2835 research outputs found
Sort by
Closure of Schools and Migration of Adolescent Tribal Girls: A Case Study of Surat
No full textThis paper is an empirical study of the consequences of the prolonged closure of schools and other educational institutions for adolescent tribal girls, migrating to the construction sector of Surat in search of work. It attempts to argue that, unlike financial hardship, disruption in education induced by the pandemic brought them to the informal labour market where the entry-level age group is now much younger, exacerbating their existing vulnerabilities
Migration, Skilling, and Employment in Bengaluru’s New Service Economy
Get PDFThis paper summarises the key findings of an extensive research study recently completed in the Bengaluru and Raichur districts of Karnataka. Against the backdrop of the Skill India policy, the research focused on skill development centres that mobilise rural youth to undergo training and facilitate their entry into the lower rungs of the new service economy. While the organised services account for an increasing share of urban employment, the study found that such jobs are unlikely to lead to economic or social mobility. Instead, low wages, insecure tenure, and economic hardships in the city push service workers to switch jobs or return to their villages. The unregulated and precarious nature of work in organised services creates a fluid and unstable workforce, thus raising questions about the hegemonic skills paradigm and India’s development trajectory
Adiyan of Wayanad District of Kerala: An Ethnographic Portrait of a Lesser-Known Tribe
Get PDFThe paper delineates an ethnographic account of a Scheduled Tribe named Adiyan of Wayanad
district of Kerala, the South-West Indian State. The community speaks a dialect of Malayalam and
Kannada, which is known as the Ravula bhasha (Language of Adiyans). The data was collected
during the ethnographic fieldwork from the selected settlements of Mananthavady municipality of
Wayanad. The paper further addresses Adiyan traditional house structure, ethnic food, socio-political
organization, economic organization and life cycle rituals. In focus, the paper tries to present the
ethnographic profile of the lesser-known Adiyan tribal community in order to understand the life
and culture of the community. The researcher observed few signs of changes from their traditional
life and culture, in the current living practices
Contesting the secular school: everyday nationalism and negotiations of Muslim childhoods
Get PDFIdeas of nationalism are (re)produced, materially and discursively, in the lives of children through schools’ actual and hidden curriculums that often exclude minorities and construct them as ‘the other’. However, the exclusion of religious minorities has been minimally explored in understanding nationalism and childhoods. Through fieldwork conducted at a government high school in Bangalore, India, I examine how ‘everyday nationalism’ is experienced and negotiated within schools by religious minorities. I foreground Muslim childhoods as they negotiate the double burden of exclusion; one through the practices of the school where secularism is enacted within ‘Hindu contextualism’ where Hindu symbols and rituals are cast as universal, and two through the stereotypes and ‘othering’ discourses about Indian Muslims. I show that though the school officially claims to adhere to a ‘secular’ ethos, many of its actual practices are contradictory to this claim. Pedagogically, there are specific aims reserved for the Muslim child to develop into a tolerant and inclusive citizen that belongs to the nation. I also show how children across religions become political actors in this space. While some absorb the ‘secular’ narratives, others absorb the dominant discourses of the Muslim being the ‘violent other’. Muslim children exercise their agentic capacities as they negotiate the school space with an awareness of the socio-political ramifications of being Musli
Exploring the forest and mapping its archaeology: Bandhavgarh National Park and Tiger Reserve, India
Get PDFThe archaeology of historical India has usually been
perceived through the lens of cities and states, leaving
forest tracts to a large extent unexamined. This article
considers the historical signature in a segment of the
Bandhavgarh National Park and Tiger Reserve, Madhya
Pradesh, India, in order to understand how histories of
occupation in jungles and wilderness where no settlements presently exist can be studied. Our survey involved a combination of ground-level investigations using
GPS devices along with an analysis of satellite images
to explore whether such images can be used for locating
structures and sites. The earliest archaeological markers
in Bandhavgarh are cave shelters of the 2nd century
CE, which form the subject of this article
Performance at the Urban Periphery: Insights from Southern India
No full textThis edited volume considers performance in its engagement with expanding Indian cities, with a particular focus on festivals and performances in Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
The editors ask how performance practices are affected by urbanisation, the effects of such changes on their cultural economy, and the environmental impacts of performance itself. This project also considers how performance responds to its context, and the potential for performance to be critical of the city’s development, and of its own compromises. Bringing together perspectives from the humanities, natural and social sciences, the book takes a multi-faceted analytical view of live performance, connecting contemporary with heritage forms, and human with more-than-human actors.
The three sections, themed around heritage, everyday life, and future ecologies, will be of great interest to students and scholars in performance, heritage studies, ecology and art history
Discourses of Development: “Development”, Resource Conflict and Political Opportunism in Odisha
Get PDFA dominant discourse links displacement with development (economic growth and modernization) as a critical factor. The dominance of “development” discourse on displacement has, however, overlooked some critical discourses such as resource conflict and political opportunism. Lately, literature has focused on resource conflicts, violent or otherwise, that have contributed substantially to large-scale displacements. Similarly, politics, in terms of using the issue of displacement as political capital to capture power, don’t allow the issue to die down. Hence, in many cases, the pains of displacement don’t reduce as the demands of the displaced are conveniently overlooked. Based on observations through extensive field research, the chapter argues that while the development activities are important factors of displacement in Odisha, the more localized conflicts, especially among the marginalized communities backed by external forces such as the Maoists and the state officials, have also contributed to large-scale displacement
Responses of birds and mammals to long-established wind farms in India
Get PDFWind turbines have been recognised as an alternative and clean-energy source with a low
environmental impact. The selection of sites for wind-farm often creates serious conservation
concerns on biodiversity. Wind turbines have become a serious threat to migratory birds as they collide
with the turbine blades in some regions across the globe, while the impact on terrestrial mammals is
relatively less explored. In this context, we assessed the responses of birds and mammals to the wind
turbines in central Karnataka, India from January 2016 to May 2018 using carcass searches to quantify
animal collisions (i.e., birds and bats), fxed radius point count for bird population parameters, and
an occupancy framework for assessing the factor that determines the spatial occurrence of terrestrial
mammals. The mean annual animal fatality rate per wind turbine was 0.26/year. Species richness,
abundance, and unique species of birds were relatively higher in control sites over wind turbine sites.
Species and functional compositions of birds in control sites were diferent from wind turbine sites,
explaining the varied patterns of bird assemblages of diferent feeding guilds. Blackbuck, Chinkara,
Golden Jackal, and Jungle Cat were less likely to occupy sites with a high number of wind turbines. The
study indicates that certain bird and mammal species avoided wind turbine-dominated sites, afecting
their distribution pattern. This is of concern to the management of the forested areas with wind
turbines. We raised conservation issues and mitigating measures to overcome the negative efects of
wind turbines on animals