Sarbeswar Sahoo
Biographic Data
| ID | 102732 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sarbeswar Sahoo |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sarbeswar |
| FAMILY NAME | Sahoo |
| SIGNATURE | SAHOO S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Indian Institute of Technology Delhi |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2633-4231 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 78 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 42 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Education Choices and the Gender Gap in Labour Market Outcomes
This study examines how early educational choices shape gender inequality in labour-market outcomes in India. Despite rising female education, declining fertility, and sustained economic growth, female labour force participation has remained low. While existing literature links women's education to employment, it largely focuses on the level of education rather than its type. Using nationally representative data from India, we analyze how stream …
Does restricting access to credit affect learning outcomes? Evidence from a regulatory shock to microfinance in India
Impact of Early Childhood School Intervention on Enrolment and Learning Outcomes
We evaluate the impact of introducing a pre-primary schooling program in government schools in the Indian state of West Bengal in 2013 on children’s enrolment in pre-primary level and subsequent test scores. Using difference-in-differences (DID), triple difference, and synthetic DID methods, we find that the program significantly increased enrolment in the pre-primary sections of the government schools. However, analysing the test scores, we find…
Civil Society Organisations’ Perspectives on the Contemporary Human Rights Situation of Indigenous Peoples in Bangladesh
Based on corpus analysis of submissions to the latest United Nations Universal Periodic Review, this study examines civil society organisations’ perspectives on the contemporary human rights situation of indigenous peoples in Bangladesh. The analysis confirms how they are subject to discrimination, denial of land rights, exclusion from decision-making, violence and suppression of indigenous languages. We argue that the present constitutes a criti…
Caste identity and teachers’ biased expectations
The political economy of privatization of education
Do educated politicians facilitate better public health? Evidence from India
Political representatives and their directives are discredited when there is an instance of rising mortality. However, there is limited empirical evidence linking public health outcomes to the quality of politicians. We investigate whether electing political leaders with higher levels of formal education affects child survival. Using an instrumental variable strategy exploiting quasi-experimental outcomes of close elections, we find that college-…
Does women's economic empowerment promote human development in low- and middle-income countries? A meta-analysis
Reducing gender inequality in economic opportunities is considered valuable in its own right and a critical element in ending poverty and boosting economic prosperity. Does the evidence from multiple interventions support this view? This paper investigates the impact of women's economic empowerment (WEE) on human development in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs). This meta-analysis focuses on interventions that increase income generation opp…
Who eats last? Intra-household gender inequality in food allocation among children in educationally backward areas of India
The practice of women eating after men is a common gender-inequitable food allocation mechanism among adults in Indian households and has been associated with poor health and nutritional outcomes for women. However, empirical evidence on whether a similar practice of girls eating after boys is prevalent among children is scarce. Using primary data from a household survey conducted in educationally backward areas of four Indian states, we provide …
The Holy Spirit in the Household
Why are the Bhil tribals increasingly converting to Pentecostalism in India? Drawing on more than a decade of in-depth ethnographic fieldwork among the Bhils in southern Rajasthan, this article argues that the Pentecostals have approached conversion not as “change of religion” ( dharma parivartan ) but as “holistic transformation of life” ( jeevan parivartan ). In a context in which the state has been withdrawing from providing basic social servi…
A glass ceiling at the playhouse? Gender gaps in public and private preschool enrollment in India
India has reduced male-biased gender gaps in primary school enrollment and progression rates in recent years. However, patterns of early childhood education enrollment, selection of preschool, and related gender gaps remain inadequately studied. This study uses data from India’s National Family Health Survey (2019–2021), which collected preschool information for children aged 2–4 years, to examine female-male gaps in preschool enrollment. An esti…
Biased teachers and gender gap in learning outcomes
We investigate the effect of stereotypical beliefs of teachers on cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes of secondary school students in two states of India. We measure teacher’s bias through an index capturing teacher’s subjective beliefs about the role of gender in academic performance. We tackle the potential endogeneity of teacher’s subjective beliefs by controlling for teacher fixed effects in a value-added model that includes lagged test scor…
The state regulation of faith-based civil society organisations in India
India's religious, ethnic and linguistic minorities experience significant discrimination and generally hold lower socio-economic status than the Hindu majority.Reports have found that religious minorities such as Muslims and Christians suffer from higher unemployment rates compared to Hindus; and despite being mostly educated, joblessness is highest among Christians.Muslims generally have the lowest work participation rate.However, the Indian go…
Burgess, Richard. Nigerian Pentecostalism and Development
BURGESS, Richard. Nigerian Pentecostalism and Development: Spirit, Power, and Transformation. Abingdon: Routledge, 2020. xiii + 249pp. Hbk. ISBN: 9781315167299. £96.00
Representation by Development Organizations
This article focuses on development organizations’ construction of representative roles in their work at the environment–development interface and on implications of these constructions for inclusiveness. While much of the past literature on representation has dealt with electoral representation, this article highlights the importance of nonelectoral representation. It follows a constructivist approach and is based on 36 in-depth interviews with …
At the Margins of the State
How is Pentecostalism changing the notions and experiences of citizenship at the margins of the state? Addressing this question, the paper argues that in the context of south Rajasthan, the Pentecostal church has played a vital role in combining the values of both pedagogical and governmental paradigms of citizenship not just to fill in the absence of the state but also to create an alternative model of citizenship that goes beyond the mere polit…
Collaboration, Co-Optation or Navigation? The Role of Civil Society in Disaster Governance in India
Existing research on civil society organizations (CSOs) facing restricted civic space largely focuses on the crackdown on freedoms and CSOs’ strategies to handle these restrictions, often emphasizing impact on their more confrontational public roles. However, many CSOs shape their roles through collaborative relations with government. Drawing on interviews with state agencies and CSOs, this article analyes state–CSO collaboration in the restricte…
Gender Segregation in Education
This paper investigates gender-based segregation across different fields of study at the senior secondary level of schooling in a large developing country. We use a nationally representative longitudinal data set from India to analyze the extent and determinants of gender gap in higher secondary stream choice. Using fixed-effects regressions that control for unobserved heterogeneity at the regional and household levels, we find that girls are abo…
Godroads
The shrinking democratic space in India
Deadly clashes have broken out this month in India's capital New Delhi between supporters and opponents of the Government's changes to citizenship laws. The amendment to the Citizenship Act of 1955 -brought into force on December 12 last year -provides Indian citizenship to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, or Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan who faced persecution and entered India before December 31, 2014. The Act does not p…
Civil society and the contemporary threat to religious freedom in Bangladesh
Against the international backdrop of rising religious tensions, this article explores contemporary civil society views on religious freedom in Bangladesh. It uses critical frame analysis of the corpus of civil society organisations’ (CSOs) submissions to the United Nations’ third cycle Universal Periodic Review (UPR), 2013-18. It provides a timely assessment of Bangladesh’s fulfilment of international obligations on religious freedom, and shows …
Seasonal Migration and Feminization of Farm Management
Civil Society Organisations and LGBT+ Rights in Bangladesh
This article explores civil society organizations’ (CSOs) views on the contemporary situation of LGBT + people in Bangladesh. It is a lacuna requiring attention because of the country’s poor and deteriorating equality and human rights record. Here we analyse the level of attention to prevailing human rights violations and apply critical frame analysis to the corpus of CSOs’ submissions to the United Nations third cycle Universal Periodic Review (…
Complementarities in CSO Collaborations
A commonly explored theme in international civil society organisation (CSO) collaborations is the dominance of Northern CSOs and how this impinges on Southern CSOs’ autonomy, but there is little work on the relative importance of different collaborations for Southern CSOs. This study examined complementarity as a new approach to understanding CSO collaboration. Seeking Southern perspectives, we examined the case of CSOs working on disaster risk r…
Laura Dudley Jenkins, Religious Freedom and Mass Conversion in India
Employment transitions of women in India
Rethinking secularism
Does women's economic empowerment promote human development in low- and middle-income countries? A meta-analysis
Reducing gender inequality in economic opportunities is considered valuable in its own right and a critical element in ending poverty and boosting economic prosperity. Does the evidence from multiple interventions support this view? This paper investigates the impact of women's economic empowerment (WEE) on human development in low-and middle-income countries (LMICs). This meta-analysis focuses on interventions that increase income generation opp…
Civil Society Organisations and LGBT+ Rights in Bangladesh
This article explores civil society organizations’ (CSOs) views on the contemporary situation of LGBT + people in Bangladesh. It is a lacuna requiring attention because of the country’s poor and deteriorating equality and human rights record. Here we analyse the level of attention to prevailing human rights violations and apply critical frame analysis to the corpus of CSOs’ submissions to the United Nations third cycle Universal Periodic Review (…
Civil society and democratization
This article assesses whether civil society promotes democratization, as has been argued implicitly or explicitly in the political discourse, following the publication of Putnam's Making Democracy Work. The theorists of “third-wave” transitology have advocated civil society as the indispensable instrument for the survival and sustenance of democracy. This article, however, argues that civil society is not necessarily a democratic force. It may or…
Collaboration, Co-Optation or Navigation? The Role of Civil Society in Disaster Governance in India
Existing research on civil society organizations (CSOs) facing restricted civic space largely focuses on the crackdown on freedoms and CSOs’ strategies to handle these restrictions, often emphasizing impact on their more confrontational public roles. However, many CSOs shape their roles through collaborative relations with government. Drawing on interviews with state agencies and CSOs, this article analyes state–CSO collaboration in the restricte…
Civil society and the contemporary threat to religious freedom in Bangladesh
Against the international backdrop of rising religious tensions, this article explores contemporary civil society views on religious freedom in Bangladesh. It uses critical frame analysis of the corpus of civil society organisations’ (CSOs) submissions to the United Nations’ third cycle Universal Periodic Review (UPR), 2013-18. It provides a timely assessment of Bangladesh’s fulfilment of international obligations on religious freedom, and shows …
Doing Development or Creating Dependency? NGOs and Civil Society in India
This paper examines the role of non-government organisations (NGOs) and the implications for democratisation in India. By analysing one such organisation, this paper argues that NGOs do not always contribute positively to the democratisation process. It shows how Seva Mandir, an NGO working in the tribal areas of Rajasthan, has adopted a purely technocratic and apolitical service delivery approach and promoted a neo-liberal model of development. …
Political Mobilisation, the Poor and Democratisation in Neo-liberal India
Globalisation has had far-reaching implications for the dynamics of liberal democracy and governance in India. With the opening of the Indian economy in the 1990s, global market forces and private sector organisations have played an increasingly significant role in the political life of the nation. Given this background, several central questions are addressed. How has globalisation affected the way that state and civil society relations in India…
Seasonal Migration and Feminization of Farm Management
Market Liberalism, Marginalised Citizens and Countermovements in India
How has neo-liberalism transformed the economic structure and policies of India? And what are the politico-economic implications of such policies for marginalised populations? Following Karl Polanyi’s theory of “double movement”, this paper argues that while market liberalism has helped India overcome the slow so-called “Hindu rate of growth”, it has adversely affected the economic interests of the poor. It further argues that the expansion of th…
The saint in the banyan tree
David Mosse's The Saint in the Banyan Tree is a product of more than three decades research in south India. The book examines Christianity's encounter with caste society and the way it has negotiat
Who eats last? Intra-household gender inequality in food allocation among children in educationally backward areas of India
The practice of women eating after men is a common gender-inequitable food allocation mechanism among adults in Indian households and has been associated with poor health and nutritional outcomes for women. However, empirical evidence on whether a similar practice of girls eating after boys is prevalent among children is scarce. Using primary data from a household survey conducted in educationally backward areas of four Indian states, we provide …
A glass ceiling at the playhouse? Gender gaps in public and private preschool enrollment in India
India has reduced male-biased gender gaps in primary school enrollment and progression rates in recent years. However, patterns of early childhood education enrollment, selection of preschool, and related gender gaps remain inadequately studied. This study uses data from India’s National Family Health Survey (2019–2021), which collected preschool information for children aged 2–4 years, to examine female-male gaps in preschool enrollment. An esti…
Biased teachers and gender gap in learning outcomes
We investigate the effect of stereotypical beliefs of teachers on cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes of secondary school students in two states of India. We measure teacher’s bias through an index capturing teacher’s subjective beliefs about the role of gender in academic performance. We tackle the potential endogeneity of teacher’s subjective beliefs by controlling for teacher fixed effects in a value-added model that includes lagged test scor…
Gender Segregation in Education
This paper investigates gender-based segregation across different fields of study at the senior secondary level of schooling in a large developing country. We use a nationally representative longitudinal data set from India to analyze the extent and determinants of gender gap in higher secondary stream choice. Using fixed-effects regressions that control for unobserved heterogeneity at the regional and household levels, we find that girls are abo…
Complementarities in CSO Collaborations
A commonly explored theme in international civil society organisation (CSO) collaborations is the dominance of Northern CSOs and how this impinges on Southern CSOs’ autonomy, but there is little work on the relative importance of different collaborations for Southern CSOs. This study examined complementarity as a new approach to understanding CSO collaboration. Seeking Southern perspectives, we examined the case of CSOs working on disaster risk r…
Land-holding, participation in agriculture and short-term migration in rural India
We analyse a nationally representative data set from India for the year 2013 in order to provide evidence on how short-term migration is affected by household ownership of land and participation in agricultural activities. We estimate a recursive-bivariate-probit model recognising the simultaneity between short-term migration and the decision to operate the land. The results of the likelihood ratio test imply that it would be incorrect to ignore …
Globalization and Politics of the Poor in India
The paper addresses two basic questions in the globalization literature: (1) is globalization a threat or an opportunity? And (2) how far does market deepening actually encourage genuine substantive democracy in the world? Many scholars have argued that globalization has resulted in increasing inequality and marginalization of the poor, which is not conducive for democracy. Drawing on the case of India, this paper, however, argues that the rollin…
Globalization, social welfare and civil society in India
This paper seeks to analyze the effects of globalization on Indian civil society. Following a historical analysis, the paper argues that civil society during the colonial and early post-colonial period remained confined to the English educated upper-caste elites. The subaltern populations were excluded from its sphere because of the virtues of modernity and the paternalistic policies of the post-colonial state and ruling elites. The decline of th…
Ethno‐Religious Identity and Sectarian Civil Society
This paper analyses the role of Rajasthan Vanvasi Kalyan Parishad (RVKP), an ethnic Hindu(tva) organisation, among the tribal populations in south Rajasthan. It argues that the RVKP has been able to enhance its legitimacy and expand its socio‐political support base among the tribals through a well‐articulated and planned process of ‘ethnification’. This process has been carried out in four basic ways: (1) utilising development projects as means t…
Globalization, social welfare and civil society in India
This paper seeks to analyze the effects of globalization on Indian civil society. Following a historical analysis, the paper argues that civil society during the colonial and early post-colonial period remained confined to the English educated upper-caste elites. The subaltern populations were excluded from its sphere because of the virtues of modernity and the paternalistic policies of the post-colonial state and ruling elites. The decline of th…
Political Mobilisation, the Poor and Democratisation in Neo-liberal India
Globalisation has had far-reaching implications for the dynamics of liberal democracy and governance in India. With the opening of the Indian economy in the 1990s, global market forces and private sector organisations have played an increasingly significant role in the political life of the nation. Given this background, several central questions are addressed. How has globalisation affected the way that state and civil society relations in India…
Rethinking secularism
Doing Development or Creating Dependency? NGOs and Civil Society in India
This paper examines the role of non-government organisations (NGOs) and the implications for democratisation in India. By analysing one such organisation, this paper argues that NGOs do not always contribute positively to the democratisation process. It shows how Seva Mandir, an NGO working in the tribal areas of Rajasthan, has adopted a purely technocratic and apolitical service delivery approach and promoted a neo-liberal model of development. …
The saint in the banyan tree
David Mosse's The Saint in the Banyan Tree is a product of more than three decades research in south India. The book examines Christianity's encounter with caste society and the way it has negotiat
Civil society and democratization
This article assesses whether civil society promotes democratization, as has been argued implicitly or explicitly in the political discourse, following the publication of Putnam's Making Democracy Work. The theorists of “third-wave” transitology have advocated civil society as the indispensable instrument for the survival and sustenance of democracy. This article, however, argues that civil society is not necessarily a democratic force. It may or…
Globalization and Politics of the Poor in India
The paper addresses two basic questions in the globalization literature: (1) is globalization a threat or an opportunity? And (2) how far does market deepening actually encourage genuine substantive democracy in the world? Many scholars have argued that globalization has resulted in increasing inequality and marginalization of the poor, which is not conducive for democracy. Drawing on the case of India, this paper, however, argues that the rollin…
Religious Violence and the “Developmental State” in Rajasthan
Market Liberalism, Marginalised Citizens and Countermovements in India
How has neo-liberalism transformed the economic structure and policies of India? And what are the politico-economic implications of such policies for marginalised populations? Following Karl Polanyi’s theory of “double movement”, this paper argues that while market liberalism has helped India overcome the slow so-called “Hindu rate of growth”, it has adversely affected the economic interests of the poor. It further argues that the expansion of th…
Caste
This entry discusses the transformation of caste in the Indian context. The entry starts with a discussion of the Indological and anthropological accounts of caste and then examines whether “caste” is essentially unique to Hinduism. Furthermore, the entry discusses the possibility of mobility within the ritual hierarchy of caste. In the final section, the entry shows how caste, once described by the Christian missionaries and the colonial state a…
Intra-Household Gender Disparity in School Choice
This paper explores gender inequality within households in the decision of private versus government school choice in India. Using a three-period longitudinal dataset on rural households from Uttar Pradesh, a northern state of India, this paper estimates a household fixed effects model and finds that there is an intra-household gender bias of 6 percentage points in private school enrolment among children aged 6–16 years. Contrary to the trend in …
Matrimonial
Pentecostalism and Politics of Conversion in India
This book studies the politics of Pentecostal conversion and anti-Christian violence in India. It asks: why has India been experiencing increasing incidents of anti-Christian violence since the 1990s? Why are the Bhil Adivasis increasingly converting to Pentecostalism? And, what are the implications of conversion for religion within indigenous communities on the one hand and broader issues of secularism, religious freedom and democratic rights on…
Employment transitions of women in India
Caste, Conversion, and Care
This paper critically examines Nathaniel Roberts’ book, To be Cared For. It argues that by discussing the “unique moral problems and cultural contradictions” that surround the everyday life-world of low caste Dalit Pentecostals in a slum in Chennai, Roberts provides a rich ethnography of caste, Christianity and care in India. In particular, the book makes several contributions: first, it provides a nuanced, contextual understanding of the “plural…
Land-holding, participation in agriculture and short-term migration in rural India
We analyse a nationally representative data set from India for the year 2013 in order to provide evidence on how short-term migration is affected by household ownership of land and participation in agricultural activities. We estimate a recursive-bivariate-probit model recognising the simultaneity between short-term migration and the decision to operate the land. The results of the likelihood ratio test imply that it would be incorrect to ignore …
Mobilizing religion and gender in India
Mobilizing religion and gender in India: the role of activism." Contemporary South Asia, 27(3), pp. 438–439
Godroads
The shrinking democratic space in India
Deadly clashes have broken out this month in India's capital New Delhi between supporters and opponents of the Government's changes to citizenship laws. The amendment to the Citizenship Act of 1955 -brought into force on December 12 last year -provides Indian citizenship to Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, Jain, Parsi, or Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh or Pakistan who faced persecution and entered India before December 31, 2014. The Act does not p…
Civil society and the contemporary threat to religious freedom in Bangladesh
Against the international backdrop of rising religious tensions, this article explores contemporary civil society views on religious freedom in Bangladesh. It uses critical frame analysis of the corpus of civil society organisations’ (CSOs) submissions to the United Nations’ third cycle Universal Periodic Review (UPR), 2013-18. It provides a timely assessment of Bangladesh’s fulfilment of international obligations on religious freedom, and shows …
Seasonal Migration and Feminization of Farm Management
Civil Society Organisations and LGBT+ Rights in Bangladesh
This article explores civil society organizations’ (CSOs) views on the contemporary situation of LGBT + people in Bangladesh. It is a lacuna requiring attention because of the country’s poor and deteriorating equality and human rights record. Here we analyse the level of attention to prevailing human rights violations and apply critical frame analysis to the corpus of CSOs’ submissions to the United Nations third cycle Universal Periodic Review (…
Complementarities in CSO Collaborations
A commonly explored theme in international civil society organisation (CSO) collaborations is the dominance of Northern CSOs and how this impinges on Southern CSOs’ autonomy, but there is little work on the relative importance of different collaborations for Southern CSOs. This study examined complementarity as a new approach to understanding CSO collaboration. Seeking Southern perspectives, we examined the case of CSOs working on disaster risk r…
Representation by Development Organizations
This article focuses on development organizations’ construction of representative roles in their work at the environment–development interface and on implications of these constructions for inclusiveness. While much of the past literature on representation has dealt with electoral representation, this article highlights the importance of nonelectoral representation. It follows a constructivist approach and is based on 36 in-depth interviews with …
Sociology (30 works) · Political science (27 works) · Politics (21 works) · Law (19 works) · Economics (17 works) · Law (13 works) · Religion, Society, and Development (12 works) · Civil society (11 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (10 works) · Gender Studies (10 works)