(SoHSS) School of Humanities and Social Sciences

<p>Shiv Nadar University is a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, research-focused, and student-centric University offering a full range of academic programs at the undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral level. With state-of-the-art infrastructure, the University comprises of academic wings, sophisticated labs, international standard sports facilities, amphitheaters, auditorium, conference rooms and smart classrooms. The University&rsquo;s goal is to become internationally recognized for the quality of its research and creative endeavors and their applicability to improving quality of life, generating new insights and expanding the boundaries of human knowledge creativity. Committed to excellence in teaching, research and service, the University aims to serve the higher education needs of India and the world beyond.</p>

Shiv Nadar University

I develop a bio-economic model to analyse how human-tiger conflicts (HTCs) impact on forest dependent community members’ decisions to invest in human capital via education. I further explore the linkages between human capital outcomes and future sustainability of the forests as well as of the tiger populations. Results suggest that the risk of human mortality arising from HTCs could play a crucial role in determining human capital investment decisions. Specifically, lower HTC risk delays efforts to increase human capital via education. Furthermore, when the chances of finding employment are not very high, or when expected income in the skilled sector is not very high, communities delay human capital accumulation and prolong reliance on forest-based livelihoods, thereby increasing HTC risks. Low-growth forests can also promote early human capital investments. Finally, the manner in which HTC risks are affected by community actions can also influence their livelihood-based decisions. © 2016, Springer Science+Business Media New York.

Economics

Human Ecology

Exploring Inter-Relationships among Human-Tiger Conflicts, Human Capital Outcomes for Forest Dependent Communities and the Sustainability of Tiger Habitats

There have been quite a few significant studies on the relationship between political economy as a discipline and the modes of colonial governmentality in India, emphasising the contradictions that were perceived to exist between the universality of the discipline and the irreducible concreteness of local conditions. In this article, I shall try to argue that a nuanced study of these contradictions would require exploring the modalities of vernacularisation of the economic discipline in the colony. The central focus of this article will be at three Bengali textbooks of political economy, mostly inspired by the famous Irish educationist Richard Whately’s textbook for children. A close reading of these books will demonstrate how a modality of translation was operative in the second half of the nineteenth century where the equivalence between ‘illustrations’ from the original and translated texts produced curious displacements and defined the vernacular domain on the basis of an exchange-based sociality grounded in the notion of the family. © 2016, © 2016 SAGE Publications.

History

Fulltext

Indian Economic and Social History Review

Exchanging words and things: Vernacularisation of political economy in nineteenth-century Bengal

The Maharashtra government's village forest rules seek to overturn the rights regime established in the letter of the law by the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act and the Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act 1996 in terms of both community rights, as well as the rights over minor forest produce. Moreover, the rules write away the future rights of the community over forests and their management and control over minor forest produce in perpetuity. These are also ultra vires of the rules regime agreed and enacted by an act of Parliament.

Economic and Political Weekly

Contested spaces, democratic rights people and forests today

The present study aimed at investigating work-related pain issues among the workers associated with pineapple peeling activity in small fruit processing units of North East India. The study also assessed the associated levels of ergonomic risk prevalent among the workers and identified ergonomic risk factors associated with pineapple peeling task. A cross-sectional survey was conducted using questionnaire-based interview, pain self-report and direct observation of the activities to understand the prevailing work conditions. Rapid Upper Limb Assessment (RULA) was used to assess the level of ergonomic risks involved. Prevalence of pain, in different body parts of the participants, was found evident with a higher percentage of participants reporting pain in shoulders (41.1%), upper arms (37.1%) and lower back (45.7%) while some had also reported of pain in neck (13.2%), lower arms (15.9%), wrists (12.6%) and palm (6%). For RULA, 89.4% of the participants had a grand score greater than equal to 5 which fell under action level 3 indicating for further investigation and changes soon. Hence, various risk factors influencing pain occurrences were identified using logistic regression, and factors like age, gender, hours of peeling, frequency of rest breaks, perceived work fatigue and years of experience, were found to be associated with risk of pain in at least one of the body parts. Identification of these risk factors laid down path for the future course of actions and improvements to address the work pain related issues among workers. Relevance to industry: The study established pain prevalence associated with manual pineapple peeling task and identified the potential risk factors, laying down basis for possible future actions to address work pain related issues and enhance productivity of the workers. © 2015 Elsevier B.V.

Design

World University root node

International Journal of Industrial Ergonomics

Work-related pains among the workers associated with pineapple peeling in small fruit processing units of North East India

The questions that this paper poses are placed at the intersection of a Liberal Arts approach to education and the pedagogy of traditional Indian dance forms. These questions are explored through my ongoing pedagogical experiment with teaching the art of abhinaya in the university classroom. This paper charts the journey of exploring what the technique of abhinaya means. How is it generated? Where does an individual find agency and voice within the discipline of a classical Indian dance form? Here abhinaya is generated through a toolbox of methods, which allows students to access their own perceptions and understandings and structure them in ways which can be communicated. Building upon their embodied knowledge, students create multiple layers of meaning, moving from the obvious depictions to abstract forms; a process that forms the bedrock of traditional abhinaya technique. Learning in the class is driven neither by the teacher nor the curriculum, but rather by the student. In its approach, this class cuts across disciplinary boundaries and creates new frictions and relations in the class. It challenges the authority of the teacher and redefines the relationship between the teacher and the taught and what constitutes legitimate knowledge in a given discipline. © 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Art & Performing Art

Research in Dance Education

Dancing in-between spaces: an auto-ethnographic exploration of an abhinaya class

Repeated droughts in agriculture have promoted intensive reliance upon groundwater resources, thereby exacerbating the already stressed groundwater reservoir situations all across the globe. This has also resulted in increased inequality among farmers by allowing those with better physical assets, such as borewells, to extract water at the cost of less affluent farmers. As a response, bore pool sharing collective arrangements were introduced in some parts of India, with the intention of slowing down the rate of groundwater depletion and helping improve the livelihoods of the worst affected farmers. Such arrangements work through promoting collective management of groundwater resources by providing critical and timely irrigation to rain-fed crops and through dis-incentivizing the cultivation of high water consuming crops. We investigate the impact of bore pool sharing programs on crop incomes and cropping patterns of the participating households in South India. A Probit–2SLS model and Propensity score matching method are used to evaluate the impact of such programs while controlling for self-selection biases. Results indicate that farmers’ participation in bore pool sharing collectives is positively associated with their crop incomes. However, contrary to expectation, the share of high water-intensive crops also increases with participation. In addition, share of water-intensive crops is higher for a collective group with a higher ratio of bore wells to number of participating households. Finally, farmers within the pool with multiple past failed bore well sinking attempts tend to extract more water, thereby threatening the sustainability of the groundwater as well as the livelihoods of the farming community. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd

World Development

Achieving Sustainability and Development through Collective Action? An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of the Bore Pool Sharing Program on Farm Incomes and Crop Choices

This chapter attempts to foreground the question of migrant labour and their survival in contemporary Kolkata with a study of workers in both ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ sectors of the solid waste management industry. In the age of ecological awareness and hygienic aesthetics, the image of a solitary woman/man sweeping the city streets in the early mornings, carrying the hazardous waste on her/his shoulders, clearing the overflowing litterbins with sharp dexterity produces a strong and darkly ironical visual effect. Apart from these heart-wrenching stories of exploitation and under-appreciation, there are other aspects of the waste disposal industry which deserve attention-especially the institutional details of their participation in the city workforce. In this chapter, the authors look at these issues by exploring work forms and life stories of conservancy workers who have migrated from different parts of the country and have been employed by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation, and of homeless rag-pickers who participate in the apparently non-official systems of waste management in the city. Closely looking at a group of ‘settled migrant’ rag-pickers, mostly women, this chapter seeks to understand the time, territory, family structures and the pattern of shifts in occupation taking place in and around a particular dwelling area. Put differently, it explores the relationship between the contingencies of occupation and the question of social reproduction, keeping the question of space alive in the context of a burgeoning rent economy in the city. © Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group (MCRG) 2017.

Accumulation in Post-Colonial Capitalism

Life, labour, recycling: A study of waste management practices in contemporary Kolkata

This volume looks at how accumulation in postcolonial capitalism blurs the boundaries of space, institutions, forms, financial regimes, labour processes, and economic segments on one hand, and creates zones and corridors on the other. It draws our attention to the peculiar but structurally necessary coexistence of both primitive and virtual modes of accumulation in the postcolony. From these two major inquiries it develops a new understanding of postcolonial capitalism. The case studies in this volume discuss the production of urban spaces of capital extraction, institutionalization of postcolonial finance capital, gendering of work forms, establishment of new forms of labour, formation of and changes in caste and racial identities and networks, and securitization-and thereby confirm that no study of contemporary capitalism is complete without thoroughly addressing the postcolonial condition. By challenging the established dualities between citizenship-based civil society and welfare-based political society, exploring critically the question of colonial and postcolonial difference, and foregrounding the material processes of accumulation against the culturalism of postcolonial studies, this volume redefines postcolonial studies in South Asia and beyond. It is invaluable reading for students and scholars of South Asian studies, sociology, cultural and critical anthropology, critical and praxis studies, and political science. © Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group (MCRG) 2017.

Accumulation in post-colonial capitalism

International Relations and Governance Studies

Afghanistan Post-2014: Power Configurations and Evolving Trajectories

The many lives of Afghanistan: Reassessing disciplinary international relations

India's landmark 2014 election brought Prime Minister Narendra Modi to power with a broad mandate to reshape the country's foreign policy. His sophistication in this realm has surprised many, but current Indian foreign policy is also influenced by both structural domestic factors that pre-date his term and new actors who seek to gain influence or expand their roles. This report explores the effect of domestic influence on Indian foreign policy by outlining the growing links between domestic dynamics and India's international aspirations. It highlights five new domestic determinants of foreign policy decision-making in light of the BJP election victory in 2014. It also discusses five significant challenges that domestic factors pose to India's ability to turn its international aspirations into reality. These factors indicate that even Modi's historic mandate may not be enough to insulate his government from domestic forces – both allies and antagonists – that wish to shape foreign policy. The report concludes with thoughts on how these aspirations and challenges influence the playing field on which foreign policy decisions are currently made in India and may manifest themselves in the policy realm.