CSDS Annual Report 17-18

ANNUAL REPORT

2017–2018

CONTENTS

Director’s Note

Highlights

Board of Governors

01

02

06

Honorary Fellows

Faculty

Visiting Fellows

8

9

51

Programmes

Project

Teaching/Training

53

63

64

Rajni Kothari Chair

Journals

Academic Activities

66

67

69

Financial Statements

Staff

72

73

iv | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

DIRECTOR’S NOTE

I

t gives me an immense pleasure to release the CSDS annual report for 2017-18, as it not only provides a stock taking of the academic activities carried out during the year but it also outlines the research agenda for the coming year. The year 2017-18 has been academically fulfilling for the faculty members, as they undertook numerous research activities individually as well as collectively under the various ongoing research programmes and projects at CSDS. The Lokniti programme conducted election studies in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Meghalaya and Nagaland where assembly elections were held in 2017-18. It organized a series of book release and discussions during this period which included Electoral Politics in India: Resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party by Suhas Palshikar, Sanjay Kumar and Sanjay Lodha, Post-Mandal Politics in Bihar: Changing Electoral Patterns by Sanjay Kumar and Indian Democracy by Suhas Palshikar. The Sarai programme completed a research project on ‘Ethnographies of Social Data’, which explored the history of statistics, evolution of survey and social data collection systems.

It concluded with a workshop on Lives of Data 2.0: Computing, Money, Media. The other events organized include an international conference on ‘What Time Is It? : Technologies of Life in the Contemporary’ and a series of Wager on Cinema film screenings. The Indian Languages Programme published two new editions of the journal Pratiman: Samay Samaj Sanskriti, a book discussion on Language Politics and Public Sphere in North India: Making of the Maithili Movement by Mithilesh Kumar Jha and a public lecture by Amitabh Rajan on ‘The Institutional Politics of Anti-Corruption’.

The prestigious annual lectures of CSDS that were organized during this period include the 19th B.N.Ganguli Memorial Lecture by Sari Nusseibeh on ‘Ideals and Interests: The Case of the Arab Transportation Network in East Jerusalem’ and the Rajni Kothari Lecture by Jayadeva Uyangoda on ‘Modern Buddhism and Democracy: Diverse

Encounters in India and Sri Lanka’. The 12th Giri Deshingkar Memorial Lecture was delivered

by Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard on ‘The Communist Party of China in the Post-Mao Era: From Mass to Elite Party’. Besides the prestigious annual lectures a series of special lectures and talks by speakers from diverse walks of life and several seminars, dialogues and film screenings were held during this reporting cycle.

The CSDS continued its commitment of capacity building program for young researchers and scholars in the field of social sciences. Several short and medium term courses were organised which included ‘Researching the Contemporary’ teaching course, summer workshop on ‘Analyzing Quantitative Data on Indian Politics’ and the workshop on ‘Mainstream and the Margins: Theory, Practice and Methods’. Besides the faculty publishing their own books, contributing chapters in edited volumes, articles in research journals, newspapers, magazines and social media platforms, the CSDS continued to bring out the three refereed academic journals, Pratiman: Samay, Samaj, Sanskriti; Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies; and Studies in Indian Politics.

The Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), New Delhi remains the primary source of funding and we duly acknowledge its continued financial support in undertaking research and training at CSDS. I would like to thank all my colleagues, both academic and non-academic for their unqualified support, which helped us in conducting and disseminating high quality research in the field of social sciences and humanities.

Sanjay Kumar

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 1

HIGHLIGHTS Special Lectures The prestigious annual lectures of CSDS that were organized during this period include the 19th B.N.Ganguli Memorial Lecture by Sari Nusseibeh on ‘Ideals and Interests: The Case of the Arab Transportation Network in East Jerusalem’ on 21 April 2017 and the Rajni Kothari Lecture

by Jayadeva Uyangoda on ‘Modern Buddhism and Democracy: Diverse Encounters in India and Sri Lanka’ on 7 April 2017. Both the lectures were held at CSDS. The Twelfth Giri Deshingkar Memorial Lecture was delivered by Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard on ‘The Communist Party of China in the Post-Mao Era: From Mass to Elite Party’ on 22 March 2018 at IIC, New Delhi. It was jointly organized with Institute of Chinese Studies, Delhi.

Lecture/Talks A series of special lectures by speakers from diverse walks of life were held during the reporting cycle which include lecture by Rohini Nilekani on ‘Private Resources and the Public Interest: How can Philanthropy Enhance Social Good?’ on 21 February 2018, lecture by Roopa Kudva on ‘Innovation for the Next Half a Billion’ on 16 November 2017 and lecture by Shobana Kamineni on ‘Need for Public-Private Partnerships in Healthcare’ on 8 September 2017. All the three lectures were held at CSDS and were well attended.

2 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

The seminars and talks that were held during the period include ‘Conscience, Freedom of Conscience and Freedom of Speech’ by Sir Richard Sorabji, ‘Helping Doctors and Patients Make Sense of Health Statistics’ by Gerd Gigerenzer, ‘The Institutional Politics of Anti-Corruption’ by Amitabh Rajan, ‘Post-Materialist Science and Integral Ecology: Experiments in the Peruvian High Amazon’ by Frederique Apffel-Marglin, ‘Path Dependence, Educational Development, and the Kerala Model: Unpacking Contested Histories’ by Manisha Priyam, ‘Transnational Reproduction on Screen: Documentaries on Commercial Surrogacy in India’ by Nadja-Christian Schneider, ‘Free Speech and Academic Freedom in India and in the West’ by Shailendra Raj Mehta, ‘The King Must Protect the Difference: The Juridical Foundations of Medieval Religious Diversity and the Making of the SŠaiva Age’ by Jason Schwartz, ‘Hindu Pluralism: Religion and Public Space at the Dawn of Modernity’ by Elaine M. Fischer and ‘The Postcolonial/Emotional State: Mother India’s Response to Her Deviant Maoist Children’ by Swati Parashar.

Workshops/Discussions/Conferences/ Seminars Besides the lectures, several workshops, dialogue and film screenings were also organized which include book discussion on international workshop on ‘Gender, Civil Society and the Role of the State’, conference on ‘Inter Asian Conversations: Media and Populism in India and Turkey’, conference on ‘Populism and the Shifting Coordinates of the Political’, launch of

As a part of faculty seminar, Ravikant presented on ‘Hinglish[tani] in Hindi Cinema: Making Sense of a Register’, Ananya Vajpeyi on ‘Language of Metaphor and Metaphysics of Self: Some readings from the early Upanishads’, Hilal Ahmed on ‘Gandhi’s Muslims’, Peter Ronald deSouza on ‘Minority Rights and Human Rights: What is the role of the Democratic State’ and Sanjeer Alam on ‘What Do the Graduates Do? Higher Education and Labour Market Outcomes in India’.

D L Sheth’s book, At Home with Democracy: A Theory of Indian Politics, an international Dalit Studies Conference: Human Dignity, Equality and Democracy’, a book discussion on Fertile Disorder: Spirit Possession and Its Provocation of the Modern, a workshop on ‘Lives of Data v2.0: Computing, Money, Media’, an international conference on ‘What Time Is It?: Technologies of Life in the Contemporary’, a workshop on ‘History and Democracy’, a dialogue with student leaders on ‘Student Politics in India: Issues and Challenges, a workshop on ‘The Question of Minorities in India’, book discussion on Electoral Politics in India: Resurgence of the Bhartiya Janata Party, a panel discussion on ‘Chinese Philosophy, Past and Present’, a conference on ‘Work, Identity and Livelihood in Nepal, Theoretical challenges and contemporary practices for South Asia’, a report release cum discussion on ‘Society and Politics between Elections’, a seminar on ‘Explorations in Indian Democracy’ and a report release cum discussion on the Report ‘Attitudes, Anxieties and Aspirations of India’s Youth: Changing Patterns’. The film screenings during this period include Rahul Jain’s film ‘Machines’, Fathima Nizaruddin’s film ‘Nuclear Hallucinations’ and Khushboo Ranka and Vinay Shukla’s film ‘An Insignificant Man’.

The visiting fellows who presented in faculty seminar include Devesh Vijay on ‘Livelihoods in Transition: Long Term Comparisons from a Village and a Slum in the National Capital Region’ and Shivani Kapoor on ‘Interrogating ‘Pollution’: The Sensory Politics of Caste in the Legal/ Environmental Discourse’.

Teaching/Training Various activities at CSDS for training and capacity building of young researchers and scholars include teaching course, workshops, long and short term fellowships and internships. The teaching course ‘Researching the Contemporary’ was held in JulyAugust 2017. The four courses offered this year include: Theory and the Global South, Reading Media: Historical and Contemporary, Touch: Forms and Meanings and Research as Practice: Issues in Method. The course ended with a three-day workshop for the students, where they presented papers on their research interests, rethought in light of the course with feedback from the faculty members.

The Lokniti programme in collaboration with Jain University, Bengaluru, organized the eleventh workshop on ‘Analyzing Quantitative Data on Indian Politics’ between 10 and 22 July 2017 at the global campus of Jain University in Bengaluru. The workshop trained twenty two young social science researchers in quantitative methods, focusing not merely on statistical techniques but also in formulating crucial research questions.

The annual ICSSR capacity-building workshop ‘Mainstream and the Margins: Theory, Practice, and Methods’ for SC/ST Research Scholars, in the beginning to intermediate stages of their doctoral project and advanced MPhil, was organized between 1-10 February 2018 at CSDS. It focused on the broad thematic of ‘Mainstream and the Margins’ addressing ideas and approaches to

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 3

issues of inequality and inclusion, dissent and democracy, vernacular modernities, emergent histories, technologies and media forms and spaces and habitats and research methodologies and practices.

(ICSSR), where scholars working on Indian politics presented an analysis of their respective states elections, highlighting the changes in party competition in their respective states. Both the seminars were held in April 2017 at CSDS.

A new initiative undertaken this year was a similar capacity building workshop ‘“kks/kkFkhZ dk;Z”kkyk% eq[;/kkjk vkSj gkf”k;s dk lekt’ for SC/ST Hindi medium research scholars in March 2018. It builds on the steady progress of the Indian Languages Programme, which is inspired by the quest to foster a substantive conversation between Western and Indian vernacular discursive traditions, in ways that will broaden and enrich the scope of social sciences in India.

The programme organized a series of book release and discussions during this period which included Electoral Politics in India: Resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party by Suhas Palshikar, Sanjay Kumar and Sanjay Lodha at India International Centre (IIC) on 9 August 2017, Post-Mandal Politics in Bihar: Changing Electoral Patterns by Sanjay Kumar at IIC on 16 April 2018 and Indian Democracy by Suhas Palshikar on 17 April 2018 at CSDS.

A number of students did their internship at CSDS, mainly with Lokniti and Sarai programmes. The students were also associated with other projects as interns and short term fellowships were provided to a few young researchers during this period.

The ongoing projects under this programme include ‘Politics and Society between Elections’,in collaboration with Azim Premji University which aims to capture public opinion between elections and a nationwide understanding of everyday development and governance in India, ‘Rule of Law: The Study of Police in India’ to ascertain people’s attitudes, experience, trust and perception of policing in the country and ‘Inequalities, Welfare and Democracy: Studies of Politics Policy Interface in Indian States’, funded by ICSSR, which is a series of studies focused on understanding and investigating the linkages between democratic politics and social policies as they shape at the sub-national level in Indian states.

Programmes Lokniti, a long term research programme of CSDS continued its research work on core themes of electoral studies and democratic politics in India.

It conducted studies in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Gujarat, Meghalaya and Nagaland during the assembly elections held in this reporting period in collaboration with ABP News. It also conducted the second round of the ‘Mood of the Nation’ survey in 19 states in January 2018 to ascertain the mood of Indian citizens on current political and social issues. It organized two seminars: a two-day seminar on ‘Explorations in Indian Democracy’, where young and mid-career scholars presented their papers within an empirical frame with specific themes; and a seminar on ‘Party Competition in Indian States’, supported by the Indian Council of Social Science Research

4 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

Sarai, another long term research programme of CSDS continued its research on the themes of media, culture and urban issues by engaging in various projects. The research team completed a research project on ‘Ethnographies of Social Data’, which explored the historical and emergent conditions of data-driven-statistical and computational-knowledge production in the

social sector. The research focus included history of statistics, evolution of survey and social data collection systems, and the Big Data emergences in the Indian context.The project concluded with a workshop on Lives of Data 2.0: Computing, Money, Media in January 2018 at CSDS. The other events organized include an international conference on ‘What Time Is It? : Technologies of Life in the Contemporary’, which brought together scholars and practitioners from India and across the world in December 2017 at CSDS and a series of Wager on Cinema film screenings.

The projects in progress under this programme include a multi collaborative project ‘The Leverhulme International Network for Contemporary Studies’, which brings together the University of St Andrews, University of Quebec at Montreal, Glasgow School of Art, Université Paris 8 and Sarai-CSDS, Delhi and ‘Objects, Media Technologies, Aesthetics and Politics: Material Histories and Cultural Imaginaries, India 19401960’, which aims to explore the new archival objects with their production, distribution and reception in aesthetic and mediatized form, and specifically through registers of publicity and advertising.

During this period, the Indian Languages programme published two new editions of the journal Pratiman: Samay Samaj Sanskriti. A book discussion on Language Politics and Public Sphere in North India: Making of the Maithili Movement by Mithilesh Kumar Jha was organized on 28 March 2018 at CSDS. The programme also organized a lecture by Amitabh Rajan on ‘The Institutional Politics of Anti-Corruption’ on 13 December 2017 at CSDS.

Project The Parekh Institute of Indian Thought invited seven scholars, David Wong, Roger T. Ames, Li Chenyang, Daniel Bell, Patrick Olivelle, Donald R Davis, and Jens Schlieter as short term fellows between July and August 2017. The grant given by the Berggruen Institute, USA enabled it to invite four Chinese scholars, in addition to three scholars on Ancient India. Besides the reading sessions, a workshop on ‘The Ends of Human Life in Ancient Indian and Chinese traditions’ was held on 4-6 August 2017 at IIC, New Delhi. David Wong delivered the third C.R. Parekh Memorial Lecture on ‘Soup, Harmony and Disagreement’ on 4 August 2017 at IIC, New Delhi.

Journals Besides members of the faculty publishing their own books and chapters in edited volumes, articles in research journals, newspapers, magazines and social media platforms, the CSDS continues to bring out its three journals, Pratiman: Samay Samaj Sanskriti, Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies and Studies in Indian Politics.

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 5

BOARD OF GOVERNORS

Deepak Nayyar (Chairman) Economist, and Former Vice Chancellor, University of Delhi, Delhi

V. B. Singh (Treasurer) Former Director, CSDS, Delhi

Rakesh Sinha (ICSSR Nominee) Professor, Motilal Nehru College, University of Delhi, New Delhi

Sanjay Kumar (Member Secretary) Political Scientist, Director, CSDS, Delhi

Virendra Kumar Malhotra (ICSSR) Member Secretary, ICSSR, New Delhi

Sudipto Mundle Emeritus Professor, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi

R. Rajaraman Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Anu Aga Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha Director, Thermax Limited, Pune

Partha Chatterjee Political Theorist, Kolkata

6 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

Prem Shankar Jha Journalist and commentator, Delhi

Prathama Banerjee (Faculty Representative) Social Scientist, Delhi

Girish Karnad Dramatist, Actor, Playwright, Bengaluru

Tanika Sarkar Historian, New Delhi

Rajeev Bhargava (Special Invitee) Political Philosopher Former Director, CSDS, Delhi

Prashant Bhushan Lawyer and Activist, Delhi

Ravikant (Faculty Representative) Social Scientist, Delhi

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 7

HONORARY FELLOWS

Ashis Nandy Sociologist and clinical psychologist, Delhi

Bhikhu Parekh Professor of political philosophy at the University of Westminster, UK

Charles Taylor Philosopher and professor emeritus at the McGill University in Montreal, Canada

D.L. Sheth Former Director, CSDS, Delhi and member of National Commission for Backward Classes (1993-96)

Deepak Nayyar Economist, Former Vice Chancellor, University of Delhi, Delhi

T.N. Madan Honorary Professor at the Institute of Economic Growth, University of Delhi

8 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

FACULTY Professor

Professor

Abhay Kumar Dubey’s research focuses on the past, present, and future of Hindi by looking into the configurations of its modernity. He prefers to investigate the plethora of Dalit, Muslim, and women’s writings to unravel the problems and prospects of the increased plurality of Hindi’s own cultural democracy.

Email: abhaydubey@csds.in

Aditya Nigam’s recent work focuses on the decolonization of social and political theory.

He has earlier worked on ideological and discursive formations and their relationship to the emergence and constitution of political subjectivities.

Email: aditya@csds.in

Professor

Professor

Peter Ronald deSouza works on issues of democratic politics and in the comparative politics of South Asia. He has earlier worked on a range of themes from Panchayati Raj, to trust and political institutions, to dalits and discrimination, to the uniform civil code in India.

Email: peter@csds.in

Rajeev Bhargava is a political theorist working on secularism, religious and cultural pluralism, identity politics and more recently, on ancient Indian social and political thought.

Email: rajeevbhargava@csds. in

Professor

Professor

Ravi Sundaram’s work rests at the intersection of the post-colonial city and contemporary media experiences. His current research deals with urban fear after media modernity, looking at the worlds of image circulation after the mobile phone, ideas of transparency and secrecy, and the media event.

Email: ravis@csds.in

Ravi Vasudevan works on non-fiction film infrastructures, the film archives and questions of historiography; postcinema media artefacts and political imaginaries; contemporary stardom and political discourse; and the dispersed urban imaginaries of contemporary cinema.

Email: raviv@)sarai.net

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 9

FACULTY Director

Professor

Sanjay Kumar’s core area of research is Electoral politics.

Using survey method as a research tool, he has also been engaged in survey based studies on Indian Youth, State of Democracy in South Asia, State of Slums of Delhi, State of Indian Farmers and Issues of Electoral Violence.

Email: director@)csds

Shail Mayaram works on subaltern pasts and moral imaginations of peasant, pastoral and forest-based communities, living together in the city and on nationalism and decolonizing knowledge.

Email: shail@)csds.in

Associate Professor

Associate Professor

Ananya Vajpeyi works at the intersection of intellectual history, political theory and critical philology.

Email: vajpeyi@csds.in

Awadhendra Sharan conducts research on urban and environmental issues. His current research is focused on Economies and Cultures of Waste and Pollution in Colonial India and Urban Infrastructure in India.

Email: sharan@csds.in

Associate Professor

Associate Professor

Hilal Ahmed works on political Islam, Muslim, modernities / representation and politics of symbols in South Asia.

Email: ahmed.hilal@csds.in

Prathama Banerjee’s current work is on histories of the ‘political’ in colonial and post-colonial India. Her work seeks to tell the story of how the political emerged as a distinct domain and/or mode of thought, action, and subjectivity in modern times.

Email: prathama@csds.in

10 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

FACULTY Associate Professor

Associate Professor

Priyadarshini Vijaisri is engaged in researching the cultural histories of ‘outcastes’. She is currently engaged in ethno-historical research on the cognitive system of ideas and cultural practices that signify the exceptional being of outcastes.

Email: vijaisri@csds.in

Ravikant is currently working on ‘Words in Motion Pictures’, which navigates inter-media sites such as print, broadcasting, and web in an effort to offer creative connections between these media forms and their diverse publics.

Email: ravikant@csds.in

Assistant Professor

Assistant Professor

Rakesh Pandey’s research interest is in the area of the cultural and intellectual history of modern India, with particular focus on knowledge formations, philosophy of culture, and moral orders.

Email: rakeshkpandey@csds. in

Md. Sanjeer Alam works on socio-spatial inequities in education, social exclusion, affirmative action, and electoral politics (Muslim politics in particular).

Email: sanjeer@csds.in

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 11

Abhay Kumar Dubey Professor

A

bhay Kumar Dubey is a social science scholar, translator, and editor. A professor at the Centre, he also directs CSDS’ Indian Languages Programme. His current research focuses on the past, present, and future of Hindi by looking into the configurations of its modernity. While underlining historically sustained structural conditions that are amenable to Hindi’s increasing status as an all-India link language, he prefers to investigate the plethora of Dalit, Muslim, and women’s writings to unravel the problems and prospects of the increased plurality of Hindi’s own cultural democracy. Dubey’s recently published work Hindi Mein Hum: Aadhunikta Ke Aine Mein Bhasha aur Vichar contains the outcome of his findings that seeks to challenge established social science wisdom that imposes a secular-communal quick-fix on the history of Hindi.

His other agenda of research is focused on the processes of a fast changing social scenario, which filtered in through reading the history of globalisation(s), by analysing the fast mutating structures of patriarchy, by dissecting newly emerging cultures of media, through examining the startling claims of a sweeping sexual revolution in the Indian metros, and by making sense of global impacts on the developing language cultures.

Under Dubey’s stewardship the Indian Languages Programme of the Centre has published a number of anthologies, translated and self-contained original works in the last fourteen years. One of his earlier works, The Study of Changing Face

12 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

of Naxalite Politics, became a best seller and has seen several reprints. In nineties he edited Samay Chetna, a reputed monthly journal of ideas and analysis; and wrote prolifically in various journals. Recently he has compiled the enormous Samaj-Vigyan Vishwakosh, a six-volume Hindi encyclopaedia of social sciences and humanities.

Currently he edits the refereed biannual social science journal Pratiman Samay Samaj Sanskriti.

Four anthologies of his essays are in pipeline.

Journal • Edited ninth and tenth issues of Pratiman Samay Samaj Sanskrit, refereed journal of Indian Language Programme.

Lectures/Seminars/Talks/Conferences • Spoke at a book launch function ‘Making of the Maithili Movement’ on 28 March 2018.

• Spoke on ‘Deshprem ke Maine’, writer’s summit on 22 March 2018.

• Delivered a lecture at Kirorimal College History Society on ‘Hindutvavadi Ekta: Ek Vaicharik Itihas’.

• Participated in a panel discussion on ‘Fifty Years of Rag Darbari’, at DU Political Science Department on 29-30 January 2018.

• Presented at annual faculty seminar on ‘Badalta Sangh Parivar banam Thahra Hua Vimarsh’, Baghaan Orchard Retreat, Garhmukteshwar, 2-4 December 2017.

• Delivered a key note address at AMU on ‘Samajvigyan ka Samajik Jeevan’, 6 November 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Loktantra aur Hindutva ki Rajniti’ at Shivnarayan Smriti Vyakhyan at Azamgarh on Samajik Nyay, 17 September 2017.

• Delivered a key note address on ‘Samajik Samrasta versus Samajik Nyay’ at Bhagat SinghAmbedkar Vichar Manch, Varanasi, 16 September 2017.

• Participated in a panel discussion on the theme ‘Sahitya aur Kala ka Sanrakshan aur Naitik Mulyon par Uska Prabhav’ at Muktangan, Bijwasan, New Delhi, 20 August 2017.

• Participated in a panel discussion on the theme ‘Mere Liye Swatantrata Ka Kya Arth Hai?’ at Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi on the occasion of Independence day, 15 August 2017.

• Presided a session and made closing remarks on famous Hindi novelist Maitreyi Pushpa’s talk on ‘Main Gaon Par Kyon Likhti Hoon’ at Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Teen Murti, New Delhi, 3 April 2017.

Articles in Newspapers/Magazines • Wrote 52 edit page articles in Lokmat Samachar, Nagpur and another 52 edit page articles in Daily Ajit, Jalandhar.

Other Academic Activities • In the last five months worked on a book length project exploring the contradictions between the discourses of Indian liberalism and Sangh Parivar by deploying the methodology of discourse mapping. The first draft of the book is completed and tentatively titled Hindu-Ekta Ki Rajniti aur Madhyamargi Vimarsh Ka Gatirodh.

• Directed Indian Languages Programme.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Vernacular Media and Representation’ in a workshop at Jamia Millia Islamia, 25 April 2017.

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 13

Aditya Nigam Professor

A

ditya Nigam’s recent work has been concerned with the decolonization of social and political theory. He has earlier worked on ideological and discursive formations and their relationship to the emergence and constitution of political subjectivities. The engagement with discursive formations has led to the need for greater attentiveness to the actual thought-worlds and imaginations of social agents and the need to step outside theoretical frames provided by standard theory, derived primarily from Western experience.

In particular, he is interested in theorizing the contemporary experience of politics, populism and democracy in the non-West – treating the non-West as the ground for ‘doing theory’ – rather than a field for application or testing of standard frameworks derived from the Western experience.

A parallel and related part of Nigam’s work has been concerned with interrogating the received ‘philosophical history’ of capital, once again from the vantage point of the experiences of India and the non-West in general. Together, these interests tie up with the whole question of what modernity means–or can mean–in societies like India’s and with conceptual resources we may best grasp that experience.

As part of this endeavour, Nigam has also been working collaboratively with some other colleagues at CSDS, in exploring thought in the conceptual universe of Indian languages.

14 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

Aditya Nigam has also been associated with a group of South Asian scholars from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, and India, working around the idea of the ‘post-national condition’.

He also works with the CSDS’s Indian Languages Programme and its Hindi journal Pratiman. He comments regularly on contemporary political issues on the blog, kafila.online He is the author of The Insurrection of Little Selves: The Crisis of Secular Nationalism in India (2006), Power and Contestation: India Since 1989, with Nivedita Menon (2007), After Utopia: Modernity and Socialism and the Postcolony (2010), and Desire Named Development (2011).

Reports/Papers/Articles in Journals/Books • ‘For a Radical Democracy Yet to Come: Imagining Possible Indian Future’s’, in Alternative Futures: India Unshackled, edited

by Ashish Kothari and KJ Joy, November 2017, Authors Upfront.

• ‘Vaicharik Svaraj aur Europetar Chintan ki Chunaotiyan’, Pratiman: Samay Samaj Sanskriti, January-June 2017, Year 5, No. 9.

Lectures/Seminars/Talks/Conferences • Participated in seminar on ‘Indian Intellectual Traditions: Social Sciences in the 21st Century’, and presented on ‘Decolonization of Thought’, GB Pant Institute, Allahabad, 25-26 March 2018.

• Presented a paper on ‘The Nirgun People and the AAP’s Popular-Democratic Address’, ICAS seminar on ‘Populism and Shifting Coordinates of the Political’, IIC, 14-16 March 2018.

• Co-organized the Second ‘International Dalit Studies Conference’ in collaboration with the Dalit Studies Collective at CSDS, 22-24 January 2018.

• Presented a paper on ‘Ambedkar, Micropower, Marxism’ and participated in a workshop on ‘Global Political Thought: Perspectives from South Asia and the Middle East’ in University of Virginia, 1-7 October 2017.

• Participated in a seminar with students in Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Centre (MESAAS), Columbia University, New York, under the Theory from the South theme, 29 September 2017.

• Delivered a lecture at Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies Centre (MESAAS), Columbia University, New York, on ‘Early Marxism and The Parapolitics of Revolution: Thinking the Question of Thought’ under the

rubric Equality and Difference: Theory from the South, 28 September 2017.

Articles in Newspapers/Magazines • ‘Yonder, the Dark Star’, (article on Tripura elections), Outlook magazine, 19 March 2018.

• ‘Gujarat 2017: The Meaning of Jignesh Mevani’, The Wire, 18 December 2017.

• ‘Remembering the ‘Revolution Against Das Kapital’’, The Wire, 2 November 2017.

• ‘What the Rise of Corbyn and Sanders says about the Future of the Left in India and Beyond’, The Wire, 19 June 2017.

Training and Curriculum Development • Taught in the Contemporary Marginalities ICSSR workshop for SC/ST students in February 2018 and in the Hindi workshop, 5 March 2018.

• Taught a course on ‘Theory and the Global South’ in the CSDS summer school Researching the Contemporary, July-August 2017.

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 15

Peter Ronald deSouza Professor

P

eter Ronald deSouza is a professor at CSDS and held the Dr S. Radhakrishnan Chair of the Rajya Sabha till April 2017. He was director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), Shimla, where he served two terms from 2007 till 2013. Subsequently, as Interim director, he set up the International Center for Human Development (IC4HD) between 2013-14.

He works on issues of democratic politics and in the comparative politics of South Asia. Favouring an eclectic approach to unpacking the problems of politics he searches for the ‘inconvenient fact’ that troubles established ways of talking about the politics of India. He has worked on a range of themes from Panchayati Raj, to trust and political institutions, to dalits and discrimination, to the uniform civil code in India. He has recently published a book of essays, In the Hall of Mirrors: Reflections on Indian Democracy (Orient Blackswan, 2018). In addition he has also edited five books.

The most recent is At Home with Democracy: A Theory of Indian Politics, Palgrave Macmillan 2018, (these are essays of Professor D.L. Sheth). The others are Speaking of Gandhi’s Death (with Tridip Suhrud, Orient Blackswan 2010), Indian Youth in a Transforming World: Attitudes and Perceptions, (with Sanjay Kumar and Sandeep Shastri, Sage 2009), India’s Political Parties (with E. Sridharan, Sage, 2006) and Contemporary India: Transitions (Sage, 2000). In addition to these books he has published numerous articles the latest of which are, ‘The Recolonization of the Indian Mind’, in Revista Critica de Ciencias Socias, 114, Dezembro 2017, 137-160,

16 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

and ‘Minority Rights and Democracy in India’, in The Sage Handbook of Political Sociology (eds) William Outhwaite and Stephen P Turner. 2017.

He was one of the three principal investigators of a five nation study on the State of Democracy in South Asia (2006). He has served as an expert and consultant for the UNDP, UNESCO, World Bank, International IDEA, Ford Foundation and Inter Parliamentary Union. He is also a regular columnist for The Hindu, The Tribune and Outlook.

As a political theorist his abiding interest is in looking at conundrums of democratic politics and at righting historical wrongs.

Reports/Papers/Articles in Journals/Books • ‘The Recolonization of the Indian Mind’, in Revista Critica de Ciencias Socias, 114, December 2017.

• ‘Minority Rights and Democracy in India’, in The Sage Handbook of Political Sociology (eds.) William Outhwaite and Stephen P Turner, London, 2017.

Books • In the Hall of Mirrors: Reflections on Indian Democracy, Orient Blackswan, 2018.

• At Home with Democracy: A Theory of Indian Politics, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. (Compiled and edited the essays of D.L.Sheth)

Lectures/Seminars/Talks/Conferences • Valedictory Address titled ‘Diversity,

Democratic Conundrums and Liberal Political Theory’, Chandigarh Social Science Congress, 15-16 March 2018.

• Presentation on ‘Scientific Temper 2.0’, IIT-M, Chennai, 5 March 2018.

• Presentation on ‘Minorities in India’, International Conference ‘India at 7.0 History and Modernization’, Kazakhstan-India Foundation, Almaty, Kazakhstan, 27 February 2018.

• Presentation on ‘Education: The Challenge Before us’, at Asia-Europe People’s Forum on Assuring Affordable Accessible and Quality Public Services for All, Manila, 11-15 February 2018.

(Un) Making of Publics’, EHESS, Paris, 13-14 October 2017.

• Co-taught a course with Ralph Weber, ‘Political and Moral Conundrums in Modern Democracy: India and Switzerland’, at Basel University of Basel, Switzerland, 26 September-8 October 2017.

• Two lectures in Pune University as Visiting Professor, 18-22 September 2017.

• Lecture to Equity Fellows of Harvard University on Indian Democracy.

• Chaired the Rajni Kothari Lecture given by Jayadeva Uyangoda on 7 April 2017.

• Discussant and final summing up of two day discussion of the flagship Global State of Democracy Report of International IDEA on Democracy’s Resilience at Colombo, 12-13 December 2017.

• Three Lectures given in Jogjakarta, Rueteng and Bandung, lecture tour in Indonesia on behalf of the Indonesian Embassy,10-25 November 2017.

• Organized a workshop on Minorities in India with Bertelsmann Stiftung, 26 October 2017.

• Presented a paper ‘Politics and the Profane: The case of MF Husain’ at the Public demos Seminar ‘Norm Conflicts and Art Forms in the

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 17

Rajeev Bhargava Professor

R

ajeev Bhargava has been at the Centre since 2005 and is currently the director of its newly launched Institute of Indian Thought. He was the Director of the Centre from 2007-2014. He has been a Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (1980-2005), and between 2001 and 2005 was Head, Department of Political Science, University of Delhi. Bhargava did his BA in economics from the University of Delhi, and MPhil and DPhil from Oxford University.

He has also been a Fellow at Harvard University, University of Bristol, Institute of Advanced Studies, Jerusalem, Wissenschaftskolleg, Berlin, and the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna. He has also been Distinguished Resident Scholar, Institute for Religion, Culture and Public Life, Columbia University, and Asia Chair at Sciences Po, Paris. He is an Honorary Fellow, Balliol College, Oxford and currently a Professorial Fellow at the Institute of Social Justice, ACU, Sydney.

Bhargava’s publications include Individualism in Social Science (1992), What is Political Theory and Why Do We Need It? (2010) and The Promise of India’s Secular Democracy (2010). His edited works are Secularism and Its Critics (1998) and Politics and Ethics of the Indian Constitution (2008).

Bhargava is on the advisory board of several national and international institutions, and was a consultant for the UNDP report on cultural liberty.

Reports/Papers/Articles in Journals/Books • ‘The Indispensability of Humanities’ in Mrinal

18 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

Miri (ed.) The place of Humanities in our Universities, Routledge, London and New York, 2018.

• ‘Nehru against Nehruvians’ in Smita Jassal (ed.), New Perspectives on India and Turkey: Connections and Debates, Routledge, London and New York, 2018.

Lectures/Seminars/Talks/Conferences • Delivered a lecture on ‘Reflections on Indian Secularism’, Miranda House, Delhi 26 March 2018.

• Inaugural address and lecture on ‘Religious Pluralism in Early Medieval India’ at a conference on ‘Indian Intellectual Traditions and Social Science for the 21st Century’, Govind Ballabh Pant Institute, Allahabad on 24-25 March 2018.

• Special colloquium on ‘Civility in Asokan Inscriptions’, Harish Chandra Institute, Allahabad, 23 March 2018.

• Participated in and chaired a conference on ‘Social Inequality in India and Brazil’, CSD, Hyderabad, 21-22 March 2018.

• Discussant at ICAS conference on ‘Populism’, IIC, 14-15 March 2018.

• Concluding reflections on ‘What does Asia Tell about the Secular’, MSH, Paris, 8-9 March 2018.

• Key note address on ‘European Secularism’

at the symposium organised by European Academy of Religion, Bologna, 5-7 March 2018.

• Key note address on ‘Nationalism’ at Bandaranaike Institute of International Relations, Colombo on 22 February 2018.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Indian Secularism’, St, Stephen’s College, Delhi ,12 February 2018.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Asoka’s Dhamma as civil religion’, conference on India-China Traditions on Global Order, Bangkok, 28-30 January 2018.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Secularism’, Department of English, Columbia University, 27 November 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Religious Diversity in Ancient and Early Modern India’, University of Texas at Austin, 2-4 November 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Ancient Indian Thought’ at Department of Philosophy, Duke University, 31 October 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Ancient Indian Political Thought’, Cornell University, 25 October 2017.

• Introduction to the workshop ‘Ends of Human Life in Ancient Indian and Chinese Traditions, organized by Parekh Institute of Indian Thought, 4-6 August 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Ambedkar, the Social Scientist and Political Philosopher’, Ambedkar Seminar, Bengaluru, 20 July 2017.

• Presented a paper on ‘Dialogue as a Basis for Sociability in Asoka’s Thought’, workshop on Dialogue in Ancient Indian Traditions, University of Lancaster, 5-7 July 2017.

Articles in Newspapers/Magazines 23 Fortnightly columns in The Hindu.

Other Academic Activities Organised the reading sessions of Parekh Institute of Indian Thought and workshop on ‘The Ends of Human Life in Ancient Indian and Chinese Traditions’ on 4-6 August 2017.

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 19

Ravi Sundaram Professor

R

avi Sundaram’s work rests at the intersection of the post-colonial city and contemporary media experiences. As media technology and urban life have intermingled in the post-colonial world, new challenges have emerged for contemporary cultural theory. Sundaram has looked at the phenomenon that he calls ‘pirate modernity’, an illicit form of urbanism that draws from media and technological infrastructures of the post-colonial city.

Sundaram’s essays have been translated into various languages in India, Asia, and Europe.

His current research deals with urban fear after media modernity, where he looks at the worlds of image circulation after the mobile phone, ideas of transparency and secrecy, and the media event.

20 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

Sundaram was one of the initiators of the Centre’s Sarai programme which he co-directs with his colleague Ravi Vasudevan. He has co-edited the critically acclaimed Sarai Reader series: The Public Domain (2001), The Cities of Everyday Life (2002), Shaping Technologies (2003), Crisis Media (2004), and Turbulence (2006).

His other publications include Pirate Modernity: Media Urbanism in Delhi (2009). Two of his other volumes are No Limits: Media Studies from India (Oxford University Press, 2012) and Delhi’s Twentieth Century (forthcoming OUP).

Reports/Papers/Articles in Journals/Books • ‘The Leak’ in Posthuman Glossary, Rosi Braidotti, Maria Hlavajova (eds), Bloomsbury, 2018.

Lectures/Seminars/Talks/Conferences • Delivered a lecture on ‘Post-Publics?’, Intermedia Studio, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, 23 March 2018.

• Delivered a keynote lecture on ‘What is a Just City? India: 1947-2017’, State of Housing, Mumbai, UDRI, 2 February 2018.

• Co-organiser of the conference on ‘What Time Is It? Technologies of Life in the Contemporary’, Sarai-CSDS, 14-16 December 2017.

• Position paper on ‘Calculation’, British Academy conference ‘Vocabularies for Urban Futures’, 23 November 2017.

• Opening Lecture, ‘Cosmopolis’, Pompidou Centre Paris, 18 October 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Urbanism Beyond the City? Thinking about Architecture after Media’ School of Architecture and Education, Mumbai, 18 August 2017.

• Keynote Lecture in conference on ‘Digital Transactions in Asia’, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, 10 August 2017.

• ‘Crowds and Agglomerations’, ‘Public Expression after the Mobile Phone’, University of Sydney, Media Department, 3 August 2017

Training and Internship • (Co-taught) Reading Media: Historical and Contemporary at CSDS teaching programme 2017.

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 21

Ravi S Vasudevan Professor

R

avi Vasudevan studied modern history at Jawaharlal Nehru University and Film Studies at the University of East Anglia.

He directs the CSDS media and urban studies programme Sarai with Ravi Sundaram. He is guest faculty in Film Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, and Jadavpur University, Kolkata.

Vasudevan is editorial advisor to the film studies journals Screen, Cinema and Cie, and Reframe and co-founder/editor of the journal BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies.

He has curated and organised film screenings, lecture series and conferences, including The Many Lives of Indian Cinema, 1913-2013 and Beyond: Disciplines, Histories, Technologies, Futures (Sarai/ CSDS January 2014) and the current Sarai Wager on Cinema series. His publications include (ed.)

Making Meaning in Indian Cinema (Delhi, OUP, 2000) and The Melodramatic Public: Film Form and Spectatorship in Indian Cinema (Ranikhet, Permanent Black, 2010, 2016). He is working on non-fiction film infrastructures, the film archives and questions of historiography; post-cinema media artefacts and political imaginaries; contemporary stardom and political discourse; and the dispersed urban imaginaries of contemporary cinema.

Reports/Papers/Articles in Journals/Books • ‘A British Documentary Film Maker’s Encounter with Empire’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, published online 4 January 2018.

22 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

• ‘Registers of Action: Melodrama and Film Genre in 1930s India’, Screen, 58 (1) Spring 2017.

• ‘From Advertising to Public Education: Notes on Burmah Shell in India’, Marg, 68 (3) 2017.

Journal • Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies, 8 (1), The Documentary Archive in Photography, Film and Video, June 2017.

• Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies, 8 (2), December 2017.

Lectures/Seminars/Talks/Conferences • Presented a paper on ‘Configurations of Partition: Exploring the Documentary and Newsreel Archive in India’ at a Conference on Partition, by Netaji Institute of Asian Studies and Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University, 22 March 2018.

• Workshop Introduction and coordination: Media and Politics, SSRC-Sarai, CSDS, 16 March 2018.

• Curator of special panel in the conference: Media and Political Mobilization, collaboration between Sarai and Social Science Research Council: ‘Transregional Virtual Research Institute. Media and Politics in InterAsian Contexts, 15 March 2018.

• Conference Introduction and Curation: Populism and the Shifting Coordinates of the Political: ICAS: MP, cross modular conference, India International Centre, 14-15 March 2018.

• Screening and discussion of films ‘The Look of Silence’ (Joshua Oppenheimer et al, 2015) and ‘I Am Not Your Negro’ (Raul Peck, 2017), Ramjas College, 21-22 February 2018.

• Lecture on ‘Looking at Time: Cinema and Historiography’, Ramjas College, 21 February 2018.

• Presented on ‘Fandry and Sairat’, Indraprastha College for Women, 13 February 2018.

• Moderator, Discussion on Machines, (Rahul Jain, 2017), Sarai Wager on Cinema Series, 9 February 2018.

• Presentation on ‘Sexuality and Cinema: Dev D’, in seminar, Women in Indian Cinema, Chicago University Centre, 8 February 2018.

• Lecture on ‘Rethinking 1950s Bombay Cinema’, Sanskriti Foundation, 27 January 2018.

• Book Discussion, Giulia Battaglia, Documentary Film in India, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 19 January 2018.

• Seminar on ‘States of Partition: Exploring the Documentary and Newsreel Archive in 1940s and 1950s India’, Berlin Graduate School, Muslim Cultures and Societies, Freie Universitat, Berlin, 22 May 2017.

• Seminar on ‘Material Cultures and Media Histories’, Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata, 5 May 2017.

• Chair and Discussant of ‘Lives of Data’ workshop, Sarai, 4-5 January 2018.

• Lecture on ‘Material Cultures and Media Histories’, Centre for Media Culture and Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, 20 April 2017.

• Paper on ‘Dispensations and Dispositifs: The Film and Media Archives’, Sarai conference, ‘What Time Is It: Technologies of Life in the Contemporary’, 15-16 December 2017.

• Public lecture on ‘Film in the Archive of Mediatized Politics’, IIT Humanities workshop on Media Resources and Social Science Research, 5 April 2017.

• Paper on ‘Configurations of Partition, in colloquium Imaginative Communities: Partitions and Visual Cultures in South Asia’, Berlin Graduate School, Muslim Cultures and Societies, 29 November 20173 also presented at CSDS Faculty Retreat, 3-5 December 2017.

• Presentation on ‘Material Cultures and Media Histories’ IIT Humanities workshop on Media Resources and Social Science research, 4 April 2017.

Other Academic Activities

• Three lectures in course, ‘Reading Media: Historical and Contemporary’, in CSDS teaching programme, Researching the Contemporary 27 July, 3 August and 24 August 2017.

• Visiting Faculty: Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University.

• Presentation on ‘Film and the Archive of Mediatized Politics’, History Module Workshop, International Centre for Advanced Studies (ICAS: MP), held at German Historical Institute, London, 9-10 June, 2017.

• Module Member: History as Political Category, ICAS: MP.

• Visiting Faculty: School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

• Module Coordinator: New Module: Media and the Constitution of the Political, ICAS: MP.

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 23

Sanjay Kumar Director

S

anjay Kumar is a Professor and currently the Director of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. His core area of research is Electoral Politics, but using survey method as research tool he has been engaged in conducting research on very wide range of themes-Indian Youth, State of Democracy in South Asia, State of Indian Farmers, Slums of Delhi and Electoral Violence.

He has published widely, written several books, edited volumes, contributed chapters for several edited volumes and published articles in various national and international research journals. His most recent book is Post Mandal Politics in Bihar: Changing Electoral Patterns. His other publications include Changing Electoral Politics in Delhi: From Caste to Class, (with Praveen Rai) Measuring Voting Behaviour in India, (with Peter R deSouza and Sandeep Shastri) Indian Youth in a Transforming World: Attitudes and Perceptions, Indian Youth and Electoral Politics: An Emerging Engagement, (With Christophe Jaffrelot) Rise of the Plebeians? The Changing Face of Indian Legislative Assemblies and (with Suhas Palshkar and Sanjay Lodha) Electoral Politics in India: Resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party. His new volume on Indian Youth based on his latest research is forthcoming.

Besides his academic writing he writes regularly for national and regional newspapers, both in English and Hindi languages. His articles are published regularly in The Hindu, Indian Express, Asian Age, Deccan Chronicles, Dainik Bhaskar, Rajasthan

24 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

Patrika and The Mint. He is also a well known face on Indian Television as Psephologist and Political Commentator. He has also been an international election observer in many countries.

Reports/Papers/Articles in Journals/Books • (With Jyoti Mishra and Vibha Attri), ‘Issues, Performance and Personality’, Seminar, 699, November 2017.

• (With Souradeep Banerjee), ‘Low Levels of Electoral Participation in Metropolitan Cities’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol LII, No. 45, 11 November 2017.

• ‘Interpreting the Electoral Verdict of 2014 Lok Sabha Election in India: A Significant Shift in Nature of Electoral Politics’, Punjab University Research Journal, Vol XLIV, No 1 January-June 2017.

Books • Post Mandal Politics in Bihar: Changing Electoral Patterns, SAGE, 2018.

• (With Suhas Palshikar and Sanjay Lodha), Electoral Politics in India: Resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Routledge, 2017.

Lectures/Seminars/Talks/Conferences • Delivered a talk on ‘Changing Patterns on Indian Electoral Democracy’, Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad, 26 March 2018.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Survey Method in Social Science Research’, Academic Staff College, Aligarh Muslim University, 24 March 2018.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Survey Research in Social Sciences’, CSDS, 8 March 2018.

• Participated in a panel discussion on ‘Simultaneous Elections’, organised by School of Liberal Arts, Jindal Global University, Sonepat, 23 March 2018.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Survey in Social Science Research’, at Capacity Building Program organised by Department of Child and Women Development, Jamia Millia Islamia, 3 March 2018.

• Presented a paper on ‘Religious Practices and Electoral Participation’, at a seminar on Religion and Politics, organised by Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 19-20 March.

• Presented a paper on ‘Role of Leadership in Indian Electoral Politics’, at a two-day seminar organised on ‘Role of Leadership in Indian Politics’, by Madhya Pradesh Institute for Social Science Research, Ujjain, 22-23 February 2018.

• Participated in a panel discussion on ‘Is India Ready to Celebrate a Century of Democracy’, organised in a two day deliberation ‘Beyond the States: A Festival of Democracy’, Jaipur, 17-18 March 2018,

• Delivered two lectures on ‘Basics of Survey Method at Department of Political Science’, St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, February 13-16 February 2018.

• Participated in a panel discussion on ‘Ethics in Indian Politics’, organised by Department of Political Science, Amity University, Noida, 15 March 2018.

• Delivered a Talk on ‘The different Images of the Holy City of Banaras’, Shyam Lal College, University of Delhi, 12 March 2018.

• Delivered the Key note address on ‘Participation of Women and Youth in Indian Democratic Politics’, at Department of Political Science, University of Nagpur, 10 March 2018.

• Participated in a panel discussion on ‘Women in Indian Politics, at Difficult Dialogues’, Organised jointly by Internal Goa Centre, LSE, and Brookings India Institute, 9-11 February 2018.

• Delivered a talk on ‘Dynamics of Electoral Politics in India’, St. Stephens College, University of Delhi, 24 January 2018.

• Delivered a talk on ‘Electoral Democracy in India: Trends and Patterns’, Centre for Federal Studies, Jamia Hamdard University, Delhi, 16 January 2018.

• Presented a paper on ‘Democracy, Inclusion and Election: Understanding the Voting Choices

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 25

of the Adivasis in Gujarat and Chhattisgarh’, ICAS workshop on ‘Political Economy of Growth and Development’, Centre for the Study of Social Sciences (CSSS), Kolkata, 11-12 January 2018.

• Delivered two lectures on Research methods, (Why Survey Research & Using Survey data for Social Science Research) at Madhya Pradesh Institute for Social Science Research, Ujjain, 16 June 2017.

• Delivered lectures on ‘Women in Indian Electoral Politics & Youth and Situation of Unemployment in India’, at Banasthali Vidyapith, Banasthali, 4 January2018.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘How to Conduct Research’ at Department of Political Science, Choudhary Charan Singh University, Meerut, 9 June 2017.

• Presented a paper on ‘Electoral Participation of Women in India’, in the seminar on ‘Gender Mainstreaming in Politics Administration and Society’, jointly organised by the MPPG Program North South University and University of Bergen, Dhaka, 18-19 November 2017.

• Delivered three lectures on ‘Survey Research Method’ at the Course on Research Methodology, HNB Garhwal University, Srinagar Garhwal, 23-24 May 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Using Quantitative Data for Social Science’, at Department of Political Science, University of Delhi, 14 November 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Survey Research in Social Sciences’, at Department of Political Science, University of Delhi, 13 November 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Survey Research in Social Sciences’, at Shyam Lal College, (evening) University of Delhi, 26 August 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Why Survey Research in Social Science’, at Researching the Contemporary, CSDS, Delhi, 27 July 2017.

• Delivered three lectures on ‘Why Survey Research, Sampling in Survey Research and Questionnaire Designing’, at Summer School on ‘Quantitative Methods in Political Science’, organised jointly by Lokniti-CSDS and Jain University, Bengaluru, 13-15 July 2017.

• Delivered two lectures on ‘Research methods, (Survey in Social Science Research & Sampling in Survey Research)’ at Madhya Pradesh Institute for Social Science Research, Ujjain, 5 July 2017.

• Delivered two lectures on ‘Research Methods (Survey as a tool of Social Science Research and Sampling in Survey Research) Academic Staff College’, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, 30 June 2017.

26 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Why Survey Research at capacity building program’, Developing Countries Research Centre (DCRC), University of Delhi, 16 May 2017.

Articles in Newspapers/Magazines • (With Pranav Gupta), ‘What Political realignment in Uttar Pradesh Means’, The Mint, 23 March 2018.

• ‘Gorakhpur and Phulpur: A Story beyond 2 Seats’, Asian Age, 19 March 2018.

• ‘Yeh sirf do seato ki kahani mart nahi hai’, Rashtriya Sahara and Hastkshep, 17 March 2018.

• (With Suhas Palshikar and Sandeep Shastri), ‘Discontent Powers Vote for Change’, Indian Express, 5 March 2018.

• (With Pranav Gupta), ‘Why BJP can’t Afford to Take its Middle Class Vote Bank for Granted’, The Mint, 1 March 2018.

• (With Pranav Gupta), ‘North East Polls: Its advantage BJP’, Asian Age, 12 February 2018.

• ‘Why the BJP needs to reach out to Rural Voters’, The Mint, 30 January 2018.

• ‘Congress Prospects Seem Better than Before’, Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle, 2 January 2018 • (With Pranav Gupta) ‘The Growing Importance of Women as an Electoral Constituency’, The Mint, 27 December 2017.

• ‘Kho Gaye Asle Mudde’, Rashtriya Sahara, (Hindi) 19 December 2017.

• ‘Modi ne Raatoraat Yuo Badla Matdatao kaa Mijaayaz’, BBC (Hindi), 19 December 2017.

• (With Shreyas Sardesai) ‘How Gujarat was Won’, The Hindu, 19 December 2017.

• ‘Verdict 2017: Question of Identity Trumps over Real Issues in 2 states’, Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle, 19 December 2017.

• ‘Gujarat Elections: BJP Seems to have an edge in a Close Fight’, The Mint, 5 December 2017.

• ‘Gujarat Election is Rahul’s Litmus Test’, Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle, 26 November 2017.

• ‘Gujarat ki Chunaavi Hava’, Dainik Jagaran, 23 November 2017.

• (With Pranav Gupta) ‘The Politics of Reservation and OBC Vote’, The Mint, 15 November 2017.

• (With Shreyas Sardesai) ‘Game on in Gujarat’, The Hindu, 14 November 2017.

• (With Pranav Gupta) ‘Why Indian Patient is Caught Between the Devil and the Deep Sea?’, Live Mint, 9 September 2017.

• ‘For BJP, 2019 Poses hardly any Challenge’, Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle, 20 August 2017.

• ‘Modi ke Saamne Bacha hi Kaun’, Rashtriya Sahara, Hastkshep, 5 August 2017.

• (With Pranav Gupta) ‘Why Narendra Modi is Concerned about Depression Amongst Students in India’, Live Mint, 1 August 2017.

• ‘High Premium, Doubtful Results’, The Hindu, 31 July 2017 • ‘BJP’s Choice of Prez, VP are means to an End’, Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle, 22 July 2017.

• ‘Beyond Poll Reforms, Basic Changes Needed’, Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle, 10 July 2017.

• ‘High Stakes in Bihar Political battle’, The Hindu, 18 July 2017.

• ‘Bigger Worries for BJP than its Defeat in Chitrakoot’, The Quint, 12 November 2017.

• (With Pranav Gupta) ‘Public Anger over Growing Unemployment a Big Challenge for Modi Govt’, Live Mint, 29 June 2017.

• ‘In Himachal, its Advantage BJP as Congress Scores ‘Self-goals’, Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle, 7 November 2017.

• ‘Farmers Crisis Likely to Escalate for BJP’, Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle, 25 June 2017.

• (With Ananya Singh) ‘Shedding light on Saubhagya-on Electrification Scheme’, The Hindu, 25 October 2017.

• ‘Electoral Bonds won’t Lead to Fairer Politics’, Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle, 16 October 2017.

• ‘Bhajapa ke Sambhavanie Dhaval’, Rashtriya Sahara, Hastkshep, 14 October 2017.

• (With Pranav Gupta), ‘Gujarat Election 2017; Clear Path for the BJP’, The Mint, 3 October 2017.

• ‘Growing Discontent against Modi Government’, Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle, 2 October 2017.

• ‘Caution: All’s is not Well with Modi Government’, Deccan Herald, 1 October 2017

• ‘In South and East, BJP on Mission Expansion’, Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle, 9 June 2017.

• (with Pranav Gupta), ‘Growing Business of Religious Tourism in India’, The Mint, 19 May 2017.

• (With Pranav Gupta) ‘A Different kind of Opponent’, The Hindu, 13 May 2017.

• ‘AAP Needs to put its House in Order’, Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle, 5 May 2017 • ‘The Rise and Fall of AAP’, Deccan Herald, 30 April 2017.

• (With Pranav Gupta) ‘AAP Interrupted’, Indian Express, 27 April 2017.

• ‘Poll funding: Taking a Few Steps Backwards’, Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle, 3 April 2017.

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 27

Shail Mayaram Professor

S

hail Mayaram is a Professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies.

Her publications include Against History, Against State: Counterperspectives from the Margins; Resisting Regimes: Myth, Memory and the Shaping of a Muslim Identity; coauthored, Creating a Nationality: The Ramjanmabhumi Movement and the Fear of Self (1995). Edited volumes are The Other Global City and Philosophy as Samvada and Svaraj: Dialogical Meditations on Daya Krishna and Ramchandra Gandhi and coedited, Subaltern Studies: Muslims, Dalits and the Fabrications of History. She has worked on subaltern pasts and moral imaginations of peasant, pastoral and forestbased communities, living together in the city and on nationalism and decolonizing knowledge. Israel as the Gift of the Arabs: Letters from Tel Aviv is her most recent book and her current research project examines contestations between Sufis and Salafis.

Reports/Papers/Articles in Journals/Books • ‘The Salafi war against Sufism: reflections on love and violence in Islamic thought and politics’, Past Connections, Contemporary Debates: India and Turkey, edited by Smita Jassal Tewari and Halil Turan, London: Routledge, 2018.

• ‘Conceptualising South Asia as a world region’, Another South Asia, edited by Dev Pathak, Delhi, Primus, 2018.

Lectures/Seminars/Talks/Conferences • Participated in ICAS Workshop, ‘Selling history:

28 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

tourist guides, bazaar histories and the politics of the past’, IIC, 17 March 2018.

• Chaired a session on ‘Countering Authoritarian Populism’, ICAS Conference on Populism, IIC, 14-15 March 2018.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Padmavat, the journey of a queen from manuscript to multiplex’, Film Studies Department, Jadavpur University, 20 February 2018.

• Participated in and chaired a session ‘In global transit: Jewish migrants from Hitler’s Europe to Asia, Africa and Beyond, International Conference organised by Max Weber Stiftung’, Kolkata, 14-15 February2018.

• Chaired a lecture, ‘How to unlock secrets by emendation of Greek and Latin texts’ and ‘how not to’ by Sir Richard Sorabji, CSDS, Delhi, 13 February 2018.

• Chair and discussant, ‘Second International Dalit Studies Conference’, CSDS, Delhi, 23 January • Organised a workshop, ‘History and Democracy’, ICAS-CSDS, Delhi, 11-12 December 2017.

• Organised and chaired a lecture by Frederique Apffel-Marglin, ‘Post-materialist science: experiments in the Peruvian High Amazon’, 8 December 2017.

• Presentation on ‘Martyrdom and the Sacred’, Institute of Fine Arts and Literature, Delhi, 4 November 2017.

• Presentation on ‘Democracy, Democratisation and Dalits: the Poona Pact and the remaking of the Political’, Panel on Democracy, ICAS Inaugural Conference on Changing Contours of the Political, Berlin, 3 October 2017.

• Participated as a panelist at launch of Looking back, the 1947 Partition of India, 70 years on, edited by Rakhshanda Jalil, Tarun Saint and Debjani Sengupta, organised by Orient BlackSwan, India International Centre, Delhi, 18 August 2017.

• Presented a paper on Popular History, ‘Workshop on History’, organised by ICAS, German Historical Institute, Delhi, 9-10 June 2017.

• Presented a paper on ‘A literary genealogy of right-wing nationalism’, Conference on Indian Literature and Social Development, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla, 5-7 April 2017.

• Participated and chaired a session in ICAS Workshop on ‘Language, Region, Knowledge: Colonial disciplines to Indian Social Sciences’, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi, 4-5 April 2017.

• Presented a paper, Early Indian thought, conversations on the ends of life between the vaidika and the upanisadika traditions, Workshop on ‘The ends of life in ancient Indian and Chinese traditions’, organised by the Parekh Institute of Indian Thought, CSDS, Delhi & the Berggruen Institute, LA, USA, 4-6 August 2017.

Articles in Newspapers/Magazines

• Organised and chaired a panel discussion on ‘Chinese Philosophy, Past and Present’ with panelists: Daniel A. Bell, David B. Wong, Chenyang Li and Roger T. Ames, CSDS, 31 July 2017.

Training and Curriculum Development

• Chaired a lecture on ‘Hindu pluralism: religion and public space at the dawn of modernity’ by Elaine Fisher, CSDS, 17 July 2017.

• Presentation on ‘The idea of heresy and challenges to Islamic pluralism’, Symposium on Treasuring Diversity: The Role of Religion in Building an Inclusive Society, Baha’i Office of Public Affairs, New Delhi, 29 June 2017.

• ‘The promise of a chosen people’, Indian Express, 7 July 2017.

• ‘Protectors of the cow and murderers of men’, National Herald, commemorative edition on 70th year of India’s Independence, 2017.

• Lecture on ‘Padmavat, ek rani ki kahani dusron ki zabani’, ICSSR Workshop for Dalit and Adivasi Students in Hindi, 8 March 2018.

• Lecture on ‘Padmavat, a journey: reflections on literature, history, politics’, ICSSR Workshop for Dalit and Adivasi Students, 1 February 2018.

Research supervision • Alok Pandey, Dr S. Radhakrishnan Postdoctoral Fellow in Humanities and Social Sciences of the UGC, 2016.

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 29

Awadhendra Sharan Associate Professor

A

wadhendra Sharan trained as a historian at Delhi University and subsequently at the University of Chicago where his doctoral thesis was on ‘The Question of Untouchability in Colonial Bihar, 1860s to 1950s.’

After initially working with the Sarai Programme, he joined the Centre’s Faculty, where he conducts research on urban and environmental issues. His book ‘In the City, Out of Place: Nuisance, Pollution and Urban Dwelling in Modern Delhi, c.1850-2000’ (OUP India) is a study of several such interrelated issues: water purity and sanitation, nuisance and traditional trades, congestion, pollution and toxicity, combining extensive archival research with a study of contemporary sources. Along similar lines, his current research is focused on Economies and Cultures of Waste and Pollution in Colonial India.

In addition, Sharan has initiated a new research project on Urban Infrastructure in India.

Sharan has delivered guest lectures at the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi and at Delhi University. His works have been published in various research journals and in the Sarai Reader series.

Reports/Papers/Articles in Journals/Books • ‘Shahar aur Paryavaran’, Pratiman, 5, 9, 2017.

• ‘Ganges as an Urban Sink: Urban Waste and River Flow in Colonial India in the Nineteenth Century’, in Martin Knoll, Uwe Lubken and Dieter Schott ed. Rivers Lost. Rivers Regained: Rethinking City-River Relations. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017.

30 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

Lectures/Seminars/Talks/Conferences • Delivered a lecture on ‘Waste as Aesthetics and as Value’, Singapore University of Technology and Design, 26 March 2018.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Smoke: A History’, Sociology of Science Workshop on Air, Delhi School of Sociology, 22 March 2018.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Delhi’s air: How do we write about it so that it matters’, City Scripts Festival, Delhi, IIHS and Goethe Institute, 10 March 2018.

• Presented a paper on ‘Environmental Politics in Delhi,’ at workshop on ‘Colossus Delhi’, Centre for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania, 18 November 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Planning, Law and Urban Environment’at SPA, Delhi, 1 November 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘City and the Countryside: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives’, Ambedkar University, 25 October 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘When the Black River is Depicted Blue’: Thinking about nature in Delhi’, Ambedkar University, Delhi, 5 October 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Urban Environments: Historical and Sociological Perspectives,’ DSE, Delhi, 12 September 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Air and Water’: Understanding Delhi’s Environment’, to students of Lewis and Clarke College, USA, Delhi, 5 September 2017.

Research supervision • Ranjana Saha, Department of History, Delhi University.

Other Academic Activities Thesis examined: • Vasundhara Bhojvaid, ‘A Sociological Study of the Emergence of a Climate Agent: The Case of Black Carbon,’ Delhi School of Sociology, 2018.

• Manpreet Kaur, Urban Planning and Nehruvian Modernism in India: A Case Study of the City of Chandigarh, Department of Political Science, Delhi University, 2018.

Book Manuscript Evaluated: • (Un)Governing the City: The Making of Colonial Delhi: 1858-1911 (Orient Blackswan, 2017).

• Urban Planning, Development and Environment: Transforming trajectories of Blue infrastructures in Kolkata (Springer, 2017).

• ‘Governing Riverscapes: Urban Environmental Change along the River Yamuna in Delhi, India’.

Evaluation done for the Geoverbund ABC/J’s Young Academic Award, Germany, 2017.

Book Review: • Anuj Bhuwania, Courting the People: Public Interest Litigation in Post Emergency India.

Delhi: Cambridge University Press, Studies in Indian Politics, 5 (2), 2017.

• Sonali Verma, ‘Criminality, Mobility and Filth: Re-writing Magahiya Doms of Bihar and United Provinces, c.1866-1947’, CHS, JNU, 2017.

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 31

Ananya Vajpeyi Associate Professor

A

nanya Vajpeyi works at the intersection of intellectual history, political theory and critical philology. She is currently working on three different projects: a history of caste categories in Western India from pre-colonial to modern times, a short political biography of Sanskrit, and her long-term research on the life of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar (1891-1956).

Her first book Righteous Republic: The Political Foundations of Modern India was named book of the year 2012 by the Guardian and the New Republic. It received the 41st Thomas J. Wilson Memorial Prize from Harvard University Press, the Tata First Book Award for Non-Fiction (2013), and the Crossword Award for Non-Fiction (2013).

Vajpeyi was educated at Lady Shri Ram College for Women (BA), Jawaharlal Nehru University (MA), the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar (MPhil), and the University of Chicago (PhD).

She has taught at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, in the history department at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and at the National Law School of India University, Bangalore. Most recently she was a Visiting Professor in South Asian and North African Studies at the University of Venice, Ca’ Foscari (Spring 2014).

Vajpeyi has held post-doctoral fellowships at the Centre for the Study of Law and Governance, JNU and the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library. She has been an IDRC visiting fellow at CSDS, a senior

32 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

fellow with the American Institute of Indian Studies, and a Kluge Fellow at the John W. Kluge Center of the Library of Congress, Washington DC in 2013 and 2014. She was a Global Ethics Fellow with the Carnegie Council on Ethics in International Affairs, 2014-2017.

Vajpeyi writes regularly for The Hindu newspaper and contributes often to Foreign Affairs and World Policy Journal. She guest-edited an issue of Seminar magazine annually, 2010-17. She is also a frequent contributor to Scroll.in, Indian Cultural Forum, and RESET: Dialogue on Civilizations.

Most recently, Ananya Vajpeyi has been the Charles Wallace India Trust Fellow 2017-18 at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at Cambridge University. She has coedited Ashis Nandy: A Life in Dissent with Ramin Jahanbegloo, published by Oxford University Press in April 2018. Her chapter, “The Politics of Knowledge, Here and Now: A Conversation with Ashis Nandy” appears in D. Venkat Rao Ed., Critical Humanities from India: Contexts, Issues, Futures, published by Routledge India in Spring 2018.

Reports/Papers/Articles in Journals/Books • ‘Universal Beach’ for the series ‘Does Art Have a Caste? A Debate on Carnatic Music’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 53, Issue No. 12, March 24, 2018.

• Introduction-The Art of Thinking Differently and A Gift of Song, Ashis Nandy in Conversation with Ananya Vajpeyi and Ramin Jahanbegloo.

• Guest Editor: ‘The Modern Magazine’, Seminar, Issue 692, April 2017.

Book • Ashis Nandy: A Life in Dissent, co-edited with Ramin Jahanbegloo, OUP, March 2018.

Lectures/Seminars/Talks/Conferences • Library Research and Meetings, Columbia Law School, and Butler Library, Columbia University, 28-30 March 2018.

• Lecture on ‘Gandhi and Ambedkar’ for John Thatamanil, Union Theological Seminary, New York City, 27 March 2018.

• Roundtable on Jack Hawley’s Coomaraswamy Prize for his book Storm of Songs at the Annual Meeting 2018, Association of Asian Studies, Washington DC, 24 March 2018.

• Lecture on ‘The Changing Place of Dr. Ambedkar in Majoritarian India’ at the Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, Aurangabad, 16 March 2018.

• Speaker in Plenary at the ‘International Conference on Development of Marathwada: Opportunities and Challenges’ at Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University, Aurangabad, 15 March 2018.

• Panel Discussion on Discrimination in India at the 2nd annual film festival, ‘Matter of Right(s)’

organized by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, New Delhi, 14 March 2018.

• Lecture with Bhasha Singh at the Margins and Mainstreams Workshop, CSDS, 10 March 2018.

• Lecture on the topic of ‘India’s Political System’ at the 65th Professional Course for Foreign Diplomats, Foreign Services Institute, Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), 9 March 2018.

• Lecture titled ‘A Political Biography of Sanskrit’ at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), University of Cambridge, 23 October 2017.

• Lecture on ‘Gandhi’ at LUISS, Rome, 18 October 2017.

• Presentation on ‘Sanskrit: A Political Biography, The Modern Life of an Ancient Language’ at the CSDS Annual Retreat in Garhmukteshwar, 2-4 December 2017.

• Lecture on ‘What can Gandhi and Ambedkar Teach Us in the Age of Hindu Nationalism?’

Gandhi Ambedkar Study Circle, St. Stephen’s College, University of Delhi, 20 September 2017.

• Chaired a lecture on ‘Coomaraswamy and the Invocation of the West’ by Dr. Priyanka Jha for the Intellectual History Talk Series, Intellectual History Research Group, Department of Political Science, University of Delhi, 11 September 2017.

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 33

• Lecture on ‘Who were the Shudras? Posing Ambedkar’s question in the Epic Forest’, Ambedkar University, Delhi, 6 September 2017.

• Presentation on ‘Language of Metaphor and Metaphysics of Self: Some Readings from the Early Upanishads’ at the CSDS Faculty Seminar, 25 August 2017.

• ‘In Conversation with TM Krishna’, Raza Foundation for the Arts: Art Matters Series, India International Centre, 8 August 2017.

• Presented a paper on ‘Metaphysics and Metaphor in the Upanishadic Imagination’, symposium on ‘Ends of Man’, CSDS-Berggruen Institute, India International Centre, 4 August 2017.

• Chaired a session on ‘Cultural Dominance and the Cultures of the Marginalised’, Quest for Equity National Ambedkar Conference, Bangalore, 22 July 2017.

• Presented a paper on ‘Social Justice and Human Equality’, Quest for Equity National Ambedkar Conference, Bangalore, 22 July 2017.

• Chaired a lecture by Jason Schwartz on ‘The King Must Protect the Difference’, CSDS, 18 July 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘The Difficulty of Being Equal: Dr. Ambedkar and his struggle with India’, International Summer School, JNU, 4 July 2017.

• Participated in a book discussion on Age of Anger authored by Pankaj Mishra, India International Centre, 24 May 2017.

• Delivered the annual Solanki Lecture 2017 on ‘The Difficulty of Being Equal; Ambedkar and his Struggle with India’, Yadunandan Centre for

34 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

India Studies, California State University, Long Beach, 25 April 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Who were the Shudras: Posing Ambedkar’s Question in the Epic Forest’, South Asia Seminar, University of California, Los Angeles, 21 April 2017.

• Participated in a panel discussion on ‘Poetry as Freedom’, VAK: The Raza Biennale of Indian Poetry, India International Centre, 8 April 2017.

• Participated in a panel discussion on ‘Towards Comparative Cultures of Thinking: The Infinite Task’, Conference on ‘Comparative Humanities: Re-configuring Humanities Across Cultures’, EFLU, Hyderabad, 7 April 2017.

• Speaker in Plenary on ‘Imagining ‘Indic Humanities: What Sanskrit Can Teach Us’, Conference on ‘Comparative Humanities: Reconfiguring Humanities Across Cultures’, EFLU, Hyderabad, 6 April 2017.

• Chaired a panel on ‘Reterritorializing the Relation between Major and Minor Literature: Deleuze, Guattari and Gandhi’, Conference on ‘Comparative Humanities: Re-configuring Humanities Across Cultures’, EFLU, Hyderabad, 5 April 2017.

Articles in Newspapers/Magazines • ‘The House on Primrose Hill’, The Hindu, 13 October 2017.

• ‘Privacy is the Swaraj of our Times’, The Hindu, 12 October 2017.

• ‘In the Twilight of Modernity’, Guftugu, October 2017.

• ‘Between Sophistry and Silence’, The Hindu, 22 August 2017.

• ‘Our House of Love’, Indian Cultural Forum, 22 June 2017.

• ‘The Loss of Gandhi’s Message of Empathy in Modi’s India’, ResetDOC, 20 June 2017.

• xka/kh dks fLid eSds esa yk;s Vh ,e d`’.kk, Shabdankan, 17 June 2017.

• ‘Why Gandhi’s favourite bhajan ‘Vaishnav Jan To’ is so important in Modi’s hate-filled India’, Scroll.in, 14 June 2017.

• ‘Eine Homogene Gesellchaft bedroht die Demokratie’, Suddeutsche Zeitung, 23 May 2017.

• ‘Death stalks the land’, Deccan Herald, 7 May 2017.

Television Programmes • Interview on ‘Witness’, BBC World Service, 21December 2017.

• Interview on ‘Beyond Belief’, BBC Radio 4 series, 14 August 2017.

• Interview for a documentary film on Modi’s India and Hindu Nationalism for Channel News Asia.

• Interview for a documentary film on ‘the Life and Ideas of Gandhi’ for Austrian Television.

Research supervision • Rahul Jondhale, EFLU, Hyderabad.

• Srishtee Sethi, TISS Mumbai.

Other Academic Activities • Facilitated testimonials from Girish Karnad and Ramin Jahanbegloo for the CSDS publicity film.

• Facilitated inviting professor Mahmood Mamdani as the Rajni Kothari Chair, JanuaryApril 2018.

• Facilitated inviting Rohini Nilekani for a special lecture “How Can Philanthropy Enhance Social Good?” at CSDS, 21 February 2018.

• Member of the jury for The Hindu Prize for Fiction 2017 presented on 15 January 2018 at the Hindu Lit for Life Festival 2018, Chennai.

• Panel Discussion on ‘Why Is India’s Secular Nationalism Under Attack?’ at the Hindu Lit for Life Literary Festival 2018, Chennai, 14 January 2018.

• Panel Discussion on ‘The Big Brother Syndrome: On Censorship and Popular Culture’ at the Apeejay Kolkata Literary Festival 2018, 13 January 2018.

• Lecture on ‘B.R. Ambedkar: The Life of the Mind and a Life in Politics’ delivered at the Library of Congress on 2 December 2014 used as reference for a graphic novel by C.G. Salamander and Debangshu Moulik Published on 6 December 2017.

• Translated the Hindi segment written by Bhasha Singh for T.M. Krishna’s song Privacy Matters: A Justice Rock production, October 2017.

• Summer Sanskrit Reading Group, Parekh Institute of Indian Thought, CSDS, July-August 2017.

• Revised, rewrote and helped redesign the CSDS brochure and wrote text for the section ‘Know Your Centre’ as member of the CSDS Publicity Committee.

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 35

Hilal Ahmed

Associate Professor

H

ilal Ahmed works on political Islam, Muslim modernities/ representation, and politics of symbols in South Asia. His book Muslim Political Discourse in Postcolonial India: Monuments, Memory, Contestation (Routledge 2014), looks at these thematic concerns to make sense of the nature of contemporary Muslim political discourse.

Ahmed is currently working on a book project on the politics of Muslim political representation in postcolonial India. He is also editing a Hindi Reader of Sudipta Kaviraj’s writings.

Ahmed is the Associate Editor, South Asian Studies, journal of the British Association of South Asian Studies.

He was a Visiting Fellow, at Victoria University Wellington, (2013-14), Visiting Asia Fellow, University of Dhaka, (2011) and Visiting Professor at University of Pune (2011).

He has designed and conducted courses on Research as Practice (2017), Politics of Political Representation (2016), Research Methods and Identities: Issues and Debates in Postcolonial India (2015), History, Memory and Identity (2009) for the CSDS Teaching Programme, Researching the Contemporary.

He also taught a course Political Sociology at the Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand.

Ahmed has worked as a lecturer of political science at University of Delhi.

36 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

Ahmed writes for academic journals, newspapers, and websites in English and Hindi. He has produced two documentaries, Encountering the Political Jama Masjid (English, 2006) and Qutub ek Adhura Afsana (Qutub: an unfinished story, Hindi with English subtitles, 2016).

Ahmed did his PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London (2007).

He was awarded the Rajya Sabha Fellowship (20152016), the Asia Fellow Award (2008/2010), the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies Fellowship (2009), the Ford Foundation-IFP Fellowship (2002), the ATRI-Charities Aid Foundation Fellowship (2001), and UGC Senior Research Fellowship (1999) and the UGC Junior Research Fellowship (1997).

A film Beacons of Hope (English, 2008) documents Ahmed’s life story and his achievements.

Reports/Papers/Articles in Journals/Books • ‘Minority Question in India’, (with Peter R deSouza and Sanjeer Alam). The project was funded by Bertelsmann Stiftung, Germany. The report has been submitted.

• ‘Indian Democracy and world’s Largest Muslim Minority’ (with Sudipta Kaviraj), Alfred Stepan (ed.) Democratic Transition in the Muslims World: A Global Perspective, Columbia University Press, New York, 2018.

• ‘Place, Politics and Voting: Lok Sabha Election

2014’, (With Md. Sanjeer Alam), Suhas Palshikar, Sanjay Kumar, Sanjay Lodha (eds). Electoral Politics in India: The Resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Routledge, New York, 2017.

• ‘Gandhi ke Musalman (Gandhi’s Muslims)’, Pratiman: Vol. 5 No.10, July-December 2017.

• ‘Syed Shahabuddin: Ek Muslim Bhartiye ki vaicharik kalpnasheelta’ (Syed Shahabuddin: Political Imagination of a Muslim Indian Translated by Kanchan Sharma) Pratiman: Vol. 5 No. 9, January-June 2017.

Lectures/Seminars/Talks/Conferences • Delivered a lecture on ‘SHARC-DILLI, an introduction to the mobile app on a Partitioned City’, AHRS UK funded Workshop on Digital Humanities, 12 April 2018.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Displacement as a Political Category’, HRD workshop on Human Rights, Ramanujan College, University of Delhi, Delhi, 19 March 2018.

• Delivered a talk on ‘Dilli jo ek shahar tha’, International Seminar on ‘Two Centuries of Urdu Writings on History, Nation, and Culture 19002017’, Urdu Ghar Literary Festival, 18 March 2018.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Heritage Politics in Contemporary India’, School of Arts and Aesthetics, JNU, 2 February 2018.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Wah Taj: Meanings and Politics of Heritage’, Jackfruit Research and Design-The Field Museum of Chicago, Amar Vilas Place, Agra, 30 January 2018.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Syed Ahmad Khan and the Metaphors of Postcolonial Politics’, International conference on ‘Commemorating Syed Ahmad Khan: A Historian, Intellectual and Man of Reason’ Aligarh Muslim University.

29 January, 2018.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Contemporary Debates on Tolerance in India’, special lecture, New York University, Abu Dhabi-CPR Delhi, 15 January 2018.

• Delivered a talk on ‘Ideas of Minority in Contemporary India’, Rehnuma Foundation, Delhi, 24 November 2017.

• Delivered a talk on ‘Knowledge Systems and Politics’, Shyama Prasad Mukherji College, University of Delhi, 24 October 2017.

• Delivered a talk on ‘Monuments and Memory: Reconstructing the Political’, ARSD College, University of Delhi, 8 November 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Methods in Social Sciences’, Academic Staff College, JMI, 22 October 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on Muslims and People’s Movements, Gandhi Peace Foundation, Delhi, 12 October 2017.

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 37

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Gandhi’s Politics and Electoral Democracy’, Gandhi Jayanti National Conference, Zakir Husain Delhi College, University of Delhi, 17 October 2017.

• Delivered a talk on ‘Narratives of Othering: Religion in the Public Sphere’, October School, Shiv Nadar University, 10 October 2017.

• Delivered the annual Gandhi lecture on ‘Gandhi ke bahane’, at Gandhi Peace Foundation, Delhi, 2 October 2017.

• Delivered a talk on ‘Loud and Clear: The Debates on Azan in Postcolonial India’, International Conference on ‘Idea of Peace, Humanism and Tolerance in Islam’, Jamia Millia Islamia, 26 September 2017.

• Delivered a talk on ‘The idea of a Research Proposal’, CSDS-Teaching Program Researching the Contemporary, 6 July 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Indian Democracy: Issues and Debates’, International Summer School, organised by the Centre for Escalation of Peace, in association with Jawaharlal Nehru University, 28 June 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Research as Practice’, Orientation Course, Jamia Millia Islamia, 6 June 2017.

• Delivered a talk on ‘Communal vote banks and the Dynamics of Representation’, Panel discussion, Aligarh Literature Festival, 4 March 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Budget and Minorities’, People’s Budget Initiative, New Delhi, 20 September 2017.

Articles in Newspapers/Magazines

• Delivered a talk on Discussion on Gender and Higher Education, Zakir Husain Delhi College, 14 September 2017.

Television Programmes

• Delivered a talk on ‘Triple Talaq and Postcolonial Sharia’, Miranda House, 11 September 2017.

• Delivered a talk on ‘Making sense of the ideas of minority’, Moti Lal Nehru College University of Delhi, 7 September 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Gandhi’s Muslims’, Creative Theory Colloquium, IIC Delhi, 6 September 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Thinking about Muslims and Islam in Contemporary India: Issues and Debates’, Indialogue Lecture Series (ILS), Indialogue Foundation, Delhi, 26 August 2017.

• Delivered a talk on ‘Research Strategies’, CSDS-Teaching Program Researching the Contemporary, 10 August 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Heritage Politics and Cultural Wars’, Curatorial Intensive South Asia (CISA), Khoj, and the Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, 7 July 2017.

38 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

• Over 60 articles published in Newspapers and web portals.

• Over 50 shows with different Hindi, Urdu and English news channels.

Training and Curriculum Development • Taught a course (with Sanjay Kumar and Sanjeer Alam) ‘Research as Practice’, Researching the Contemporary Programme 2017.

Research supervision • Saidali P.P., Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.

• Yunush Ahmed Mohamed Sherif, The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad.

• Nuaiman Keeprath, Andru Department of Communication, Sarojini Naidu School of Fine Arts, Performance Arts and Communication, University of Hyderabad.

• Rajesh Ranjan, Department of Political Science, University of Delhi.

Prathama Banerjee Associate Professor

P

rathama Banerjee is a historian, trained at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her current work is on histories of the ‘political’ in colonial and postcolonial India. Her work seeks to tell the story of how the political emerged as a distinct domain and/or mode of thought, action, and subjectivity in modern times.

Banerjee’s earlier work was on the Politics of Time, in which she looked at the emergence of the modern discipline of history in colonial Bengal from an encounter with ‘peoples without history’tribes, aborigines, primitives-as they were variously called. She mapped this encounter in different discursive and material sites such as that of calendrical reforms, history and geography texts, anthropology, poetry, indentured labour markets, agrarian credit markets, and so on.

Apart from history, Banerjee is also interested in political theory, philosophy, and literature. At a more precise level, her interest lies in the cusp between the philosophical and the literary-the interface which she argues historically produced traditions of political thinking in India.

Along with other colleagues, Banerjee is currently involved in an exploration of the history of concepts in modern Indian languages-a project that brings together questions of theory, literariness, language, and translations around the life of concepts in India.

Reports/Papers/Articles in Journals/Books • ‘Afterword’ in Gender, Caste and the Imagination of Equality, (ed.) Anupama Rao, Delhi, Women Unlimited, 2017.

• ‘Example and Following’, Contemporary South Asia, 25(4), 2017.

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 39

Lectures/Seminars/Talks/Conferences • Delivered a talk on ‘Time, Chronology and the Historian’s Craft’, Department of History, Ashoka University, 14 February 2018.

• Presented a paper on ‘Can Music Help Us Think Politics: Some Thoughts on the Contemporary’, conference on ‘What Time Is It? Technologies of Life in the Contemporary’, Sarai-CSDS, Delhi and Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller Bhavan, 14-16 December 2017.

• Presented a paper on ‘Equality and Spirituality’, at Conference on Global Intellectual History and Political Thought, Institute of Humanities and Global Cultures, University of Virginia, 1-7 October 2017.

• ‘Equality: Economic and Spiritual’, conversation on ‘Equality and Difference: Theory from the

40 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

Global South’, Columbia University, 28 September 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘What Moves: Social Movement and its Subject’, School of Global Studies and Critical Humanities, Bologna University, 6 July 2017.

• Delivered a talk on ‘What is the Social After All?’, School of Global Studies and Critical Humanities, Bologna University, 5 July 2017.

• Delivered a talk on ‘Is Sovereignty a Universal Concept?’, School of Global Studies and Critical Humanities, Bologna University, 4 July 2017.

Articles in Newspapers/Magazines • ‘Ambedkar’s Rethinking of Religion’, Forward Press, 13 May 2017.

Priyadarshini Vijaisri Associate Professor

P

riyadarshini Vijaisri is a historian engaged in researching the cultural histories of ‘outcastes’. Her doctoral research at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, was on the multiple patterns of sacred prostitution in colonial south India. She is currently engaged in ethno-historical research on the cognitive system of ideas and cultural practices that signify the exceptional being of outcastes.

Vijaisri’s book, Dangerous Marginality: Rethinking Impurity and Power, offers a frame for alternative ways of writing caste/outcaste histories, the caste structure, and the boundaries in caste societies.

Her research focuses on the myths about the origin of outcastes to discern the general structure of meanings and motifs surrounding untouchability.

This study is based on comparative evidence for understanding untouchability in the Indian context,

especially in South Asia and Africa. This project further explores possibilities of this comparative civilizational analysis to discern the different cultural conceptions of untouchability as having origins in practices and cultural conceptions surrounding death, contagion, and danger. These cultural conceptions are further explored in comparison with Tribal communities of the Eastern Ghats. She is also engaged in another related project on the nature of violence in caste societies.

This study seeks to explore the ways in which violence is inseparable from conceptions of sacred and self and how these in varied ways engage with beliefs or ideas of purity and pollution.

Vijaisri was a visiting Fellow at the International Institute for Asian Studies, Leiden in 2005, and a Fellow at the Nantes Institute for Advanced Studies in 2011-12.

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 41

Lectures/Seminars/Talks/Conferences • Was a Guest speaker at the seminar organized on ‘Women Empowerment and Gender Equality: Planet 50-50 by 2030’ Guntur, Andhra by DEEDS in collaboration with UN, 1 March 2018.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Aesthetics of the Elemental Body: The Case of the Tangible Winds’ at the Dalit Studies Conference, CSDS, Delhi, 24 January2018.

• Presented a paper on ‘Rudimentary Notes on the Aesthetics of the Elemental Body: The Case of the Tangible Winds’ at the Annual Faculty Seminar, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, 3 December 2017 and similar paper at the Dalit Panel on Religion in Indian History Congress, Jadavpur, 29 December 2017.

• Delivered a talk on ‘Caste Violence: Pollution, Territoriality and Madness’ at Centre for the Study of Exclusion and Discrimination, JNU, Delhi, 10 November 2017.

• Presented a paper on ‘Caste Violence: Pollution, Territoriality and Madness’ Panel on Dalit History and Politics, Indian History Congress, Tiruvanathapuram, 3-6 October 2017.

Training and Curriculum Development • Taught a course on ‘Touch: Forms and Meanings’ for the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies Teaching Program, Researching the Contemporary, July-August 2017.

Other Academic Activities • Field visit to Telengana for the project on ‘Jati’s Offsprings’, 19-24 February 2018.

42 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

Ravikant

Associate Professor

R

avikant is a bilingual historian, writer, and translator. He read, researched, and taught modern Indian and world history in various colleges of Delhi University before joining the Centre’s Sarai programme at its inception in 2000. He is the author of Media ki Bhasha-leela, New Delhi, Vani Prakashan, 2016. His collaboratively edited books include Translating Partition: Stories, Essays, Criticism with Tarun Saint (2001); Deewan e Sarai 01: Media Vimarsh: Hindi Janpad (2002), Deewan e Sarai 02: Shaharnama with Sanjay Sharma (2005); His collaborative filmography includes Andaz Production’s Kali Shalwar (2001), an adaptation of Saadat Hasan Manto’s eponymous story, and Jo Dooba So Paar (2011).

Ravikant’s doctoral work, ‘Words in Motion Pictures: A social History of Language of ‘Hindi’ Cinema’, navigated inter-media sites such as print, broadcasting, and web in an effort to offer creative connections between these media forms and their diverse publics. The Hinglish Project, in collaboration with SOAS, London, tries to make sense of contemporary bilingualism in North India.

He also works for the Indian Languages programme at CSDS and its peer-reviewed journal Pratiman.

His recently published essays can be found on the web at Academia.edu, Kafila, Rachnakar, Gadyakosh, Janaki Pul, and the Deewan mailing list, which he manages.

Reports/Papers/Articles in Journals/Books • ‘Undoing Partition: Flight of Utopian Fantasies across Borders’, in Rakshanda Jalil, Debjani Sengupta and Tarun Saint, (eds.) Looking Back: the 1947 Partition of India, 70 Years On, Orient BlackSwan, New Delhi, 2017.

Lectures/Seminars/Talks/Conferences • Lecture on ‘Cinema: Parde se pare’, Shodharthi Karyashala: Mukhyadhara aur Hashiye ka Samaj, CSDS, March 2018.

• Lecture on ‘Official and Cinematic Discourses on Radio’, Refresher Course for Teachers, CPDHE, DU, 26 March 2018.

• Presentation on ‘Hindustani Cinema mein Sanskrit: Shastra ka Laukik Rupantar’ at the Conference on Social Sciences in the 21st Century: G.B. Pant Institute, 25 March 2018.

• Lecture on ‘Intermediations: Film Studies After YouTube’, Academic Conclave, St. Stephen’s College, DU, 23 March 2018.

• Presented on ‘The Language of Social Media’, National Seminar, English and Hindi Departments, Maitreyi College, Delhi University, 16 March 2018.

• Delivered the Keynote Lecture on ‘Literature, Cinema and the Indian Partition’, Zacklit, English Department, Zakir Husain College (E), DU, 12 March 2018.

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 43

• Inaugural Lecture on ‘Hindi Sahitya: GhairSahityik Kshitij’, UGC National Workshop, Hindi Department, Cochin University, 8 March 2018.

• Lecture on ‘Looking at Time, Memory, Cinema’, Had-Anhad, History Society Festival, Ramjas College, 21-22 February, 2018.

• Lecture on ‘Cinema beyond Screen’, Mainstream and the Margins: A Researchers’ Workshop, CSDS, February 2018.

• Talk on ‘Barsaat ki Raat, India Habitat Centre’, 13 February 2018.

• Inaugural Screening/Discussion: Govind Nihalani’s Aakrosh, Spic Macay’s Virasat’18, Miranda House, DU, 12 February 2018.

• Panel discussion on Partition Violence and its Many Faces, English Department, Hansraj College, DU, 2 February, 2018.

• Presented a paper on ‘Between Colonialism and Nationalism: Radio for Multilingual Indians?’, International Workshop on Comparative Colonialism, IIC, 14-16 December, 2017.

• Presented a paper on ‘Many Shades of Corruption in Hindi Cinema’, CSDS Annual Faculty Seminar, Garhmukteshwar, 2-4 December 2017.

44 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

• Presented a paper on ‘Many Shades of Hindi Cinematic Corruption’, International Workshop on History and Democracy, ICAS-MP, CSDS, 11-12 December 2017.

• Talk on ‘Madhubala: The Venus of Indian Cinema’, Defence Colony Club, 25 November 2017.

• Lecture on ‘Sahitya-Cinema Antarsambandh’, Hindi Department, Kamla Nehru College, DU, 13 November 2017.

• Panel on ‘Bol ki Lab Azad hain tere’, Diwali Festival, Aditi Mahavidyala, DU, 13 October 2017.

• Lecture on ‘Sunana Cinema ko Radio par’, Annual IFFCO Lectures, New Delhi, 11 September 2017.

• Talk on ‘Intermediations: Cinema and Radio in South Asia’, Sakshya, History Department, Hindu College, 8 September 2017.

• Panelist, ‘Legacies of 1947 for the Indian Subcontinent’, Films on Independence/ Partition, Bikaner House, New Delhi, 18 August 2017.

• Talk on ‘Azadi ke Sanskritik Auzar’, GAD, Delhi Secretariat, 9 August 2017.

• Talk on ‘Swatantrata Senani kaun the?’, GAD, Delhi Secretariat, 8 August 2017.

• Talk on ‘Madhubala - Venus of Indian Cinema’ Impressario Asia, IPSAA Day Care, Mayfield Gardens, Gurugram, 23 July 2017.

• Theme Lecture: ‘Language, Literature, Technology’, Young Researchers Workshop, NMML, 13 June 2017.

• Talk on ‘Hindi Film Patrakarita: Shuruati Daur (1930-60)’, NMML, Delhi, 6 June 2017.

• Book Discussion on Kunwar Narain’s Lekhak Ka Cinema, Habitat Film Festival, India Habitat Centre, 28 May 2017.

• Panel on ‘The Daily Act: Cartoon as Commentary’, Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art, Pamposh Enclave, GK, New Delhi, 7 May 2017.

• Presented a paper on ‘Media Memory and Intermediality: The ‘Regional’ in Hindi Cinema’, International Seminar, IIAS, Shimla, 26-28 April 2017.

• Presented a paper on ‘Popular Intermediations: Listening to Cinema on Radio’, CHS, JNU, 19 April, 2017.

Articles in Newspapers/Magazines • ‘Chunautiyan hi Chunautiyan’, Kadambini, Special New Year Number, January 2018.

• ‘Padmavat ka Aitihasik Adarsh aur Hum’, Navbharat Times, Mumbai, 26 November 2017.

• ‘The Less Explored Narratives of Partition’, Video Conversation with Debjani Sengupta and P.K. Datta, The Wire.

Television Programmes • ‘Hindi Film Patrakarita: Shuruati Daur (1930-60)’, Rajya Sabha TV, 1 July 2017.

Training and Curriculum Development • Conducted a two-day Film Appreciation Workshop with senior classes, Doon School, Dehradun, 12-13 August 2017.

• Co-Instructor, Course on Media: Historical and Contemporary, Researching the Contemporary, CSDS, June-July 2017.

Research supervision • M.Phil. Thesis Evaluation: Anisha Saigal, ‘Broadcast to Broadband: Bollywood in flux across Platforms’, SAA, JNU, 2016.

• Lecture on ‘A Cinematic Take on the Language Debate’, Capacity Building Workshop on Media and Communication Studies, CCMG, JMI, New Delhi, 4 April 2017.

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 45

Md Sanjeer Alam Assistant Professor

M

d. Sanjeer Alam is trained in social geography at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi where he received his Ph. D. Before joining the CSDS faculty, he worked with the Centre’s Lokniti Programme.

Alam works on a variety of themes including sociospatial inequities in education, social exclusion, affirmative action, and electoral politics (Muslim politics in particular). He has researched and published extensively on these themes in both national and international academic journals. His major work is a book titled Religion, Community, and Education: The Case of Rural Bihar (2012). Recently, he has co-edited with K. C Sivaramakrishnan the volume Fixing Electoral Boundaries in India: Processes, Outcomes and Implications for Political Representation (2015).

Currently, Alam is involved in the compilation of A Socio-economic Atlas of Religious Groups in India, and also working on the book project Affirmative Action for Muslims?

Reports/Papers/Articles in Journals/Books • (With Hilal Ahmed), ‘Place, Politics and Voting: Lok Sabha Elections 2014’ in Suhas Palshikar, Sanjay Kumar and Sanjay Lodha (eds.): Electoral Politics in India: The Resurgence of BJP, Routledge India, 2017.

46 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

Lectures/Seminars/Talks/Conferences • Presented a paper on ‘Civil Society and Educational Development among Muslims: The Case of Kerala’, international seminar on ‘Civil Society: Perspectives from South Asia’ organized by Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilizations (London) at Agha Khan Academy, Hyderabad (India), 1-2 March 2018.

• Presented a paper on ‘Expansion of Higher Education and Implications for Graduate Labour Market in India’ in 59th ISLE (international) conference held at Gulati Institute of Finance and Taxation, Thiruvananthapuram, 16-18 December 2017.

• Presented a paper on ‘Who Gets White Collar Jobs? The Intersection of Social Origin and Spatial Context’ in an international seminar on State, Civil Society and India’s Religious Margins organized by Centre for the Study of Social System, Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi), 7-8 December 2017.

• Presented a paper on ‘Educational Attainment and Occupational Destination: The Impact of Social Origin and Spatial Context’ at CSDS Annual Faculty Seminar, 2-4 December 2017.

• Made a presentation on ‘Minorities and Policies’ in a workshop on The Minority Question in India, jointly organised by CSDS and Bertelsmann Foundation Germany, 26 October 2017.

• Presented a paper on ‘Who Gets White Collar Jobs? Understanding Social Inequalities in Labour Market Outcomes in India’, in an International Seminar at Gedu College of Business Studies, Royal University of Bhutan, 28 September 2017.

• Made a presentation on ‘The State of Schooling in Bihar: An Overview’ in a workshop on The State of School Education in Bihar, held at A. N Sinha Institute of Social Sciences, Patna, 18 September 2017.

Training and Curriculum Development • Delivered a lecture on ‘The World of Data and Social Science Research’ at CSDS for CSDS’s Teaching Programme ‘Researching the Contemporary’, July-August 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘the working with NSSO Data’ at CSDS for CSDS’s Teaching Programme ‘Researching the Contemporary’, July-August 2017.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Doing Evidence Based Social Scientific Research’ at CSDS-ICSSR sponsored workshop on ‘Mainstreams and Margins’, March 2017.

• Presented a paper titled ‘What Do the Graduates Do? Expansion of Higher Education and Labour Market Outcomes in India’ at CSDS Faculty Seminar, 28 April 2017.

Articles in Newspapers/Magazines • ‘If Muslim majority countries have abolished triple talaq, why can’t India?’, WION.

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 47

Rakesh Pandey Assistant Professor

R

akesh Pandey studied ancient history and philosophy at the University of Allahabad, following it up with a postgraduate degree in modern history at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He did his doctoral work on the making of archaic and classical forms of cultural knowledge in colonial India at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.

Pandey’s research interest is in the area of the cultural and intellectual history of modern India, with particular focus on knowledge formations, philosophy of culture, and moral orders. He is currently working on a monograph dealing with aspects of colonial archaism together with a study on interpretations of precolonial textual traditions in North India and another on philosophical aesthetics and the anti-modern focusing on Ananda K. Coomaraswamy among others.

He has been actively involved with the Centre’s Teaching initiative, ‘Researching the Contemporary’ and the Indian Languages Programme. Pandey has also taught modern history at the University of Hyderabad.

48 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

Reports/Papers/Articles in Journals/Books • ‘History’s Revenge, Memory’s Forgiveness,’ Seminar issue on Revenge and Forgiveness, No. 698, October 2017.

• Review of John S. Hawley, A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2015), Indian Economic and Social History Review, 54, 3, 2017.

Lectures/Seminars/Talks/Conferences • Lecture on ‘Hashiye Ka Pratikalp: Katha Ka Itihas Aur Vartaman (Ek Pratyaya-Vimarsh) in the Researchers’ Workshop on ‘Mukhyadhara Aur Hashiye Ka Samaj’ organized and conducted at CSDS, Delhi, 5-13 March 2018, 6 March 2018.

• Presentation on ‘Literary Antiquarianism: Historical Novel and Popular History in North India’ in International Workshop on ‘History and Democracy,’ CSDS, 11-12 December 2017.

• Presentation in the Annual Faculty Seminar of the CSDS on ‘Antinomies of Symbols:

Modernism and Philosophical Aesthetics of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy,’ Garhmukteshwar, 2-4 December 2017.

• Lecture on ‘Gandhi’s Ethics of Speech: Prayer as Inner Dialogue,’ in the Gandhi Study Circle, Janki Devi Memorial College, University of Delhi, 10 October 2017.

• Presentation on ‘Symbols and the History of Culture: Philosophical Aesthetics of Ananda K. Coomaraswamy’ in the International Seminar on ‘A Mediated Magic: The Indian Presence in European Modernism,’ organized by Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation, Stockholm and Engelsberg, 28 August 2017.

• Presentation on ‘Rethinking Humanities: Is There an Indian View!’ in the ‘Roundtable on Humanities’ at the India International Centre, Delhi, 19 July 2017.

• Presentation on ‘Renegade Bilingualism,’ in the workshop on ‘Language, Region, Knowledge: Colonial Disciplines to Indian Social Sciences,’ under the Programme ‘ICAS: MP: Metamorphosis of the Political’ for the Module on ‘History as a Political Category’ at the Institute of Economic Growth, 4-5 May 2017.

• Presentation on ‘The Ethics of Purushartha: Modern Readings in a Comparative Vein’ in the Workshop on ‘The Ends of Human Life in Ancient Indian and Chinese Traditions,’ Organized by Parekh Institute of Indian Thought, CSDS, Delhi & the Berggruen Institute, LA, USA, 4-6 August 2017.

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 49

Praveen Rai

Academic Secretary

P

raveen Rai is a Political Analyst with more than fifteen years of experience in survey research and election studies. A postgraduate in history with a degree in law from University of Delhi, he worked with Lokniti: Programme for Comparative Democracy, a research programme of CSDS that specializes in elections and party politics. While at Lokniti, he handled more than fifty election studies and used empirical data and statistical tools for academic and research based writings.

His key areas of interest include politics, electoral competitions and opinion polling in India. His research on ‘Electoral Participation of Women in India: Key Determinants and Barriers’ was published as a special article in Economic and Political Weekly in 2011 and ‘Women’s Participation in Electoral Politics in India: Silent Feminisation’ in South Asia Research in 2017. He co authored a book Measuring Voting Behaviour in India, published by Sage in 2013. His articles have been published in academic journals, edited books, online media and blogs.

Reports/Papers/Articles in Journals/Books • ‘Loss and Gain for Both Parties’ Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. LII no 51, 23 December 2017.

• ‘Gujarat Assembly Elections 2017: Why the Lotus May Not Bloom’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 52, Issue No. 46, 18 November 2017, • ‘AAP has Decimated a Historic Mandate for Alternative Politics’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 52, Issue No. 17, 29 April 2017.

Lectures/Seminars/Talks/Conferences • Delivered three lectures on ‘Survey Research in Social Science’, workshop on ‘Research Methodology and SPSS Usage in Data Analysis in Social Sciences’, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, H.N.B Garhwal University, Srinagar, Uttarakhand, 18-27 May 2017.

Articles in Newspapers/Magazines • ‘How Gujarat was won: Modi, dynasty, asmita, the ‘Pak conspiracy’ and Congress’ own goals’, moneycontrol.com, 18 December 2017.

• ‘Aam Aadmi Party: Five years of inglorious politics’, Livemint, 24 November 2017.

• ‘Commentary: What India’s next president should do’, Expert Zone, Reuters.in, 20 July 2017.

50 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

VISITING FELLOWS Teena Anil

Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, at Jamia Millia Islamia.

Reports/Papers/Articles in Journals/Books • (With Paul D’Souza), ‘Development Interventions of Religious Organizations in Contemporary India’, Jeevadhara-A Journal for Socio-religious Research, Vol. XLVII, No. 281, 2017 ISBN 0970-1125, Religious Institutions and Social Development-II, Edited by Vincent Sekhar, Malloosery, Kottayam.

Lectures/Seminars/Talks/Conferences • Delivered a Lecture on ‘Interrogating the State: Understanding Occupational Dignities’, workshop on Mainstream and the Margins: Theory, Practice and Methods, CSDS, 1-9 February 2018.

• Presented on ‘Revisiting Caste and its Idea of Cleanliness: Anthropology of Manual Scavenging’, in the National Seminar on “The Scourge of Scavenging: Revisiting the Question on Sanitation/Scavenging/Scavengers “ held at the IIAS, Shimla from 8-10 November 2017.

Training and Curriculum Development • Three days Training Programme for Field Researchers’ Orientation on “A study on “Discrimination and Exclusion in Education of the Children of the Households of Unclean Occupation” at Indian Social Institute, Bangalore, 5-7 March 2018.

• Developed a Course for 4th Semester M.A Class: Understanding Society: Perspective from Below, at Centre for the study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, at Jamia Millia Islamia.

Research Supervision • Presently also supervising two students of M.A 4th Semester for their Dissertation topics: Addressing Citizenship: Muslim Migrants of Delhi and Addressing Citizenship and Understanding Filth in; Public Spaces’; Anthropology of Sanitation, at Centre for the

Ashutosh Kumar Reports/Papers/Articles in Journals/Books • ‘Bhartiya Rashtravad Banam Girmit Pratha’, Pratiman, Varsh 5, Ank 10, 2017.

• ‘Gandhi, Girmit and National Movement’ in (ed.) P. Pratap Kumar, Contemporary Issues in the Indian Diaspora of South Africa, Serial Publication, Delhi, 2017.

Books • Coolies of the Empire: Indentured Indians in the Sugar Colonies, 1830-1920, Cambridge University Press, New Delhi, 2017.

• The Indian Labour Diaspora: A Resource Text for Students, edited with Crispin Bates and Marina Carter, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2017.

Lectures/Seminars/Talks/Conferences • Presented on ‘Making of Indentured Law’in a panel on Indian Indenture and Practices of Freedom Across the South Asian Diaspora: Lessons and Legacies, AAS 2018 Annual Conference, Washington DC, 22-25 March 2018.

• Presented on ‘India and the anti-indenture Campaign’ at Indian Diaspora World Convention 2017, The Hague, Netherlands, 5-8 October 2017.

• Presented on ‘Experiments with Education: South African Experience and Educational Ideas of Mahatma Gandhi’ at National Discussion Meet/Seminar on `Educational Ideas of Gandhi in Policy Perspective,National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA), New Delhi, 3-5 October 2017.

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 51

Prabhat Kumar

Roluah Puia

Reports/Papers/Articles in Journals/Books

Lectures/Seminars/Talks/Conferences

• ‘Representing Servant Lives in the Households and Beyond, in Nitin Sinha and Nitin Varma (eds.), Servant Pasts, 16th to 20th Centuries, Vol. II, Orient Blackswan, 2017.

• ‘Sketching a Forgotten Cartoonist: Mohanlal Mahto ‘Viyogi’, 1902-1990’, Essays in Honour of Gita Dharampal-Frick, (eds.) Rafael Kloeber and Manju Ludwig, CrossAsia eBooks, Heidelberg, 2017.

• Book Review: Charu Gupta, The Gender of Caste: Representing Dalits in Print, (Permanent Black: Ranikhet, 2016) South Asian History and Culture, Vol 8, Issue 1, 2017.

Lectures/Seminars/Talks/Conferences • Delivered a lecture on ‘Cartoons and the Hindi Print Culture, c. 1900- c. 1940’, at History Department, Shiv Nadar University, Noida on 2 April 2018.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Caricaturing Social Identities: Gendering practices in the Hindi cartoons, 1920s-1930s’, in a national seminar on “Indian Culture: Traditions and Practices (Recent Reflections), at Ram Lal Anand College, University of Delhi on 16 March, 2018.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Satire and Political Culture: Question of Tradition, History and Scientific Rationality in Early Twentieth Century Colonial North India’ in a national seminar on “Political Cultures in India: Shifting Profiles” at Atma Ram Sanatan Dharma College, University of Delhi on 15 February, 2018.

Shivani Kapoor Lectures/Seminars/Talks/Conferences • Conducted Workshop on ‘Rhetorical Analysis’ at Seminar Course on ‘Rethinking the Obvious: The Rhetoric of Development’, organized by Miranda House College, University of Delhi and Elizabeth J Somers Women’s Leadership Program, The George Washington University, on 30 August and 1 September 2017.

52 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

• Presented a paper on ‘(im)possible futures: state, community, and border politics in northeast India’ at National Conference on ‘India’s Act East policies: needs and priorities of Northeast India and Myanmar’ organized

by Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research, Jamia Millia Islamia, 12-13 March 2018.

• Presented a paper on ‘Being Mizo in Bangalore: a view from migrants lifeworlds’ on the National seminar-workshop on ‘Process of Migration from Northeast India’ organized by Indian Social Institute (ISI), Bangalore and North Eastern Social Research Centre (NESRC), Guwahati on 23-24 February 2018.

• Delivered a lecture on ‘Statelessness as a choice: a view from the uplands of northeast India’ at ICSSR Workshop for SC and ST on ‘Mainstream and Margins: Theory, Practice and Methods,’ CSDS, 1-9 February, 2018.

• Delivered a talk on ‘Contemporary Sociopolitical situation in the North –East,’ Jawaharlal Nehru University, 18 January, 2018.

• Presented a paper on ‘Ethnographies from the Peripheries: Minority Contentions and Frontier Encounters at the MizoramMyanmar-Bangladesh Borders’ at International Conference on ‘Locating Northeast India: Human Mobility, Resource Flows and Spatial Linkages’, Tezpur University, 9-12 January 2018.

• Visited as a Resource person for a talk on the ‘Indigeneity, Migration and Conflict,’ Shillong, 4 October 2017.

• Delivered a talk on ‘Grouping is the tragic of all that has befallen us: the state and violence in Northeast India,’ organized by Manipur Research Forum (MRF), Jawaharlal Nehru University, 16 September 2017.

PROGRAMMES

Lokniti is a research programme of the CSDS established in 1997. It houses a cluster of research initiatives that seeks to engage with national and global debates on democratic politics by initiating empirically grounded yet theoretically oriented studies. By bringing various projects of the CSDS on elections, democratic politics and party politics together under a single programme, Lokniti seeks to engage with global debates on democracy.

Though housed at the Centre, it derives its strength from its nationwide network of scholars located in universities, colleges and other research institutions across the country.

- Directed by Sanjay Kumar and Suhas Palshikar

The Sarai programme at CSDS has arguably been South Asia’s most prominent and productive platform for research and reflection on the transformation of urban space and contemporary realities, especially with regard to the interface between cities, information, society, technology, and culture.

- Directed by Ravi Vasudevan and Ravi Sundaram

Indian Languages Programme was started in 2001 and over the years it has emerged as a distinct locus of activity with a number of books and publications to its credit. An idea that began with a limited agenda of translating and making available to the Hindi reading public the works by CSDS faculty members, has progressed into thinking about the entire question of social sciences and what it might mean to ‘do social sciences in Indian languages’.

- Directed by Abhay Kumar Dubey

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 53

Projects Completed Assembly Election Studies 2017-2018 Lokniti in collaboration with Anand Bazar Patrika (ABP) Network conducted pre-poll surveys for assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh in 2017. For Gujarat assembly elections, three rounds of prepoll surveys were conducted, while in Meghalaya and Nagaland, pre poll surveys were conducted in 2018.

The post-poll surveys for assembly elections in Goa, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh were conducted in 2017. In Gujarat, an exit-poll survey was conducted in 2017 and in Tripura a post-poll survey was conducted in 2018.

Mood of the Nation Study 2018 Lokniti in collaboration with ABP News conducted the second round of the ‘Mood of the Nation’ survey between 7-20 January 2018 to ascertain people’s mood on political and social issues in the country. The study was conducted in 19 states and the findings of the same were telecast by ABP News on 30th January, 2018.

Projects in Progress Politics and Society between Elections Lokniti and Azim Premji University (APU) have entered into a collaboration to conduct a study on society and politics between elections. While Indian democracy gains vibrancy and momentum during elections, there is little knowledge of the problems of everyday governance and development in India which form the substantive aspects of democracy. In other parts of the world, studies like the Afro Barometer and the Latin American 54 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

Barometer conduct public opinion surveys on democracy, governance, economic conditions and related issues. The rationale behind this study is a data gathering effort that allows a nationwide understanding of everyday development and governance in India.

The second round of the study was conducted in 2018 in the eight states namely Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Bihar, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan. Currently, the report of this round is being prepared with a view to publishing it by the end of April 2018.

Rule of Law: The Study of Police in India This research project aims to ascertain people’s attitudes, experience, trust and perception of police. A collaborative project between LoknitiCSDS and Common Cause, the survey based study was carried out in twenty two states in the country. The report of the study is ready and will be released on 9 May 2018.

Inequalities, Welfare & Democracy: Studies of Politics Policy Interface in Indian States This research project (funded by Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR)) is a series of studies which aim to understand and investigate the linkages between democratic politics and social policies as they take shape at the subnational level in Indian states. The principal investigator of the study is Prof Sanjay Kumar; Prof Rajeshwari Deshpande and Dr Kailash K.K. are the co-investigators in the study. The project was rolled out on 1 April 2017 and field studies were conducted in the states of Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and Gujarat. Currently, the survey finding of the study is being analyzed and field work will be conducted in Karnataka along with state assembly election survey.

Politics of Development in India: Who Gets what, when and how?

This is a collaborative project between Lokniti, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (Norway) and University of California, Berkeley. The project aims to generate a database of electoral outcomes at the polling booth level across India for both 2009 and 2014 parliamentary elections, merging with developmental indicators available in the Indian census. It will examine whether villages/ wards with a high electoral turnout, a high level of competition or voting for the winner or loser have seen more development between 2001 and 2011 than other villages within the same constituency.

The findings of the study will be deliberated in a conference before disseminating the findings through research articles and a couple of books including an Atlas of Voting Pattern (micro level) in India. In February 2018, a detailed book proposal was submitted to Cambridge University Press (CUP), and on sharing of comments/queries by anonymous reviewers, a detailed response was submitted. The expected timeline for submission of the manuscript is in May-June 2018.

Lectures/Seminars/Talks/ Conferences Seminar on Explorations in Indian Democracy A two-day seminar on ‘Explorations in Indian Democracy’was conducted for young and midcareer scholars on 4-5 April 2017 at CSDS. The seminar, discussed within an empirical frame with specific themes, received an enthusiastic response in the form of papers by young and mid-career scholars. The participants of the seminar included scholars from different institutions such as Delhi University, University of Hyderabad, G.B. Pant Institute of Social Sciences, Ashoka University, Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, Gauhati University, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, and Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru; as well as from Oxford University, University of Cambridge, Leiden University, Netherlands, University of California, Berkeley etc.

Seminar on Party Competition in Indian States Supported by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) Lokniti organized a seminar

on ‘Party Competition in Indian States’ on 3 April 2017 at CSDS. The seminar involved the participation of scholars on Indian politics wherein they presented the analysis of their respective states elections, highlighting the changes in party competition in their respective states. Among those who presented their work included AK Verma (Uttar Pradesh), Alaknanda Shringare (Goa), Jyoti Chatterjee and Suprio Basu (West Bengal), Ashutosh Kumar (Punjab), Senjan Mangi Singh (Manipur), K. M Sajad Ibrahim (Kerala), Dhruba Pratim Sharma (Assam) and P. Ramajyam (Tamil Nadu).

Reports/Papers/Articles in Journals/Books Journal Studies in Indian Politics In this reporting period the eighth and the ninth issues of the journal Studies in Indian Politics have been published (Vol. 4, No. 2 and Vol. 5, No 1).

Article The survey findings in the report ‘The State of Democracy between Elections’ were discussed in an article by Ramachnadra Guha in The Hindustan Times with a special mention of Lokniti Network.

Reports Release of Report on Indian Youth The report of youth study Attitudes, Anxieties and Aspirations of India’s Youth: Changing Pattern conducted by Lokniti in collaboration with Konrad Adeneur Stiftung was released on 3rd April 2017.

The finding of the study was discussed by Surinder Jodhka (Jawaharlal Nehru University), Neha Buch (CEO, Pravah) and Neha Dixit (Independent Journalist). The findings of the report have been covered widely in various newspapers, magazines and online forums, a few of which are listed below: • ‘Lokniti-KAS Youth Survey: Mind of Youth’, The Indian Express.

• ‘Indian Youth is a strange mix of conservative and liberal attitudes’, The Economic Times.

• ‘Indian Youth look Modern but inclined to Conservatism & Intolerance’, The Hindu.

• ‘Stylish, Anxious & Conservative: Young Indians today’, The Quint.

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 55

Internship Name

Institutional Affiliation

Period

Sagar

Azim Premji University, Bengaluru

May-June 2017

Suvarna Bhattacharya

Azim Premji University, Bengaluru

May-June 2017

Ananya Singh

Miranda House, University of Delhi

July-August 2017

Ankita Barthwal

Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai

July-August 2017

Akaash Jain

University of Delhi

February-March 2018

• ‘Traditional, Conservative & Anxious: India’s youth a ready vote bank for BJP’, Catch News.

• ‘CSDS survey suggests the youth is at odds with ‘liberal values’, News Laundry.

• ‘India’s Polity has shifted from Hope to Fear and Modi knows it’, Hindustan Times.

Release of Report ‘Society and Politics between Elections’ The first report of the study Society and Politics between Elections undertaken by Lokniti in collaboration with Azim Premji University was released on 4th April 2017 at CSDS. A panel discussion on the report was organized and the panelists included Niraja Gopal Jayal (Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi), Ashutosh Varshney (Professor, Brown University, USA) and Siddharth Varadarajan (Founding Editor, The Wire).

The findings of the report have also been covered in various newspapers, magazines and online forums, some of which are listed below: • ‘Lokniti-APU Study: Caste, Community, Identity in India; Snapshots from Four States’, The Indian Express.

56 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

• ‘Most Non-Muslims consider Muslims least patriotic among Indians: Survey Report’, Sabrang India.

• ‘Only 33% of Hindus count a Muslim as a close friend’, The Times of India.

Book Lokniti continued with its rich tradition of election studies with the publication of Electoral Politics in India; Resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party.

Released on 9th August, 2017, the book uses data from the National Election Study, 2014 to analyse the 2014 Lok Sabha elections thematically. The book was edited by Suhas Palshikar, Sanjay Kumar & Sanjay Lodha and was published by Routledge.

Lokniti Newsletter The monthly newsletter which started in 2004 provides information and updates about the activities of Lokniti and its network members. It is circulated to more than 1200 subscribed readers through email and is also available on the Lokniti website (www.lokniti.org).

Projects Completed Ethnographies of Social Data Big Data and the Data Revolution have been pitched as a potential transformation of all modes of digital data collection, organization, storage, mining, analytics and visualization. The social data – the data collected and generated by governments, academia, businesses including technology companies, and civil society organisations pertaining to education, health, development, poverty, public behaviour, etc. – has been a key site for the constitution and circulation of the new episteme of data-drivenness. Taking this as a point of departure, the project explored the historical and emergent conditions of data-driven – statistical and computational – knowledge production in the social sector. The research focus included history of statistics, evolution of survey and social data collection systems, and the Big Data emergences in the Indian context.

Projects in Progress Uncertainty, Climate Change and Transformation Uncertainty has emerged as a ‘super wicked problem’ for scientists and policy makers alike in climate change decision-making. This study explores the discourses and practices of climate change and uncertainty and transformation from ‘below’ and from ‘above’ and how they interact in diverse settings in India; to what extent the discrepancy between uncertainty understandings is a barrier to social transformation necessary to adapt to climate change and develop approaches to bridge the different perspectives of uncertainty from ‘above’ and ‘below’ in order to foster more productive and socially just ways of dealing with uncertainties and social transformation.

The fieldwork for the project commenced from October 2015 and is continuing at different sites of

study including Mumbai, Kachchh and Sunderbans.

The preliminary findings were presented at workshops in Bhuj (January 2017), Kolkata (January 2016), Mumbai (October 2015).

The Leverhulme International Network for Contemporary Studies The Leverhulme International Network for Contemporary Studies (LINCS) brings together the University of St Andrews, University of Quebec at Montreal, Glasgow School of Art, Université Paris 8 and Sarai-CSDS, Delhi. The network aims to gather together and bring into dialogue currently dispersed theories and practices of ‘the contemporary’ from as broad a range of fields as possible, including ‘everyday’ conceptions of the term, and in so doing, to lay the groundwork for the creation of a unified field of ‘Contemporary Studies’.

The first conference under this project ‘What Time Is It?: Technologies of Life in the Contemporary’was held between 14-16 December 2017 at CSDS. It brought together scholars and practitioners from India and across the world. The convenors of the international conference include: Ravi Sundaram, Ravi Vasudevan (Sarai, CSDS), Monica Narula, Jeebesh Bagchi, and Shuddhabrata Sengupta (Raqs Media Collective).

Objects, Media Technologies, Aesthetics and Politics: Material Histories and Cultural Imaginaries, India 1940-1960 This project speaks to issues of archiving and memorialization by developing an engagement with a novel and underexplored terrain of historical experience. This is the world of objects as they bear testimony to major transformations in energy use, environment, travel, bodily health and cleanliness, registers of everyday life. The aim is to attend to this deeper register of transformation, and its political underpinnings in the work of states, business corporations, media practitioners and consumers. The project braids this exploration of new archival objects with their production, CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 57

distribution and reception in aesthetic and mediatized form, and specifically through registers of publicity and advertising.

Lectures/Seminars/Talks /Conferences Ravi Sundaram delivered a lecture on ‘PostPublics?’, Intermedia Studio, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, 23 March 2018.

Ravi Vasudevan presented a paper on ‘Configuraitons of Partition: Exploring the Documentary and Newsreel Archive in India’, Conference on Partition, Netaji Institute of Asian Studies and Department of Film Studies, Jadavpur University, 22 March 2018.

Ravi Vasudevan did the workshop introduction and coordination of InterAsian Conversations: Media and Populism in India and Turkey, SSRC-Sarai conference, CSDS, 16 March 2018.

Ravi Vasudevan curated the special panel on Media and Populist Mobilization conference in collaboration between Sarai and Social Science Research Council: Transregional Virtual Research Institute. Media and Politics in InterAsian Contexts, 15 March 2018.

Ravi Vasudevan did the conference introduction and curation of Populism and the Shifting Coordinates of the Political: ICAS:MP, cross modular conference, India International Centre, 14-15 March 2018.

Ravi Vasudevan did the screening and discussion of films The Look of Silence (Joshua Oppenheimer et al, 2015) and I Am Not Your Negro (Raul Peck, 2017), Ramjas College, 21-22 February 2018.

Ravi Vasudevan delivered a lecture on, ‘Looking at Time: Cinema and Historiography’, Ramjas College, 21 February 2018.

Ravi Vasudevan presented on ‘Fandry and Sairat’, Indraprastha College for Women, 13 February 2018.

Ravi Vasudevan presented on ‘Sexuality and Cinema: Dev D’, in a seminar on Women in Indian Cinema, Chicago University Centre, 8 February 2018.

58 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

Mehak Sawhney presented on ‘Vocal Affections and Machinic Listening’, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Conference, IIT Madras, 2-4 February 2018.

Ravi Sundaram delivered the keynote lecture on ‘What is a just city? India: 1947-2017’, State of Housing, Mumbai, UDRI, 2 February 2018.

Ravi Vasudevan delivered a lecture on ‘Rethinking 1950s Bombay Cinema’, Sanskriti Foundation, 27 January 2018.

Ravi Vasudevan participated in a book discussion on Giulia Battaglia, Documentary Film in India: An Anthropological History, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 19 January 2018.

Mehak Sawhney presented on ‘Vocal Affections and Machinic Listening’, Lives of Data v2.0: Computing, Money, Media, Sarai-CSDS, 5-6 January 2018.

Ravi Vasudevan was chair and discussant at Lives of Data v2.0: Computing, Money, Media, Sarai, 5-6 January 2018.

Ravi Sundaram was a co-organiser of What Time is it? Technologies of Life in the Contemporary conference, Sarai-CSDS, 14-16 December 2017.

Ravi Vasudevan presented a paper on ‘Dispensations and Dispositifs: the Film and Media Archives’, Sarai conference, What Time Is It? Technologies of Life in the Contemporary, 14-16 December 2017.

Ravi Vasudevan presented a paper on ‘Configurations of Partition’, in colloquium Imaginative Communities: Partitions and Visual Cultures in South Asia, Berlin Graduate School, Muslim Cultures and Societies, 29 November 2017 and also presented at CSDS Faculty Retreat, 3-5 December 2017.

Ravi Sundaram presented a position paper on ‘Calculation’, the British Academy conference Vocabularies for Urban Futures, 23 November 2017.

Mehak Sawhney presented on ‘(Un)threading the Sensory: Materialities of the Technological among the Visually Impaired in India’, Materiality and Embodiment-South-South II Conference, Centre for International History, Columbia University, New York, 27-28 October 2017.

Ravi Sundaram delivered the opening lecture on ‘Cosmopolis’, Pompidou Centre, Paris, 18 October 2017.

Alankar presented a paper by project team members at EADI Conference at Bergen, 20-23 August 2017.

Ravi Vasudevan delivered a lecture on ‘States of Partition; Exploring Documentary and Newsreel Archives in the history of Partition’, India Habitat Centre in curation on Legacies of Independence and Partition, 19 August 2017.

Ravi Sundaram delivered a lecture on ‘Urbanism Beyond the City? Thinking about Architecture after Media’, School of Architecture and Education, Mumbai, 18 August 2017.

Ravi Sundaram delivered a keynote Lecture, Conference, ‘Digital Transactions in Asia’, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, 10 August 2017.

Ravi Sundaram delivered a lecture on ‘Crowds and Agglomerations, Public Expression after the Mobile Phone’, University of Sydney, Media Department, 3 August 2017.

Sandeep Mertia presented on ‘Round Table on Big Data, Development, and Governance’, Carnegie India. India International Centre, 19 July 2017.

Vebhuti Duggal presented on ‘Ubiquitous listening: Radios, public spaces and film sounds in North India, c. 1952-75’, 15th anniversary of South Asian Popular Culture journal conference, Birmingham City University, Birmingham, 27-28 June 2017.

Ravi Vasudevan delivered a lecture on ‘States of Partition; Exploring Documentary and Newsreel Archives in the history of Partition’, Muslim Studies Centre, Freie Universitat, Berlin, 22 May 2017.

Ravi Vasudevan delivered a lecture on ‘The Film Archive: Material and Cultural Histories’, Centre for the Study of Social Sciences, Kolkata, 5 May 2017.

Vebhuti Duggal presented on ‘Sounding out the pharmaish: radios and request-postcards in North India, c. 1955-75’, Regional Cultures and New Media Technologies, an international conference at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, Shimla, 26-28 April 2017.

Sandeep Mertia presented on ‘Studying Software: Engineering, Ethnography, Epistemology’, conference on ‘Science/Technology in Humanities and Social Science: Sites, Motifs, Prescriptions’ Conference, IIT Delhi, 20-21 April 2017.

Ravi Vasudevan delivered a lecture on ‘Media archives and a material/cultural historiography’, School of Media, Culture and Governance, Jamia Millia Islamia, 20 April 2017.

Ravi Vasudevan delivered a lecture on ‘Film in the Archive of Mediatized Politics’, IIT Humanities, Mumbai, 12 April 2017.

Ravi Vasudevan delivered a lecture on ‘The Film Archive: Material and Cultural Histories, IIT Humanities, Mumbai, 11 April 2017.

Ravi Vasudevan was a Resource Person for workshop on media research, IIT Humanities, Mumbai, 10-11 April 2017.

Vebhuti Duggal presented on ‘Sound’s materialities: Constructing a history of the loudspeaker in India’, Media and Mediations workshop, HSS-IIT Bombay, 3-4 April 2017.

Sandeep Mertia delivered a guest lecture ‘Studying/Doing Software: from Bits to Bots, and back’, course ‘Introduction to Digital Anthropology’, IIT Delhi, 3 April 2017.

Internship Name

Institutional Affiliation

Period

Laboni Bhattacharya

Hindu College, University of Delhi

June-July 2017

Richa Thakur

Department of English, University of Delhi

MarchApril 2017

Fellowship/Scholarship Laura McLean, Curator and Research Associate, Sarai-CSDS, January-March 2018.

Satakshi Sinha, Jawaharlal Nehru Scholarships for Doctoral Studies, 2018 onwards.

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 59

Reports/Paper/Articles in Journals/Books Ravi Vasudevan, ‘A British Documentary Film Maker’s Encounter with Empire’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, published online 4 January 2018.

Ravi Vasudevan, ‘Registers of Action: Melodrama and Film Genre in 1930s Indian Cinema’, Screen, 58 (1), Spring 2017.

Ravi Vasudevan co-edited special issue on the Documentary Archive in photography, film and video, Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies, volume 8, no. 1, 2017.

Sandeep Mertia, ‘Socio-Technical Imaginaries of a Data-Driven City-Ethnographic Vignettes from Delhi’, Fibreculture, special issue on Computing the City, July 2017.

Ravi Vasudevan, ‘From Advertising to Public Education: Notes on Burmah Shell in India’, Marg, 68 (3) 2017.

Sandeep Mertia, ‘Time-pass Development: Situating Social Media in Rural Rajasthan’, Economic and Political Weekly. Vol. 52, Issue 47, 25 November 2017.

Sandeep Mertia, ‘Ctrl Episteme’, invited review of the book Control: Digitality as Cultural Logic, by Seb Franklin (MIT Press, 2015). Computational Culture, Issue 6, Nov 2017.

Sandeep Mertia, ‘Socio-Technical Imaginaries of a Data-Driven City – Ethnographic Vignettes from Delhi’, Fibreculture, Issue 29: Computing the City, May 2017.

Vebhuti Duggal, co-authored with Aditi Deo, ‘Radios, Memory-cards and Ringtones, or How the Mobile Phone became our Favourite Music Playback Device’, South Asian Popular Culture, Vol. 15, Issue 1, 2017.

Journals In this reporting period the Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies, 8 (1), June 2017: The Documentary Archive in Photography, Film and Video and the issue 8 (2), December 2017 were published.

60 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

Other Activities InterAsian Conversations: Media and Politicsin India and Turkey Workshop, SSRC-Sarai, 16 March 2018.

Mehak Sawhney, Course on Truth, Knowledge and Capitalism in the Anthropocene with Bernard Stiegler and Divya Dwivedi, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Delhi, 13-24 February, 2018.

Machines, Sarai Film Curation, Wager on Cinema, in discussion with director Rahul Jain, Pallavi Paul, Prabhu Mohapatra and Shaunak Sen, 9 February 2018.

Lives of Data 2.0: Computing, Money, Media Workshop, 5-6 January 2018.

What Time Is It? Technologies of Life in the Contemporary Conference, 14-16 December 2017.

Ghashiram Kotwal, Sarai Film Curation, Wager on Cinema, in discussion with Dhananjay Kapse and Milind Wakankar, 24 November 2017.

Nuclear Hallucinations, Sarai Film Curation, Wager on Cinema, in discussion with director Fathima Nizaruddin, Subasri Krishnan and Ravi Vasudevan, 17 November 2017.

Alankar, Teaching students of BA (Hons) Political Science at Ram Lal Anand College, University of Delhi.

Ravi Sundaram, 2 lectures in course Reading Media: Historical and Contemporary, in CSDS teaching programme, Researching the Contemporary, 13 July and 17 August 2017.

Ravi Vasudevan, 3 lectures in course Reading Media: Historical and Contemporary, in CSDS teaching programme, Researching the Contemporary, 27 July, 3 August and 24 August 2017.

Ravi Vasudevan, Founder Editor, Bioscope: South Asian Screen Studies.

Ravi Vasudevan, Editorial Advisor: Screen, Glasgow; Cinema and Cie, Italy; Reframe, London.

Ravi Vasudevan, Joint Committee Member, MS Merian/R. Tagore International Centre for Advanced Studies: Metamorphosis of the Political.

Vebhuti Duggal, Adjunct Faculty, Film Studies, School of Culture and Creative Expressions, Ambedkar University, Delhi.

Projects Completed The ninth and tenth issue of the journal Pratiman Samay Samaj Sanskriti were edited and published during the current reporting period.

Projects in Progress The work on publishing the eleventh issue of Pratiman Samay Samaj Sanskriti started during this period.

Lectures/Seminars/Talks/Conferences A book discussion on Language Politics and Public Sphere in North India: Making of the Maithili Movement by Mithilesh Kumar Jha was held at CSDS on 28 March 2018.

Amitabh Rajan delivered a lecture on ‘The Institutional Politics of AntiCorruption’ at CSDS on 13 December 2017.

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 61

PAREKH INSTITUTE OF INDIAN THOUGHT (Directed by Rajeev Bhargava) The Parekh Institute of Indian Thought invites two to three internationally reputed Fellows working on the theme chosen for the year. They are appointed for a period of one to three months and during their stay at CSDS, they collaborate with each other, faculty of the CSDS, and with other scholars working in the area of their interest. To coincide with their stay, the Institute organizes two to three day workshop on a selected theme.

The grant given by the Berggruen Institute, USA enabled the programme to invite four Chinese scholars, in addition to three scholars on Ancient India. The seven scholars who participated in the reading sessions held in July-August 2017 included David Wong, Roger T. Ames, Li Chenyang, Daniel Bell, Patrick Olivelle, Donald R Davis, and Jens Schlieter. A workshop on ‘The Ends of Human Life in Ancient Indian and Chinese Traditions’ was held on 4-6 August 2017. The third C.R. Parekh Memorial Lecture was delivered by David Wong on ‘Soup, Harmony and Disagreement’ on 4 August 2017 at IIC, New Delhi where he argued that the ancient Confucian ideal of he , ‘harmony’, quite like some ancient Indian conceptions, is a viable ideal in pluralistic societies composed of people who subscribe to different ideals of the good life, and different comprehensive moral and religious beliefs.

62 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

PROJECT INCLUSIVE MEDIA FOR CHANGE (Directed by Vipul Mudgal)

Projects in Progress ICSSR supported project on ‘Exploring a Design Structure for a Media Regulator for India: Drawing from the EU and UK bodies’.

Lectures/Seminars/Talks/ Conferences Vipul Mudgal was a speaker at a panel discussion on ‘Electoral Malpractices and its Concerns’ held at the India International Centre,

by Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR) and Election Watch Regional Consultation on Electoral and Political Reforms, 17 August 2017.

Vipul Mudgal was a speaker and discussant on ‘Death within Divine Value Chains’ at the knowledge workshop, Centre for Migration and Labour Studies, Aajeevika Bureau, Ahmedabad, 11 July 2017.

Vipul Mudgal was a panel speaker on ‘Global Media and Student Protests’ at Hilton Bayfront, San Diego, as part of 67th Annual Conference of the International Communication Association (ICA), 29 May 2017.

Vipul Mudgal delivered the Opening Keynote on ‘Tryst with Democracy: 70 Years of Media

in Independent India- Successes, Challenges, Interventions’, the International Communication Association (ICA) pre-conference at University of California, San Diego (UCSD), USA, 25 May 2017.

Vipul Mudgal delivered a lecture on ‘Media and development’ at the UGC faculty capacity building workshop organised by Centre for Communication, Culture, Media and Governance (CCMG), Jamia Millia Islamia University, New Delhi, 26 April 2017.

Reports/Papers/Articles in Journals/Books Book review of Hope in a Challenged Democracy

by Ashwani Kumar, Hindustan Times, 3 August 2017.

‘The mother’s milk of politics’, book review of When Crime Pays: Money and Muscle in Indian Politics by Milan Vaishnav, Hindustan Times, 5 May 2017.

Book Journalism, Democracy and Civil Society in India, 2017, (eds) S Rao and Vipul Mudgal, Routledge, London and New York, 2017.

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 63

TEACHING TRAINING Researching the Contemporary ‘Researching the Contemporary’ (RTC) is a teaching programme at the Centre, that evolved as part of the doctoral fellowship program and eventually as an independent academic program, designed collectively by the faculty for research scholars.

The annual workshop conducted for SC/ST students has been substantively shaped by the RTC and in a way has become an important component of the teaching program. The cross-disciplinary courses provide an opportunity for rigorous engagement with core epistemic concerns like concept, theory and methodology so as to analyze the formation of the contemporary and its multiple histories, ideologies, forms and affects.

The four courses offered this year include: Theory and the Global South (Aditya Nigam), Reading Media: Historical and Contemporary (Ravikant, Ravi Sundaram and Ravi Vasudevan), Touch: Forms and Meanings (Priyadarshini Vijaisri) and Research as Practice: Issues in Method (Hilal Ahmed, Sanjay Kumar, Sanjeer Alam).

The course ended with a three-day workshop by the students in the last week of August, where they presented papers on their own research interests, rethought in light of the course. The feedback from the faculty was offered to the students and the students were also invited to submit anonymously their own feedback on the teaching course. The students who attended more than 70 percent of the classes were given certificate of participation on completion of the course. The teaching course ‘Researching the Contemporary’ was held between 4 July and 30 August 2017 at CSDS. There were more than 500 applications, out of which 55 students were shortlisted and 42 students finally completed the course. There were 21 students from universities outside Delhi, and CSDS was able to subsidize their stay with a stipend of INR 25,000 and reimburse their travel expenses.

64 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

Mainstream and the Margins: Theory, Practice, and Methods The annual ICSSR capacity-building workshop ‘Mainstream and the Margins: Theory, Practice, and Methods’ for SC/ST Research Scholars, in the beginning to intermediate stages of their doctoral project and advanced MPhil, was organized between 1-10 February 2018. This year the workshop focused on the broad thematic of ‘Mainstream and the Margins: Theory, Practice, and Methods’ addressed ideas and approaches to issues of inequality and inclusion, dissent and democracy, vernacular modernities, emergent histories, technologies and media forms and spaces and habitats and research methodologies and practices. Participants were provided readings on the lectures offered by the faculty instructors.

On the last two days students made presentations of their research work and main effort has been towards providing an opportunity to review their research proposal in light of participation in this intensive orientation program. This year 41 applicants were selected; 29 non-local and 12 local students. Outstation students were provided 3rd AC return train fare and a stipend of Rs. 15,000/- to meet expenses for the duration of the workshop.

‘kks/kkfFkZ dk;Z’kkyk% eq[;/kkjk vkSj gkf’k;s dk lekt

The CSDS undertook a new initiative this year in organizing a similar capacity building workshop ‘“kks/kkfFkZ dk;Z”kkyk% eq[;/kkjk vkSj gkf”k;s dk lekt’ for SC/ST Hindi medium research scholars in March 2018. It was an opportunity to reach out to Hindi medium scholars who otherwise have been unable to benefit adequately from the regular workshops.

This academic venture more importantly builds on the steady progress of the Indian Languages Programme, which is inspired by the quest to foster a substantive conversation between Western and Indian vernacular discursive traditions, in

ways that will broaden and enrich the scope of social sciences in India. Thus, one of the main concerns in designing the workshop was to ensure it would not be a mere replication of the English workshop. Efforts were made to concretely reflect on combining intellectual and pedagogic issues, and design a program that could facilitate a creative exploration of a basic underlying question, “What does it mean to do social sciences in the vernacular?” The faculty, including the visiting faculty members, thus had to work on separate sets of lectures/classes.

Students made presentations of their research proposals in a two-day student workshop towards the end. Overall 46 students participated in the Hindi workshop, of which 30 were outstation students and provided travel allowance and a stipend at par with the English medium workshop participants. This workshop was possible due to surplus funds available in the workshop grant allocated by the ICSSR in 2018. Given the significance of such an academic program for Hindi medium students and the centre’s own intellectual investments we hope to receive support of the ICSSR to ensure it becomes an annual programme.

11th Summer Workshop on Quantitative Methods in Political Science Lokniti, in collaboration with Jain University, Bengaluru, organised the 11th Summer Workshop on ‘Analyzing Quantitative Data on Indian Politics’ between 10th and 22nd July 2017 at the global campus of Jain University in Bengaluru. The two-week residential workshop aimed at training young social science researchers in quantitative methods, focusing not merely on statistical techniques but also on formulating research

questions. Data from the 2014 National Election Study (NES) pre-poll was used as the basis for the study.

Twenty-two participants who attended this year’s workshop were selected from a pool of about hundred applicants affiliated with some of the premier research institutions and leading universities of the country such as Delhi School of Economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi University, University of Hyderabad, Punjab University (Chandigarh), Tata Institute of Social Sciences (Mumbai), Gauhati University (Assam), and North Eastern Hill University (Shillong). The resource persons for the workshop included Pradeep Chhibber (University of California, Berkeley), Irfan Nooruddin (Georgetown University, Washington), Siddharth Swaminathan (Azim Premji University, Bengaluru), Sandeep Shastri (Jain University), Sanjay Kumar (CSDS), Suhas Palshikar (Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune), Kailash K.K (University of Hyderabad), Rajeshwari Deshpande (Savitribai Phule Pune University) Reetika Syal (Jain University, Bengaluru), Jyoti Mishra (Lokniti) and Deepti Swamy (Jain University, Bengaluru).

The participants made a presentation at the end of the workshop, by choosing an appropriate research question and using quantitative techniques to answer it. An Advance Workshop would be organized for those participants who would submit a research paper within a defined time framework after attending the workshop.

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 65

RAJNI KOTHARI CHAIR

T

he work of CSDS since its beginning has focused on democratic politics, addressing a broad range of issues which include:analysis of Indian electoral politics and surveys around vital political and cultural issues with a comparative perspective; re-evaluation of the diversity in democratic politics and practices; study of party systems, political processes and movements outside the formal institutions of democracy; and the exploration of the role of institutions of democracy and their salience in promoting rights, justice, and development.

These studies reflect alternative formulations of politics and explore unorthodox ways of studying political theory. The Rajni Kothari Chair in Democracy is intended to be a major step towards nurturing this tradition. The Centre initiated the Chair in 2002 to make it a definitive referent for a discourse on democracy. The Chair is an invited position.

The objectives of the Chair are: to facilitate research in the area of comparative democracy by a scholar of eminence, leading to significant publications and to enable her/him to interact with scholars, political activists, and civil society groups in India with a view to strengthening the ideas and institutions of democracy.The Chair was supported by grants from the Ford Foundation and the Sir Ratan Tata Trust in 2002 and 2003 respectively.

66 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

In line with the Centre’s multi-disciplinary approach towards social science research, Kothari Chairs have come from political science, philosophy, anthropology, and history. The first Chair was Douglas Lummis, the Okinawa-based scholar of democracy who joined CSDS on 20 August 2004 and stayed till 10 December 2005.

Since then, Ramin Jahanbegloo (2005-07), Sudipta Kaviraj (2008), Gananath Obeyesekere (2009), Rounaq Jahan (2010), Abdellah Hammoudi (2010), Charles Taylor (2011), Arif Dirlik (2011), Shahid Amin (2012-13), Alfred Stepan (2014) Arindam Chakrabarti (2015), Jayadeva Uyangoda (2016-17) and Mahmood Mamdani (2017-18) have held the Kothari Chair.

Mahmood Mamdani is the Director of the Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR), Uganda, Herbert Lehman Professor of Government at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University and the Professor of Anthropology, Political Science and African Studies at Columbia University.

His works explore the intersection between politics and culture, a comparative study of colonialism since 1452, the history of civil war and genocide in Africa, the Cold War and the War on Terror, and the history and theory of human rights.

JOURNALS BioScope BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies is a screen media research journal for the South Asian region brought out by Sarai in collaboration with the University of Westminister. Now completing its seventh year, this is a biannual peer-reviewed journal published

by Sage India. This initiative grew out of the significant output of research, teaching, and publications on South Asian and particularly Indian film and media over the past decade and a half.

BioScope proposes to cover a wide historical and contemporary canvas, ranging from pre-cinematic forms of assembly through to contemporary computer practices, game cultures, ambient television, surveillance imaging, and the field of screen-based art installations. The general interest of the journal extends to the rich intersection of South Asian screen practices with related forms, such as musical recordings and performances, popular print culture and stage set designs, architectural space, fashion, and the history of publicity. Apart from research papers, the journal features illustrated articles and notes for a special archives section in each issue. This includes documentation on institutional history, forms of regulation, legal contexts, popular print culture, translations of critical and popular writings on screen cultures, ethnographic diaries, photographic collections, and interviews.

Studies in Indian Politics Published by Lokniti, a research programme of the CSDS, Studies in Indian Politics (SIP) is a blind peer-reviewed bi-annual journal which provides a forum for those engaged in the study of Indian politics. It publishes research writings based on original research, book reviews as well as discussions on teaching Indian politics and issues in research methods. The journal publishes research writings that seek to explain different aspects of Indian politics. The Journal adopts a multi-method approach and publishes articles based on primary data in the qualitative and quantitative traditions, archival research, interpretation of texts and documents, and secondary data. The Journal covers a wide variety of sub-fields in politics, such as political ideas and thought in India, political institutions and processes, Indian democracy and politics in a comparative perspective particularly with reference to the global South and South Asia, India in world affairs, and public policies. While such a scope will make it accessible to a large number of readers, keeping India at the centre of the focus will make it target-specific.

SIP is a forum for those engaged in the pursuit of generating new knowledge and analyses of Indian politics based on original research. By way of making such a knowledge and analyses accessible to the public, it will cater to the needs of a large number of social and political scientists engaged in teaching and research at educational and research institutions in India and abroad.

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 67

izfreku% le; lekt laLd`fr ckjg lky igys fodkl”khy lekt v/;;u ihB ¼lh,lMh,l½ ds Hkkjrh; Hkk’kk dk;Zdze us fganh esa O;ofLFkr vuqla/kkuijd fpUru vkSj ys[ku dks c<kok nsus dh dksf”k”ksa “kq# dh FkhaA vc ;g m|e vius nwljs pj.k esa igq¡p x;k gSA igyk nkSj eq[;r% vaxzth esa vkSj ;nk&dnk vU; Hkkjrh; Hkk’kkvksa esa fy[kh x;h csgrjhu jpukvksa dks vuqokn vkSj laiknu ds tfj;s fganh esa ykus dk FkkA blesa feyh vis{kkd`r lQyrk ds ckn vaxzth ls vuqokn vkSj laiknu ij t+ksj dk;e j[krs gq, Hkkjrh; Hkk’kkvksa esa Hkh lekt&fpUru djus dh fn”kk esa c<+us dh t#jr eglwl gks jgh FkhA ysfdu bl igyd+neh ds lkFk O;kogfjd vkSj Kkuehekald /kjkry ij ,d jpukRed eqBHksM+ dh iqoZ&”krZ tqM+h gqbZ FkhA lh,lMh,l ds Lo.kZ t;arh o’kZ esa lekt&foKku vkSj ekufodh dh v?kZokf’kZdh iwoZ&lehf{kr if=dk izfreku% le;&lekt&laLd`fr dk izdk”ku bl “krZ dh vkaf”kd iwfrZ dj ldrk gSA fiNys dqN o’kksZa esa v/;;u ihB esa vaxzth ds lkFk&lkFk fganh esa Hkh ys[ku djus okys fo}okuksa dh la[;k c<+h gSA lkFk gh Hkkjrh; Hkk’kk dk;Zdze ds bnZ&fxnZ dqN ;qok vkSj lEHkkoukiw.kZ vuqla/kkudÙkkZ Hkh tek gq, gSaA izfreku dk ed+ln bl tekr dh t+:jrsa iwjh djrs gq, fgUnh dh fo”kky eqQ+fLly nqfu;k esa QSys gq, vufxur “kks/kdrkZvksa rd igq¡puk gSA lekt&fpUru dh nqfu;k esa pyus okyh lS)kfUrd cglksa vkSj jktuhfrd&lekftd&lkaLd`frd foe”kZ dk dsUnz cuus ds vykok ;g eap vU; Hkkjrh; Hkk’kkvksa dh ckSf)drk ds lkFk tqM+us ds gj ekSd+s dk ykHk mBkus dh fQ+jkd+ esa Hkh jgsxkA 68 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

ACADEMIC ACTIVITIES Special Lectures Event

Month/Date

Twelfth Giri Deshingkar Memorial Lecture by Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard on ‘The Communist Party of China in the Post-Mao Era: From Mass to Elite Party’

22 March 2018

Special Lecture by Rohini Nilekani on ‘Private Resources and the Public Interest: How can Philanthropy Enhance Social Good?’

21 February 2018

Special Lecture by Roopa Kudva on ‘Innovation for the Next Half a Billion’

16 November 2017

Special lecture by Shobana Kamineni on ‘Need for Public-Private Partnerships in Healthcare’

8 September 2017

3rd C R Parekh Memorial lecture by David B. Wong on ‘Soup, Harmony, and Disagreement’

4 August 2017

19th B.N.Ganguli Memorial Lecture by Sari Nusseibeh on ‘Ideals and Interests: The Case of the Arab Transportation Network in East Jerusalem’

21 April 2017

Special lecture by Isher Judge Ahluwalia on ‘Urban governance in India’

12 April 2017

Rajni Kothari Lecture by Jayadeva Uyangoda on ‘Modern Buddhism and Democracy: Diverse Encounters in India and Sri Lanka’

7 April 2017

Conferences/Workshops/Seminars/Discussions Event

Month/Date

Book discussion on Language Politics and Public Sphere in North India: Making of the Maithili Movement by Mithilesh Kumar Jha

28 March 2018

ICAS: MP TM5, International workshop on ‘Gender, Civil Society and the Role of the State’

19–20 March 2018

ICAS Internal Meeting: InterAsian Conversations: Media and Populism in India and Turkey

16 March 2018

ICAS: MP, Inaugural Meeting Populism and the shifting coordinates of the political

14–15 March 2018

eq[;/kkjk vkSj gkf”k;s dk lekt fl)kar% O;ogkj vkSj izfof/k

5–13 March 2018

Book launch of D L Sheth’s book At Home with Democracy: A Theory of Indian Politics

23 February 2018

Wager on Cinema: Screening of Rahul Jain’s film ‘Machines’

9 February 2018

Research Scholars’ workshop on ‘Mainstream and the Margins: Theory, Practice and Methods’

1–9 February 2018

Faculty Seminar:Presentation by Shivani Kapoor on ‘Interrogating ‘Pollution’: The Sensory Politics of Caste in the Legal/Environmental Discourse’

25 January 2018

International Dalit Studies Conference: Human Dignity, Equality and Democracy

22–24 January 2018

Book discussion on Fertile Disorder: Spirit Possession and Its Provocation of the Modern by Kalpana Ram

15 January 2018

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 69

Event

Month/Date

Workshop on ‘Lives of Data v2.0: Computing, Money, Media’

5–6 January 2018

International Conference on ‘What Time Is It?: Technologies of Life in the Contemporary’

14–16 Dec 2017

ICAS: MP TM1 Workshop on ‘History and Democracy’

11–12 Dec 2017

Annual Faculty Seminar

2–4 December 2017

Open Data Camp

2 December 2017

Student Politics in India: Issues and Challenges (A Dialogue with Student Leaders)

28 November 2017

Screening of ‘An Insignificant Man’: A Film by Khushboo Ranka & Vinay Shukla

10 November 2017

Faculty Seminar:Presentation by Devesh Vijay on ‘Livelihoods in Transition: Long Term Comparisons from a Village and a Slum in the National Capital Region’

30 October 2017

Workshop on ‘The Question of Minorities in India’

26 October 2017

Wager on Cinema: Screening of Fathima Nizaruddin’s film ‘Nuclear Hallucinations’

17 November 2017

Faculty Seminar:Presentation by Ravikant on ‘Hinglish[tani] in Hindi Cinema: Making Sense of a Register’

29 September 2017

Faculty Seminar:Presentation by Ananya Vajpeyi on ‘Language of Metaphor and Metaphysics of Self: Some readings from the early Upanishads’

25 August 2017

Book Discussion on Electoral Politics in India: Resurgence of the Bharatiya Janata Party

9 August 2017

Panel Discussion on ‘Chinese Philosophy, Past and Present’

31 July 2017

Faculty Seminar:Presentation by Hilal Ahmed on ‘Gandhi’s Muslims’

28 July 2017

Reading Group

25 July – 2 Aug 2017

Conference on ‘Work, Identity and Livelihood in Nepal, Theoretical challenges and contemporary practices for South Asia’

22–23 July 2017

Teaching course on ‘Researching the Contemporary’

4 July – 30 Aug 2017

Faculty Seminar:Presentation by Peter Ronald deSouza on ‘Minority Rights and Human Rights: What is the role of the Democratic state’

26 May 2017

Faculty Seminar:Presentation by Sanjeer Alam on ‘What Do the Graduates Do? Higher Education and Labour Market Outcomes in India’

28 April 2017

Report release cum discussion on ‘Society and Politics between Elections’

4 April 2017

Seminar on ‘Explorations in Indian Democracy’

3–5 April 2017

Report release cum discussion on Report ‘Attitudes, Anxieties and Aspirations of India’s Youth: Changing Patterns’

3 April 2017

Board of Governors Retreat-cum-Meeting

1–2 April 2017

70 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

Lectures/ Talks Event

Month/Date

Lecture by Sir Richard Sorabji on ‘Conscience, freedom of conscience and freedom of speech’

13 February 2018

Lecture by Gerd Gigerenzer on ‘Helping Doctors and Patients Make Sense of Health Statistics’

19 January 2018

Lecture by Amitabh Rajan on ‘The Institutional Politics of Anti-Corruption’

13 December 2017

Lecture by Frederique Apffel-Marglin on ‘Post-Materialist Science and Integral Ecology: Experiments in the Peruvian High Amazon’

8 December 2017

Lecture by Manisha Priyam on ‘Path Dependence, Educational Development, and the Kerala Model: Unpacking Contested Histories’

30 November 2017

Lecture by Nadja-Christian Schneider on ‘Transnational Reproduction on Screen: Documentaries on Commercial Surrogacy in India’

17 October 2017

Lecture by Shailendra Raj Mehta on ‘Free Speech and Academic Freedom in India and in the West’

27 July 2017

Lecture by Jason Schwartz on ‘The King Must Protect the Difference: The Juridical Foundations of Medieval Religious Diversity and the Making of the ‘Saiva Age’

18 July 2017

Lecture by Elaine M. Fischer on ‘Hindu Pluralism: Religion and Public Space at the 17 July 2017 Dawn of Modernity’ Presentation by Swati Parashar (Visiting Fellow) on ‘The Postcolonial/Emotional State: Mother India’s Response to Her Deviant Maoist Children’

13 April 2017

CSDS Annual Report 2017–18 | 71

FINANCIAL STATEMENT Sources of Fund

Provisional 2017-18 (Amount in INR/Lakhs)

1. Grants i. From ICSSR

559.00

ii. From Projects

581.40

2. Own Sources

78.83

Total

1219.23

3. Expenditure i. Establishment ii. Administrative & Other cost iii. Project Expenditure Total

588.84 74.51 555.80 1222.36

Finances/Acknowledgment The Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), New Delhi remains the primary source of funding for CSDS. During the financial year 2017-18, ICSSR sanctioned INR 5,15,00,000 under Salary (OH-36) and INR 44,00,000 as General (OH-31) grant.

The audit for the financial year 2016-17, started in the month of June and was completed in August 2017.

72 | CSDS Annual Report 2017â&#x20AC;&#x201C;18

STAFF Praveen Rai (Academic Secretary) Jayasree Jayanthan (Administrative Officer) R. Natarajan (Senior Accounts Officer) Avinash Jha (Deputy Librarian) Preethi M (Secretary to the Director)

Ayodhya Prasad Verma

Chetan Bharmoria

Ghanshyam Dutt Gautam

Harsh Bhushan Rawat

Hem Lata

Jagdish Kumar

K.A.Q.A. Hilal

Kalwa

Kamlesh Jha

Madhukar Jagtap

Manoj Kumar

Poornima Atri

R.K.S. Yadav

Raghuvir Singh Butola

Ram Shabad Yadav

Ramesh Singh Rawat

Ranjit Negi

Ritwik Gangopadhaya

Sachin Kumar

Santosh Kumar Yadav

Vikas Chourasia

Rakesh Kumar Yadav

CSDS Annual Report 2017â&#x20AC;&#x201C;18 | 73

©2018 CSDS

Printed and bound in India Text and images by CSDS Designed by ishtihaar.com 74 | CSDS Annual Report 2017–18

Ishtihaar-12/18

Centre for the Study of Developing Societies 29 Rajpur Road, Delhi 110054 +91-11-23942199 | www.csds.in