to the resources provided by the project through representatives of their lineages.
Focusing on the dynamism of village politics in the process of natural resource management project in Bangladesh, I argue that people with different interests compete with each other over natural resources to meet their needs. I also indicate that the dynamic process of confrontation and collaboration among different actors implies a priori categories in the policies of community-based natural resource management and an analysis of the target communities disguises the potentiality of political actions by the people.

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This paper discusses recent changes in village festivals based on fieldwork conducted in a Rajasthan village. I focus on village festivals, specifically on those which are collective, because they are explicitly intended to benefit the whole village, even if some villagers do not actually participate. Nowadays a pilgrimage to the shrine of a local saint named Ramdev has become quite popular among the village people, while the traditional village festival is in decline. Every year a group of pilgrims is voluntarily formed and they go on foot to his shrine in Ramdeora, which is 350 kilometres away from the village. Why does the pilgrimage to Ramdeora attract so many more people from the village than ten years ago?
First, I describe the process how whereby the traditional festival goes into decline and the pilgrimage flourishes as a new annual festival. Then, I consider specific character of the Ramdev cult and argue that the hybrid nature of the saint Ramdev, who is traditionally a god of Hindu outcastes and Muslims, and is presently involved in egalitarian Hindu Bhakti sects, gives him power to encompass a large number of people regardless of their creed, caste, class and gender. Finally, comparing the traditional village festival and the pilgrimage to Ramdeora, I conclude that the former has the same function as the latter to unite the village people and to create a "community", but the structure of the community experienced through participating in the pilgrimage is totally different from that experienced in the village festival. Decentralized social relationships and the nexus uniting different people are articulated in the former, while the hierarchical order and centralized power structure are embodied in the latter.

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Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902) made several speeches as the representative of Hinduism on the occasion of the World Parliament of Religions held in the city of Chicago in the USA in 1893. This article seeks to examine the motives behind his speeches from both religious and social viewpoints. Vivekananda endorsed Hinduism as a religion of tolerance and universal acceptance, a religion that enabled the realization of the divinity in man. He also appealed to the audience to recognize the circumstances of the poor in India. These speeches present him as a new type of sannyasin (one who had renounced all), an individual who focused not merely on personal salvation but on the social and material liberation of others. His audience comprised a diversity of Christian sects, including Unitarians. For Vivekananda himself, the speeches at the World Parliament of Religions served as a turning point, both for his Vedantic mission in the West and the establishment of the Ramakrishna Mission in Calcutta in 1897.

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Prazo refers to a piece of land that the Portuguese kings rented to their subjects for a certain period of time. In the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Estado da India or the government of the Portuguese State of India introduced this system in the districts of Goa, Damao and Bacaim in order to encourage the casados —married men permitted to stay in Portuguese India— to settle in the country. Thus, the aim was to create areas that would be inhabited by landed Portuguese settlers. In the case of Damao, which is the subject of the present paper, instead of pieces of land, villages were rented as prazo to the casados for three generations on the condition that they would fulfill military obligations, such as providing horses, muskets and foot soldiers. However, some casados regarded prazos as their own property and often sold them. Moreover, military services were often not required at the end of the sixteenth century, and hence the prazo system did not seem to have functioned well. Nevertheless, the system survived and created a new landed nobility —fidalgos— who exploited this system for their own benefit.

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The cause of the Buddha's death remains unknown. This article investigates the symptoms and signs depicted in the Mahaparinibbanasuttanta in order to analyse the situation in the months before he died. It is, however, unknown whether this text is old or is a later interpolation, though many of the symptoms and signs described lead us toward a diagnosis. He suffered from severe pain and bloody diarrhea shortly after he ate sukara-maddava which had been prepared by his generous host, Cunda. Before eating, he felt something was wrong with the food but he ate some. Afterwards he made his host bury the leftovers in a pit. His bloody diarrhea continued, and he often asked for water, indicating intense thirst and dehydration. He continued to travel on foot, and died at Kusinara about 20 Km away from Cunda's house. Most studies on the cause of his death have focused on what sukara-maddava was; whether it was soft pork, mushrooms, or something else. There are many diseases that bring on bloody diarrhea, such as infectious colitis, ischemic colitis including mesenteric infarction, colon cancer, peptic ulcer disease, ulcerative colitis, Crohn's disease, or colonic diverticulosis. All diseases apart from infectious colitis can be excluded due to the Buddha's age, symptoms and signs, clinical course and the bloody stool. Mettanando has recently reported that the Buddha most likely suffered from mesenteric infarction caused by an occlusion of the superior mesenteric artery. However, I think this possibility can be ruled out as the Buddha did not vomit in the early stage of the illness and had no pre-existing diseases, such as heart disease, arrhythmia, etc. If he suffered from severe diseases, such as mesenteric infarction, he would not have continued to travel on foot. So I suspect his illness was severe infectious colitis accompanied by acute onset after his rainy season retreat and fever caused by sukara-maddava, whatever it was, or drinking water contaminated with bacteria, namely dysentery, which would have been common in ancient India.

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The purpose of this paper is to examine birth control movements led by social reformers in early 20th century India. It focuses on analysing the works of Raghunath Dhondo Karve (hereafter R. D. Karve), in an effort to trace historical debates over birth control and women's sexuality in British India. R. D. Karve (1882-1953) was a professor of mathematics and one of the leading birth control advocates in Bombay presidency. He was strongly influenced by Neo-Malthusian ideologies whilst based in Paris and this experience encouraged him to start a birth control clinic in Bombay in 1921 (which, notably, was the first clinic of its kind in Asia). Karve was also responsible for publishing a magazine titled ‘Samaj Svasthya’, which appeared on a monthly basis for twenty six years; its purpose was to widely disseminate information on family planning. Despite these accomplishments, there have been relatively few attempts at examining Karve's views and work. This gap becomes all the more surprising when we compare the scholarship available on N. S. Phadke and A. P. Pillay, who were Karve's peers and also active in birth control movements within the Bombay presidency. Phadke's and Pillai's relative fame can be partially explained by the fact that most of their major works were published in English, and that they retained lasting connections with well known international activists and sexologists such as Margaret Sanger, Marie Stopes, Havelok Ellis, etc. Karve, in comparison, published his views on the theme of birth control in Marathi, which has contributed to them being ignored in many recent analyses. This paper seeks to redress this imbalance, by carefully analysing Karve's writings, especially those available in ‘Samaj Svasthya’; in this manner, this contribution seeks to provide new insights into the deployment of birth control movements in early 20th century India.

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