Set in the eastern state of Odisha in a district known as the “Somalia of India,” Everyday State and Politics in India: Government in the Backyard in Kalahandi (Routledge 2018) studies a development project in a region iconic for development failure. Drawing on rich fieldwork with a watershed development project in district Kalahandi, anthropologist Sailen R ... Show More
Today
P. Thirumal and K. A. Nuaiman eds., "Inhabiting Technologies/Modernities: Media and Cultural Practices in South Asia" (Orient BlackSwan, 2025)
Studies of forms of media have focused on either political or cultural histories of media. Political histories study media growth and literacy, and the emergence of liberal democratic institutions in Western and postcolonial societies. Cultural histories study the multiple origin ... Show More
1h 20m
Mar 12
Margherita Trento et al., "For the Love of Tamil: Essays in Honor of E. Annamalai" (UnionPress, 2025)
For the Love of Tamil celebrates the life and work of E. Annamalai (born 1938), the most prominent Tamil linguist of his generation. Spanning six decades and multiple continents, his scholarship ranges from formal analyses of Tamil syntax and semantics to studies of diglossia, pe ... Show More
42m 22s
Apr 2023
Rajesh Veeraraghavan, "Patching Development: Information Politics and Social Reform in India" (Oxford UP, 2022)
Rajesh Veeraraghavan’s Patching Development: Information Politics and Social Change in India (Oxford University Press, 2022) offers the first ethnographically grounded perspective on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (2005), which was promulgated as a wel ... Show More
1h 7m
Jan 2023
M. R. Sharan, "Last Among Equals: Power, Caste and Politics in Bihar's Villages" (Westland, 2021)
M. R. Sharan is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, studying questions centred around development economics and political economy. He obtained his PhD from Harvard University in 2020 and was previously at the Delhi School of Economics and Hansraj College. His no ... Show More
44m 32s
Dec 2023
Chetan Choithani, "Migration, Food Security and Development: Insights from Rural India" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
Migration, Food Security and Development: Insights from Rural India (Cambridge UP, 2023) examines the role of migration as a livelihood strategy in influencing food access among rural households. Migration forms a key component of livelihoods for an increasing number of rural hou ... Show More
37m 46s
Feb 2012
Marcus Franke, “War and Nationalism in South Asia: The Indian State and the Nagas” (Routledge, 2011)
North East India is, as Marcus Franke’s War and Nationalism in South Asia: The Indian State and the Nagas (Routledge, 2011) all too convincingly demonstrates, often considered peripheral to ‘India (or even South Asia) proper.’ A densely wooded, sparsely populated tract of hills ( ... Show More
1h 8m