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What are the rewards of paid care work for frontline health workers? I focus on India's women community health volunteers, the largest such workforce in the world. Appointed since 2007 and numbering one million, these women are paid per-case incentives to connect the poor and marginalized to government-run health services. Using 14 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Delhi and Punjab, including 80 interviews, I find that women community health volunteers (called Accredited Social Health Activists or ASHAs) experience extrinsic rewards in paid care work. ASHAs earn not only from their official wages, but also from two unofficial streams: a) a boost of income from non-ASHA work and b) commissions from private hospitals. I also find that the intrinsic rewards ASHAs report—emotional gratification, relative autonomy, and skill-building—are co-constituted with extrinsic rewards; that is, they are tied to their earnings. This calls into question the "Love versus Money" binary, used to frame much of the discussion on care work. I argue instead for a "Love of Money" framing—that is, money as a reward and money as begetting other rewards. My findings highlight the significance of globalizing the empirical research on paid care work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an ethnography of college life in India, I examine the role of social ties in navigating the inequities of university life. I analyze the socialities of sharing knowledge and resources among disadvantaged students, which I call "infrastructures of sociality." "Infrastructure" designates here two things: first, the role of the university's infrastructure—its physical spaces and organizational routines—in enabling social ties; and second, the fact that these social ties literally function as infrastructure, in that they make university life possible for disadvantaged students, especially in the context of institutional neglect. I therefore advance Bourdieusian scholarship that views social ties among disadvantaged students as merely lacking in social capital, arguing instead that these ties constitute a form of non‐dominant social capital that is analytically distinct and powerful in its own right. Yet, I suggest that these social ties are a double‐edged sword: while the intensive mutual aid of disadvantaged students makes university participation possible, it nonetheless rests on exclusion from more privileged social groups. Thus, despite mitigating exclusion from the university, infrastructures of sociality also inadvertently participate in the reproduction of inequality, by reinforcing exclusion from the elite cultural and social resources circulating among privileged students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an ethnography of college life in India, I examine the role of social ties in navigating the inequities of university life. I analyze the socialities of sharing knowledge and resources among disadvantaged students, which I call "infrastructures of sociality." "Infrastructure" designates here two things: first, the role of the university's infrastructure—its physical spaces and organizational routines—in enabling social ties; and second, the fact that these social ties literally function as infrastructure, in that they make university life possible for disadvantaged students, especially in the context of institutional neglect. I therefore advance Bourdieusian scholarship that views social ties among disadvantaged students as merely lacking in social capital, arguing instead that these ties constitute a form of non‐dominant social capital that is analytically distinct and powerful in its own right. Yet, I suggest that these social ties are a double‐edged sword: while the intensive mutual aid of disadvantaged students makes university participation possible, it nonetheless rests on exclusion from more privileged social groups. Thus, despite mitigating exclusion from the university, infrastructures of sociality also inadvertently participate in the reproduction of inequality, by reinforcing exclusion from the elite cultural and social resources circulating among privileged students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposes a well-being index of older adults which integrates five domains, namely, activities of daily living, health status, psychological strength, life accomplishment and social ties, and examines potential socio-demographic, living arrangement, lifestyle and religiosity determinants of well-being. The present study uses micro data of 1255 older adults from the recent pilot survey for the Longitudinal Aging Study in India (LASI) conducted in 2010. The results suggest that normal activities of daily life, health, and social ties decline with advancing age, while life accomplishment remains stable over age. However, when all domains are integrated, well-being tends to fade out with advancing age. While smoking has a deterrent effect on well-being, better economic status, literacy, living in a joint family with spouse, religiosity, and regular physical exercise have a statistically significant positive effect on the well-being of older adults in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study builds upon the top management literature to predict and test antecedents to firms’ engagement in corruption. Building on a survey of 341 executives in India, we find that if executives have social ties with government officials, their firms are more likely to engage in corruption. Further, these executives are likely to rationalize engaging in corruption as a necessity for being competitive. The results collectively illustrate the role that executives’ social ties and perceptions have in shaping illegal actions of their respective firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]