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After independence the Government of India planned to replace the leadership systems prevalent in the rural areas by new systems. The aim of this study is to analyse the problems involved in introducing modern leadership in the rural social systems of India dominated by traditional leadership. What forms the background of the present work is the hypothesis, namely, that changes in leadership are dependent on changes in other social spheres which are not directly connected with the sphere of leadership. One such sphere is the occupational structure of a microsocial system, which is seen here as one crucial independent variable for change in rural leadership structure. This hypothesis is particularly interesting, because its empirical derivation, could be rechecked. Occupational diversification has been seen as a dependent variable in the process of change in economic behaviour on the one hand and on the other as an independent variable in the process of change in leadership behaviour.

The benefits of large-scale genetic studies for healthcare of the populations studied are well documented, but these genetic studies have traditionally ignored people from some parts of the world, such as South Asia. Here we describe whole genome sequence (WGS) data from 4806 individuals recruited from the healthcare delivery systems of Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, combined with WGS from 927 individuals from isolated South Asian populations. We characterize population structure in South Asia and describe a genotyping array (SARGAM) and imputation reference panel that are optimized for South Asian genomes. We find evidence for high rates of reproductive isolation, endogamy and consanguinity that vary across the subcontinent and that lead to levels of rare homozygotes that reach 100 times that seen in outbred populations. Founder effects increase the power to associate functional variants with disease processes and make South Asia a uniquely powerful place for population-scale genetic studies., (© 2023. The Author(s).)