11.1 Purpose and Procedure

A central aim of Project RISE is an in-depth of account of the rituals, behaviors, and practices that surround the perinatal experience in Bihar. The following narrative is the culmination of efforts to achieve that aim. To augment the qualitative and quantitative data, we also conducted a final set of qualitative discussions near the end of the project that consisted of interviewing the interviewers. The ‘raw data’ and methods for these interviews are presented in Chapter 5. The following narrative account of the perinatal journey began by converting those observations into a text-based description centered on the experience of Roshni, who plays the role of an illustrative Bihari mother, whom we accompany on a journey from trying to become pregnant to just after delivery. We present the narrative as a third person account of her decisions and experiences.

After converting the interviewing-the-interviews data into a text-based account, we filled in additional details based on the other datastreams with the goal of presenting an as-complete-as-possible account of the major perinatal decisions, beliefs, practices, and rituals that a young mother in present-day Bihar might encounter.