The principle of reasonable accommodation according to Article 2 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) is defined as ​‘necessary and appropriate modification and adjustments not imposing a disproportionate or undue burden, where needed in a particular case, to ensure to persons with disabilities the enjoyment or exercise on an equal basis with others of all human rights and fundamental freedoms’. Exploring the relationship between inclusive policies enacted in institutions of higher education in India, and their impact on those who claim accommodation, we discuss the nature of care that informs and animates such interactions. Drawing on feminist disability studies scholarship on care, particularly, Akemi Nishida’s recommendation that care is inherently collective we analyse two sets of transactions selected for study as enabling care in patronising and charitable manners, while simultaneously ignoring the politics of responding to and providing accommodations. We find that institutional responses to accommodation claims are less reflective of the socio-political and affective aspects integral to the RA principle. Instead, the focus seems to be on providing either technocratic solutions or interpreting RA claims as causing undue burden. By reading the RA principle through the lens of scholarship on interdependence, we aim to broaden the scope of adopting and interpreting the RA principle.

Nature-based solutions have gained popularity as an approach to reduce the impacts of climate and environmental change, providing multi-fold and multi-sectoral benefits especially in cities. Yet there has been growing concern about their utility for cities of the Global South, a concern fuel led by the paucity of studies, including scientific peer reviewed and gray literature. In this paper, we contribute to this knowledge gap, based on an analysis of 120 case studies of NBS in Global South cities, documented in two databases (Urban Natural Atlas and Oppla). These cases fall largely under categories of blue and green infrastructure, with a few cases also focusing on grey infrastructure (in buildings or campuses). While most cases are in Asia, several have also been documented in Africa and Central/​South America. Two-third of documented NBS cases are aligned towards either national, or lower-level (regional and local) policies indicating the importance of policy mechanisms for driving their implementation. Institutional arrangements are usually non-government, government or collaborative arrangements, with the goal of climate resilience, biodiversity support and ecosystem restoration — along with social goals of creating public spaces. However, when private players take on the mandate for NBS, they focus primarily on grey infrastructure (in buildings and campuses), primarily meant for private or employee benefits,and not for the public. In cases where public engagement is a stated priority, we find tokenistic approaches deployed, primarily seeking engagement through information dissemination and consultation predominate. Despite the stated importance for participation and engagement, only a few cases focused on empowerment and co-creation of NBS with local communities. We suggest that there is a greater need for documentation regarding the modes of participation especially on roles and levels of actors involved, to enrich our understanding of the impact of NBS on values of justice and equity in the cities of the global South.

This is a dialogue and reflection about fieldwork, laughter, and decolonising methodology. Is there a time to laugh? How and why should researchers laugh? By focusing on the Naga people in Northeast India, an Indigenous community with a deep history of militarisation, this dialogue draws our attention to the meaning of laughter, fellowship, and emotional connections. An Indigenous Naga anthropologist in conversation with an ecologist, this dialogue dwells on the meaning of laughter as sharing an experience of fellowship together. Social science methodologies are often structured on examinations, investigations interviews, fieldnotes, and observations. This dialogue opens a space to reflect on fieldwork, research, and decolonisation. Laughter, as this dialogue highlights, is about affection, solidarity, and collective vision. For any long-term relationship that one seeks to establish as a researcher, acknowledging and respecting the history of the land, adopting a community-approach, and mentoring Indigenous local scholars to lead the research among their respective communities are important steps towards decoloniality.

Graphical literacy or graphicacy is a critical component of scientific literacy. Graphs are used to integrate and represent complex sets of information requiring abstraction from perceptual experience. They form essential parts of the Mathematics and Science curriculum across school curricular stages. A key to developing meaningful pedagogic practices to inculcate graphical literacy is in understanding how students perceive and comprehend features of graphs and interpret them. This study attempts to understand how children from the primary, middle and high school years, perceive and interpret information in bar and line graphs. Two hundred and twenty-nine children from four different school contexts in Grades V, VII and IX were administered questionnaires and interviewed based on tasks requiring comprehension of graphs. It was found that children’s understanding of graphs was tied to the curricular progression which was significant at Grades V and IX. Comprehension of bar graphs with nominal data was easier compared to line graphs requiring integration of information from two dimensions and interpreting them. Further, graphs requiring preliminary levels of statistical understanding were easier to comprehend. While prior experience and facility with graphical conventions played a role, interpretation from spatial to symbolic representations posed challenges. Students did not have a clear preferred strategy or a linear comprehension trajectory, but moved back and forth between conventions, clustering of graphical elements and written content in questions, to make meaning. Those who had performed well used various perceptual strategies simultaneously. Further, they were found to employ transformational reasoning based on a sense of ​‘how things work’. It was observed that meaningful pedagogic practices at school and informal experiences outside the classroom aid graphical literacy.

Authors

Sindhu Mathai, Parvathi Krishnan, and Jaya Sreevalsan-Nair

Postcolonial democratic deepening brings new challenges to religion as a social imaginary in India. Increasing cultural differentiation and pluralisation are countered by fundamentalisation, but also challenge existing minority/​multicultural imaginations. Religion, as the overarching identity category, has come under scrutiny given the politicization of caste among Muslims, who form the country’s most significant religious minority. Through social-justice and anti-caste politics in the 1990s, lowered-caste Muslims started to enact a new identity named Pasmanda, which means ​“those who have been left behind”. The Pasmanda discourse emphasises internal heterogeneities and hegemonies and pluralises the ​“Muslim”. It thus ruptures the imaginary of Muslims as a homogeneous minority in a culturally diverse country and problematises the majority – minority framework. An important site of contestation is the reservation (quota) policy in public employment, education, and the legislature. While privileged-caste Muslims generally prefer a quota based on religion, the lowered-caste Pasmanda Muslims increasingly mobilise for a caste-based quota, thus challenging systems of recognition and redistribution.

Authors:

Khalid Anis Ansari & Caroline Suransky