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The use of financial incentives is a common instrument to advance women's health across low and middle-income countries. Since the 1990s, the conditional cash transfer (CCT) for health has been generally lauded by researchers, policy makers and international financial institutions due to demonstrated improvements in access to health services and a range of health outcomes. Some scholars, however, have cautioned that CCTs should be further scrutinised to assess potential unintended consequences and moral concerns in a variety of contexts. In this article, I re-examine Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY), a cash incentive programme that aims to promote institutional deliveries in order to reduce high levels of home deliveries and maternal deaths in India. I adopt a critical perspective, focusing on the specific instrument of dowry through the lens of capitalist patriarchy (Mies, M. (1986). Patriarchy and accumulation on a world scale. London: Zed Books). Global and national health policy experts and policy makers require a greater awareness of the dowry system, since this system may hamper the use of financial incentives by reinforcing the commodification of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

West Bengal (WB) ranks high among the 15 major states of India, where there is still a disturbing persistence of underage marriage among girls, leading to early motherhood as a consequence. The article explores the reasons for this in the context of social and economic conditions in the state. The article argues that more than poverty and illiteracy, the unavailability of new employment opportunities for women and girls in the rural and urban areas of the state explains why parents do not have the incentive to invest in more schooling or the higher education of their daughters. The article is mainly based on secondary data with occasional references to some primary evidence from a recent survey done by the author. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The World Health Organization (2009) implicates deep-rooted cultural and social norms as influential contributing factors toward physical and intimate partner violence against women. The dowry system is a social practice that perpetuates the oppression, torture, and murder of women in India. The practice of dowry is an expected part of marriage in cultures where arranged marriages are the norm. Violence can occur when the dowry or bride-price is deemed unsatisfactory by the recipient. In India, in spite of laws prohibiting the practice, not much has changed over the last 30 years. The National Crime Records Bureau of India, recorded a total of 8,618 female deaths related to dowry disputes in 2011, and the Asian Women’s Human Rights Council (2009) estimates that the practice of dowry is implicated in 25,000 deaths and maiming of women between the ages of 15–34 in India every year. The current review of literature reveals that despite efforts on the part of the Indian government, social activists and feminists organizations in India, not much has changed over the past decade, in fact, the problem has increased, resulting in an unprecedented amount of mortality and morbidity among women in India. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Bridegroom price is extracting a heavy toll on the poor in rural Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, India. Poor households are becoming indebted and losing assets to pay the increasing amounts demanded by grooms at the time of their daughters’ weddings. Bridegroom price is a relatively recent phenomenon in the area, first practiced amongst scheduled and backward caste groups less than two decades ago. This article draws upon practice theory and cultural neo-institutionalism to offer an alternative explanation for the emergence and persistence of bridegroom price as a time, space and socially specific institution. Using empirical material from in-depth qualitative interviews in two villages in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh in 2010, it suggests that bridegroom price emerged as a result of shifts in the subjectivities of low-caste men, and in particular the evaluation of the self in relation to the social whole. The article seeks to contribute to existing explanations for bridegroom price and dowry, while also arguing that theoretically informed approaches are necessary in order to develop effective measures to combat these institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]