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This paper studies the problem of poor health outcomes in India from the demand side, and using the unit level data from the 60th round of the National Sample Survey analyses the determinants of not accessing medical care. This analysis is confined to persons who have reported being ill within 15 days of the survey but have not sought either public or private professional medical services. There are systematic variations in accessing healthcare between urban and rural areas, as well as between males and females in each sector.

Using official reports and supplemented with field notes, this paper examines the quantum and nature of exclusion from and inclusion in “development”. Data reveal that for women, education and employment move in opposite directions, literacy among women workers is lower than literacy among non-working women and development is not closing the gender gap. The bulk of women “included” in development disproportionately constitute the unorganised workers; the latter are those in the unorganised sector plus those working in the formal sector as informal workers.

Marriage by choice is increasingly being cognised as a category between arranged marriage and love marriage without the constraint of caste. Based on an ethnographic fieldwork in a village in Allahabad district, this paper explores the aspirations of women and young girls to changes in marriage practices. It seeks to understand how patriarchy, customs and traditions operate in the form of social disciplines that constrain women’s lives and how women perceive these social disciplines and attempt to carve out spaces of freedom.

Structural developments over the last decade in Pakistan have resulted in numerous substantive transformations, which have altered social relations and societal structures. There are many reasons for this change such as capital inflows, globalisation, the media boom and trends in women’s education. There is a need to interpret and further explore such developments to examine and understand what, if anything, they mean for political transitions and transformations.