LETTERS

Issn 0012-9976
Ever since the rst issue in 1966, EPW has been Indias premier journal for comment on current affairs and research in the social sciences. It succeeded Economic Weekly (1949-1965), which was launched and shepherded by Sachin Chaudhuri, who was also the founder-editor of EPW. As editor for thirty-ve years (1969-2004) K rishna R aj gave EPW the reputation it now enjoys.

On Intergenerational Occupational Mobility

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C Rammanohar Reddy
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his is with reference to the article on intergenerational occupational mobility by Sripad Motiram and Ashish Singh (How Close Does the Apple Fall to the Tree? Some Evidence from India on Intergenerational Mobility, EPW, 6 October 2012) in which they comment, there are only few studies that have focused on the issue of intergenerational mobility. It seems that the authors have missed some stray but important works conducted on the topic of intergenerational occupational mobility in the eld of economics in India. In India, the subject of intergenerational occupational mobility was rst studied by Sovani and Pradhan in their 1955 paper who focused their analysis on the data gathered in the resurvey of Pune city carried out in 1954 by the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics (Occupational Mobility in Poona City between Three Generations, The Indian Economic Review, Vol 2, No 4). Based on a 4% random sample of families, their study revealed that though 54.3% in their sample registered upward occupational mobility, the overwhelming importance of those who are stable spoke of the essential stability of the occupational structure of Pune. Other studies on occupational mobility were that of Nijhawan and of Jetley, both published in EPW in 1969. Occasionally as one takes up an entirely different issue, there are references to occupational mobility. For example, Hirway in her 1979 paper published in the Indian Journal of Labour Economics speaks about the impact of the green revolution on intergenerational occupational mobility in the Matar taluka of Gujarat. Similarly, Vasishta in his 1990 study published in

the journal Social Action, while discussing the prole of marginalised irregulars in the informal sector of Ludhiana city, studied intergenerational occupational mobility. This writer worked on the issue of intergenerational and intra-generational occupational mobility in Calicut (now Kozhikode) during 1990-93 and found great immobility between fathers and sons and mothers and daughters in the matter of both intergenerational and intra-generational occupational mobility (Pattern of Intergenerational and Intragenerational Occupational Mobility: A Study of Calicut City, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Mysore, 1993. See also Varma and Rayappa papers published in Manpower Journal and Artha Vijnana in 1999 and 2000, respectively.) Most classications of occupations like the International Labour Organisations (ILO) 1949 International Standard Classication of Occupations and census classication focus on economic activity while dening occupations. Contrary to this, researchers in disciplines like sociology view occupation as a social function or role performed by an individual and his location in the social scale. This basic difference between the two approaches to occupation leads to a very wide gulf between methodologies in economics and in other disciplines. While the desirability of using secondary data sources to study intergenerational occupational mobility is limited, Motiram and Singh rely on such sources for their analysis, in their case the India Human Development Survey data. On close examination, the way in which Motiram and Singh classify occupations as farmers (self-employed in agriculture), selfemployed in non-agriculture, and workers is faulty which arises out of the confusion between the terms occupation and employment status. In the ILOs 1949

Web Exclusives
The following articles have been uploaded in the past week in the Web Exclusives section of the EPW website. They have not been published in the print edition. (1) Dussehra Festivities in Mughal Shahjahanabad Rana Safvi (2) Adivasis and the New Land Acquisition Act Chitrangada Choudhury (3) Bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh: Almost a Fait Accompli? Trinadh Nookathoti Articles posted before 12 October 2013 remain available in the Web Exclusives section.
october 19, 2013 vol xlviII no 42
EPW Economic & Political Weekly

LETTERS

classication, The occupation of any person is the kind of work which he or she performs, and this alone determines the particular group to which the person is assigned. On the other hand, employment status or work status refers to the nature of employment of that individual. Several problems crop up while developing a particular denition of occupational mobility in the Indian context. Poverty, inequality, unequal opportunity, heterogeneous character of the labour market, difference in skill levels in rural and urban environments, etc, make it difcult to develop a representative denition of occupational mobility suiting Indian conditions.
Visakh Varma Retired Principal, Panampilly Memorial Government College,
Chalakkudy, Thrissur, Kerala

in both the countries involved and most unfortunately the doctors, which enables this multimillion dollar industry to blossom at the expense of many unsuspecting Indians who still consider doctors as gods and will toe the line mechanically as and when they are asked by the doctors to do so.
Pavan Comment on EPW website

against any one candidate, what would be the legitimacy of this election?
Tapan Kumar Mukherjee
Burdwan, West Bengal

Errata
The article Poverty Trends in India 2004-05 to 2009-10: Updating Poverty Estimates and Comparing Ofcial Figures by Utsa Patnaik, published on 5 October 2013, contained the following errors. These have been corrected and the corrected version of the article has been placed on the EPW website. (1) The following text was inadvertently left out of the print edition (p 55) and is published in full below. We see from Table 6RU that in rural India the ofcial poverty lines are underestimated to the greatest extent in six states where energy intake at these lines is extremely low, only 1,150 to 1,550 calories per day: Delhi, Goa, Kerala, Meghalaya, Puducherry and Tamil Nadu. Puducherry is the extreme case with only 1,150 calories accessible at the ofcial line, similarly the population of rural Delhi and Goa could obtain a mere 1,400 calories at the respective ofcial poverty lines. In rural Delhi, Goa and Kerala the ofcial poverty ratios are only 7.7, 11.5 and 12 whereas the percentage of persons unable to obtain 2,200 calories are 86, 92 and 76. Another three states show calorie intake at ofcial poverty lines of between 1,550 and 1,700: Arunachal Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, where actual poverty affects 60%, 85%, and 85% of persons whereas ofcial poverty percentages are 26.2, 26.1 and 21.2, respectively. In four states Gujarat, Haryana, Uttarakhand and West Bengal the calorie intake at ofcial poverty lines ranged between 1,700 and 1,800. The actual poverty ratios in Gujarat, Haryana, Uttarakhand and West Bengal were 76, 52, 56 and 89 compared to the ofcial percentages of 26.7, 18.6, 14.9 and 28.8. In Meghalaya and Nagaland no persons in households reached the 2,200 calories nutrition norm, the cost of accessing it could only be obtained by projecting the relation between MPCE and calorie intake. At Rs 2,500 per month, it was nearly as high as in rural Delhi. The lowest levels of actual poverty, affecting half or less of the rural population were registered by Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and Tripura (36, 38 and 48, respectively). But it should be remembered that energy requirements are higher as well in those of the hill states which have a cold climate the average calorie intake in those states is about 200 calories per capita per day more than the all-India average and the lowest observed level is also about 150 calories per day higher. (2) On page 57, Food and Agriculture Organisation Corporate Statistical Database should have read as FAOSTAT database.

NOTA: The New Provision

ost observers have acknowledged that the Supreme Court has passed two landmark judgments that pave the way for major electoral reforms in Indian sociopolitical system. The rst is the judgement which upholds forfeiture of membership of Legislative Assembly or of Parliament if convicted by a court of law for two years and more, and the second is the order to the Election Commission to make provisions for the option of none of the above (NOTA) in the ballot paper or electronic voting machines. These surely are historic judgments. But they have profound theoretical and practical implications in social choice and voting procedure. While the rst one will help to give the country a good, clean, corruption-free and transparent governance, the second one will give the voter greater exibility and freedom for the expression of his/her preferences. NOTA is likely to remove the restrictions on individual preferences by expanding choice one bold step further through the aggregation procedure. The new dispensation will ensure more wise and rational choice of deserving candidates and peoples representatives by majority decisions. But this system may have one serious sociopolitical consequence which demands thoughtful consideration, because the possible outcome may delegitimise the conventional result. Suppose more than 50% of those voting exercise the NOTA option, will the winner be morally entitled to be democratically elected? It seems that the legal position is that the NOTA votes will be similar to the invalid votes and the winner will be chosen from among the valid votes cast. However, in our hypothetical situation, because the majority votes have been
vol xlviII no 42

Egregious Nexus
his is in response to the EPW editorial On Trial and Found Wanting (12 October 2013). The rst step to a clinical trial (CT) naturally is obtaining the informed, free and complete consent of the subjects involved and their right to question, also to withdraw from the trial at any point. Failing so miserably at the rst hurdle towards conducting a safe and legitimate CT clearly leaves no hope for the thousands of poor, illiterate and helpless Indians falling into this vicious trap. There are reports which show that doctors nd it much more lucrative to conduct CTs than their practice. It is even more unfortunate that doctors are known to attach caveats for treating the needy which forces them into CTs in order for them to receive treatment. The Food and Drug Administration of the United States, which showed such alacrity in banning the products from Ranbaxy in their country and also conducting rigorous inspections at their factory at Mohali, somehow fails to subject their own drug companies, which export the trials of their drugs to poor countries, to such scrutiny claiming jurisdictional conicts. This is a line which our authorities are all too fond of too. It is an egregious nexus between the drug companies, the concerned authorities
Economic & Political Weekly EPW

october 19, 2013

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october 19, 2013

Economic & Political Weekly

320-321, A to Z Industrial Estate Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai 400 013, India Email: edit@epw.in, epw.mumbai@gmail.com
vol xlviII no 42
EPW Economic & Political Weekly