1,011 research outputs found
Decoding India's Budget 2018: hope and promise sans reality?
No full textBudgets in India have often suffered from a hope versus reality conundrum. Deepanshu Mohan uses the examples of Minimum Support Price, the healthcare scheme, and wage inequality to illustrate how when hope does not necessarily translate into reality
The limitations of metric-fixation in healthcare assessment standards
No full textConsidering the Indian context, Deepanshu Mohan looks at the counter-productive nature of metric-based incentives affecting performance in the healthcare sector with some comparative anecdotes from the United States
India's tryst with long-term economic growth: a policy case for (restrained) economic populism?
No full textWhilst the rise of political populism has been recognised as a growing menace across the globe, in the run up to the release of the budget, Deepanshu Mohan makes the case for economic populism as a potential solution to India's slowed economic growth
Vulnerable communities in neoliberal India : Perspectives from a feminist ethnographic approach
No full textMohan, Chindaliya, and Thomas offer an ethnographic critique of modern, neoliberal India from the perspective of studying the daily lives-livelihoods of marginalised, unsecured, informal vulnerable communities residing in the urban, peri-urban spaces across the nation.
With case studies ranging from groups of pastoralists, fisher-folk, and handicraft workers of Kashmir to the weavers of Kutch, and the factory workers and artisans of the Delhi capital, this edited volume of feminist ethnographies cover previously undocumented geographical and socio-cultural contexts of vulnerable groups, put together by the Centre for New Economics Studies, O.P. Jindal Global University. The diverse range of ethnographic case studies further explore the invisibilisation of the growing informal sector in India’s labor market, studied through the applied concepts of Gayatri Spivak’s othering, Doreen Massey’s power geometries and Pierre Bourdieu’s (fractured) habitus. In addition to providing visual narratives of daily lifestyle, livelihoods of identified communities, our ethnographic analysis is rooted in discussing feminist paradigms from each study’s respondents.
A useful read for scholars and policymakers interested in understanding intersectional applications of development studies in context of the unsecured workforce in India, with application across disciplines of social-economic anthropology of South Asia, using the methodological lens of experimental ethnography
Rethinking education as an economic good: analysing the proliferation of private universities across India
No full textPrivately-funded higher education institutions have been materializing across India in the last few years. Anamika Srivastava & Deepanshu Mohan consider how these new universities challenge the traditional value, nature and goals attached to education. They argue that while private investment is necessary to meet increasing demand, new institutions must be careful not to compromise or contradict the larger social goals of higher education
India in Latin America: a missing story?
No full textDeepanshu Mohan and Tridivesh Singh Maini explore the weaknesses of India’s current relationship with Latin America and identify opportunities that could prove mutually beneficial. They argue that improvements can only be achieved if India moves beyond multilateral instruments and seek to develop relations with individual countries in Central and South America
Pan-India stories of informal Workers During Covid-19 pandemic : Crisis narratives
No full textThis book aims to delve into the application of feminist ethnography by engaging with the lived experiences of vulnerable workers, occupied by India’s informal workforce, across its deeply stratified labour-market landscape.
Set up and organized in a diverse spatial trajectory through identified case studies from across India, the book, in a post pandemic context, aims to study, critically reflect on the vulnerable state of India’s workforce, capturing the daily emergencies, livelihood of marginalized communities. Case studies in the book feature the pandemic-crisis narratives of farmers, fisherfolk, factory workers, artisans, small scale entertainment providers, sanitation, and waste workers, to name a few.
By understanding the intersectional dimensions of social structures like caste, gender, and class our case studies in the book also attempt to unpack the ‘dualities’ present in the contemporary understanding of India’s labour market. Reflective discussions with field ethnographers through first-person narratives help documenting their own observations from different case studies, while focusing on interactions on how to work through power dynamics and varied positionalities across dynamic field sites marked with different spatial characteristics.
The text is primarily aimed at students and peer scholars of development studies, or for those who interested in learning about the application of ethnographic methods to studying/understanding the governing dynamics of informality across India and South Asia
The Practice of Visual Ethnography: Examining Identity and Lived Experiences of Marginalised Communities
No full textThis book presents visual ethnography as a transformative approach to understanding, documenting, and representing the layered realities of marginalized communities and often-overlooked institutional contexts. It demonstrates how visual storytelling tools ranging from photography and video to infographics and spatial mapping can uncover the subtle social, cultural, and economic dynamics that traditional textual research tends to miss. Drawing on diverse case studies, the volume shows how visual narratives not only illuminate lived experiences but also foster collaboration and challenge dominant representations
Introduction
No full textIn 1947, Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of independent India, extended the nation’s “tryst with destiny.” Marking the culmination of the long, fraught history of British colonisation, Nehru’s speech delivered at the “stroke of midnight hour” emphasised his vision for the proliferation of the newly “free” nation. His conception of post-colonial India came with a promise for freedom and opportunity to the common man, to the peasants and workers of India; to fight and end poverty and ignorance and disease; to build up a prosperous, democratic and progressive nation, and to create social, economic and political institutions which will ensure justice and fullness of life to every man and woman. (Nehru, 1947) After the long-drawn struggle for decolonising and reclaiming the Indian identity, Nehru’s speech painted a utopian vision of what the future held for the diverse collective of Indians. The reality, however, was far from an equitable societ
Reflections
No full textThis anthology brings to light the often concealed narratives of vulnerable communities from India, variably termed “informal settlements” or “slum dwellers.” Amidst economic advancement, these individuals grapple with unseen vulnerabilities, overshadowed by the rise of more visibly productive industries. Through a captivating exploration of visual narratives, authors strive to shed light on the essence of these marginalised communities scattered across North and West India—from the picturesque valleys of Kashmir to the arid landscapes of Kutch. Against the restructuring of India’s economic systems since the 1990s, these communities found themselves at a crossroads—whether to cling to time-honoured traditions or rebuild lives from scratch. Through the recorded voices of these diverse communities, the aim is to provide a nuanced understanding of their experiences within the broader framework of contemporary repercussions of neoliberalism in India. This chapter contextualises the ensuing case studies within the feminist critique of neoliberalism and the broader socio-economic transformation that followed sui
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