Over 500,000 people are regularly engaged in seasonal migration for rice work into southern West Bengal. This paper analyses social processes at work in the interactions between employers and workers, and the welfare/illfare outcomes. Group identities based on religion and ethnicity are strengthened through the experience of migration and deployed by some migrants to make this form of employment less degrading. In West Bengal seasonal migration can involve practical welfare gains. Importantly, an informal wage floor has been put into place and managed by the peasant union allied to the largest party in the Left Front regime. However, the costs and risks of migration remain high.seasonal migration, West Bengal, group identities, welfare gains,

This article tells of changing social and spatial identities in the countryside of contemporary West Bengal. It draws on a study of interactions between those seeking wage work in agriculture and the people trying to recruit them. We find a continuing and nested process of both self-identification and categorisation. Unconscious as well as conscious ethnic affinities are consolidated and changed. At the same time, identities are used instrumentally by workers to make the outcome of negotiations less demeaning, and by employers to bargain more effectivelyfor the workforce they need. The context is one of the emergence of capitalist production relations in agriculture, presided over by a coalition government led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist). The newly prosperous agriculture has been a source of wealth for capitalist employers, reinforcing constructions of difference in relation to the migrant workers they employ. At the same time, many employers are attracted by the prospects of urban,jobs and life-styles and invest in their children's education. Migrant workers show a similar ambivalence, being attracted by the potential earnings and consumption possibilities arising out of being employed in the West Bengal 'rice bowl', and simultaneously repelled by the dangers they associate with the place.

In high sediment laden river projects or silt affected power stations, the frequency of repair and maintenance of underwater parts is comparatively higher which leads to increase the overall forced outages per year for repair The extent of the major maintenance will depend on the operating condition such as suspended sediment load passing through the turbine and how the machine was loaded during the operation. This paper illustrates the analysis of sediments, effect of sand erosion and maintenance of turbine of Kali Gandaki “A” Hydroelectric Plant (144 MW). The paper also describes the repair methods used for different turbine components to minimize the effects induced by sediment erosion. HYDRO Nepal JournalJournal of Water, Energy and EnvironmentIssue: 17, July 2015

West Bengal is home to nearly 18.5 million Dalits. They constitute 23 per cent of the total population of the State. The large Dalit population in the state earns for West Bengal the third place among the Indian states and union territories on the basis of share of Dalits to the total population. Only Punjab (28.5 percent) and Haryana (24.7 per cent) are ahead of West Bengal as regards the share of Dalits in their respective total populations. Again, West Bengal's contribution to the total Dalit population of the country is 11 per cent, and the only state ahead of West Bengal is Uttar Pradesh, which contributes 21 per cent of the total Dalit population of the country. Bihar comes third with 7 percent. Despite having such a strong numerical presence, Dalit influence in West Bengal society seems to be insignificant when compared with the all India scenario. While Kerala gifted the nation a Dalit president, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh have sent several union ministers and all India leaders, Dalit literature of Maharastra and Tamilnadu have been flourishing in a radical way to contribute immensely to the main body of Indian literary texts, many other states have seen the Dalits flourish in various fields, West Bengal's record in Dalit representation and activism look so withered that even with the greatest efforts one would fail to imagine that this part of the country had produced in the pre-independence period, astounding Dalit social and political movements. What went wrong that the Dalit movement of post independence Bengal, named after West Bengal following the partition in 1947, reduced to be cold-stored in oblivion? Has their status changed radically to make them at par with the so-called mainstream? The answer is a definite No. Certainly, the socioeconomic changes among the Dalits of West Bengal have been far less remarkable. According to 2001 Census, the literacy rate of the Dalits in West Bengal is 59 per cent that places it, jointly with Jammu and Kashmir, at the bottom part of the list of the Indian states and union territories (20 1 h rank in Dalit literacy). Indeed, Dalit literacy rates of 12 of the Indian states are higher than the total literacy rate of West Bengal (68.6 per cent) 3. The occupational pattern of the Dalits of West Bengal inclines to follow the general all India trend of dependence upon manual

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