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Academic Themes
My research Archive
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Understanding Tamil Nadu’s commitment to public services
Posted on August 9, 2012 |My doctoral dissertation on Tamil Nadu's extensive commitment to providing basic public services -
Combatting corruption with mobile phones
Posted on August 9, 2012 |A project for proactive transparency using mobile phones -
Mind-maps for organising the layout of a chapter, article or dissertation
Posted on August 9, 2012 |This is a part of the series, diary of a doctoral student with stories on politics, emotions and other things that determine our research beyond the research methods. One challenge that I faced while writing my dissertation was that every time I started a new chapter, I had to deal with multiple ways of organising it. For example, there were times when I could have narrated my story village by village. Alternatively, I could have organized the layout based on themes or chronology of events that would cut across each village. There was merit in organising the chapter in each of these... -
Lessons from India’s Right to Food Campaign
Posted on September 9, 2011 |Brief review of the right to food litigation in the Supreme Court of India. -
Making subjectivity visible: Sections from my dissertation
Posted on August 9, 2011 |I wrote these pieces in a course on ‘creative non-fiction’ and included them in the dissertation to provide my readers a break from the formal monotony. Sadly, most people remember sections of this from the dissertation, and little else. Such is the life of a doctoral student. 15 Jan 2006 I should not have trusted my ethnography professor. She convinced me today that good academic writing should make the researcher visible. By subscribing to this, I have created an existential crisis for myself: Who am I? I would like to write about my fondness for butter scotch ice cream and... -
Toothpaste, hair oil, and democracy
Posted on December 15, 2010 |A recent survey says that Dalits of Uttar Pradesh have started using toothpaste and hair oil more regularly. Will it have an impact on democracy? Economic and Political Weekly recently carried the report of the survey by Devesh Kapur and others (Kapur et al. 2010). The paper argued that there have been important changes in grooming, eating practices and ceremonial consumption patterns of Dalits, and in general a rapid erosion of discriminatory practices that stigmatised the Dalits of Uttar Pradesh. This interesting survey draws attention to perceived discrimination, and how it has changed since the 1990s. The authors draw attention... -
Friendships and “research methods”
Posted on September 17, 2009 |The temptation and pressure to confirm in one’s research topic is tremendous – especially if you are a PhD student. In the course of the last 3 years many of my friends have asked me to include some quantitative element in my research. When I tell them that it does not suit my question they’d add, perhaps do what you do and then add some statistical work to it. When my (descriptive) interviews were almost done another friend goaded me to code it and regress it. The notion that regression is what makes a study authoritative is so deeply rooted... -
My dissertation question
Posted on November 23, 2008 |When it comes to provision of basic amenities India performs badly by any account. Roads, electricity, water, schools, primary health, nutrition programmes, other amenities most basic to people today are poorly provided in most parts of India. Facilities that exist too are badly maintained and are often dysfunctional. While this is true by and large some states have performed exceptionally well. The famed example is Kerala whose education and health programmes have been remarkable. Another equally remarkable performer has been Tamil Nadu. The state has huge budgetary commitments for the social sector and most of these schemes also tend to... -
Overview of institutional change in Tamil Nadu & Governance
Posted on November 23, 2008 |An overview of institutional changes in Tamil Nadu over two centuries that explains the state’s relatively good governance Myron Weiner argued that India’s failure in providing universal education was due to the hierarchical mindset of the elite politicians and bureaucrats who did not consider it essential for children from the lower castes to be educated. Similarly in the Western world, there is evidence that evidence that relatively equal societies created provisions for universal primary education earlier. In other words, there is a strong relationship between social relations in a society and the role the government plays therein. I argue that... -
On narrowing focus for dissertation proposal
Posted on April 30, 2007 |One of the biggest challenges in writing a proposal is to narrow down our interests to choose a topic In three days, I would have defended my dissertaion proposal, and it feels good to think that I’ll get it out of my way. It looks like the proposal is one of the biggest time killers among Ph.D. students; it is indeed a challenge to move from a variety of ideas to a defendable proposal. Most of us come to a Ph.D. with a broad set of interests and it feels awkward to narrow it down into a topic that almost...
