Indian Council of Social Science Research

Background Postpartum depression (PPD) adversely affects women, infants and their families. For various reasons, women are less likely to seek assistance for mental health issues during the perinatal phase, despite the availability of perinatal services. The study focuses on postpartum women' experience in a given context of the South Indian state Kerala, with an impressive record in public health and mass education. Objectives To explore the barriers and facilitators of help-seeking behaviour for depressive symptoms among postpartum women in Malappuram district, Kerala, India. Methods This study utilised a qualitative descriptive design focusing on PPD among postpartum women (within 6 weeks) identified as screen-positive through community screening. Only those screened positive for PPD symptoms and given consent for detailed personal interviews (12 women) are included. The interview followed a phenomenological approach to reflect their experience with PPD and postpartum life in the given setting. The interviews were conducted in local language and transcripts were later translated into English. Thematic analysis and coding were done with the support of Quirkos software. Results The facilitators for help-seeking behaviour identified include awareness and social support. The barriers consist of a lack of awareness, inadequate social support, financial distress, reliance on spiritual treatment, absence of social connection, stigma,judgments, and fear of medication side effects. Conclusion This study identifies barriers and enablers affecting help-seeking behaviour among women identified with PPD symptoms in Kerala, India. It advocates for a multi-sectoral collaborative approach that incorporates individual, family, community, and systemic factors to diminish stigma, elevate awareness, and reinforce support networks. Policymakers are urged to address these areas to improve diagnosis, treatment, and lessen maternal morbidity.

This research paper attempts to understand how these Hindu festivals promote the spirit of collectivism, cooperation, and well-being in society. The study reveals that Hindu festivals not only provide people with mental peace and happiness but also stimulate economic activity and inspire individuals to assist the needy. During these festivals, people work together collaboratively, thereby cultivating a sense of belonging and unity within the community. However, in this changing global scenario, some new challenges like increasing materialistic tendencies and environmental imbalance have also been seen with time. Therefore, today it has become necessary that we celebrate festivals with simplicity, responsibility, and sensitivity towards nature so that their basic spirit remains intact and they can contribute more meaningfully to the overall welfare of society.

The declining share of millets in India’s food systems from 22.2 per cent of total food grain production in 1950–1951 to around 6 per cent in recent years not only altered agrarian economies but also disrupted the ritual and cosmological worlds of indigenous (tribal) communities. This article investigates the socio-cultural significance of millet among the Kutia Kandha, a particularly vulnerable tribal group of Kandhamal and Kalahandi districts, Odisha. It poses the questions how does millet function as a ritual medium through which social relations, gendered identities, and ecological ethics are produced and reproduced? How are these practices changing under the pressures of market integration, outmigration, and state-led millet revival? Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and ritual economy framework, it shows that millet operates simultaneously as a subsistence grain, a ritual offering to Dharni Penu (the Earth Goddess), and a gendered knowledge system in which women are primary custodians of seeds, songs, and sacred practice. The article demonstrates that while generational shifts and market forces are eroding millet-based practices, state interventions such as the Odisha Millet Mission (OMM) have had uneven reach among subsistence-level households. The study’s originality lies in its insider ethnographic positioning conducted in Kui by a researcher from Kandhamal and in its contribution to debates on indigenous food sovereignty, ritual economy, and decolonial approaches to sustainable development, including the UN Sustainable Development Goal on Zero Hunger (SDG 2).

This article advances an anthropological analysis of how material substances acquire social efficacy through ritualized circulation, moral valuation, and cosmological embedding in tribal as well as other indigenous societies of India. By criticizing approaches that treat ritual as epiphenomenal to subsistence, it demonstrates how millet-centered rituals actively organize economic relations, structure gendered authority, and sustain collective personhood. Drawing on ethnographic material from the Kutia Kondh of Odisha, and comparative ritual formations such as the Burlang Yatra and the Bathukamma festival of Telangana, the article foregrounds women’s ritual labor as a central mechanism through which ecological knowledge, social memory, and symbolic power are produced and transmitted across generations. Conceptualizing women not as passive bearers of tradition but as ritual-economic agents, the analysis shows how embodied practices mediate relations between land, seed, and cosmology. In this regard, millet emerges as a relational substance that anchors gendered identities and reconfigures the boundaries between economy, ritual, and ecology. The article argues for re-centering indigenous foodways and women’s ritual agency within anthropological analyses of economy and identity. These challenging frameworks marginalize such practices as residual or merely symbolic in relation to “real” economic life.

Tourism has emerged as a critical driver of socio-economic transformation in peripheral and ecologically fragile regions across the developing world. The Kutch region of Gujarat represents a compelling example of how tourism-led development can simultaneously diversify livelihood sources and improve socio-economic well-being. This paper examines tourism as a dual catalyst that not only expands income opportunities but also enhances livelihood quality through improved income levels, employment generation, infrastructure development, and social empowerment. Drawing on primary survey data and secondary sources including government reports and academic literature, the study finds that approximately 77 percent of respondents perceive tourism as enabling multiple income streams, primarily in a supplementary capacity. At the same time, tourism has led to measurable improvements in income, reduced out-migration, enhanced market access, and strengthened local entrepreneurship. The analysis integrates the case of Hodka village to illustrate how community-based tourism models can amplify both diversification and improvement outcomes. However, structural challenges such as seasonality, environmental pressures, and uneven distribution of benefits limit the transformative potential of tourism. The paper argues that tourism in Kutch operates as a complementary yet transformative sector that enhances resilience and improves livelihoods when embedded within inclusive and sustainable policy frameworks.