Publications & Resources
Explore key scholarship, reports, resources and work from our community.
Our faculty, students and researchers work together everyday to contribute to a better world by grappling with urgent problems we are facing in India. We conduct rigorous work to produce high quality learning resources and publications to contribute to public discourse and social change. Here, we feature a sample from our work for everyone to access. You can explore featured resources, policies, and the latest publications from the University.
To explore all the work of our University, please visit our publications repository.
Working Paper Series
Towards a New Development Equilibrium among the Forest Dependent Adivasis of Central India — A Case for Agrarian Adaptive Skilling
in Azim Premji University
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- Authors
- School of Development
Abstract
In a homogenised imagination of human aspirations, development interventions replicate popular models, including intensive farming in Adivasi landscapes. In the process, they try to sedentarise and individualise Adivasi communities living in the forest peripheries. Even as modernisation remains an elusive target in most of the tribal belts, ethnic socio-ecological institutions become redundant, leaving the community deskilled — ecologically, socially, and economically. Adivasi’s concerns about this conventional development process entailing detribalisation are seldom deliberated in literature and among the community.
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Article
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- Authors
Abstract
Institutional births increased in India from 39% to 79% between 2005 and 2015. Drawing from 17 months of fieldwork, this article traces the shift from home to hospital births across three generations in a hamlet in Assam in Northeast India. Here, too, one finds that most births have shifted from home to hospital in less than a decade, aided by multiple factors. These include ‘free’ birthing facilities and financial incentives offered by government schemes, idiosyncratic changes within the hamlet, such as the introduction of biomedical practices through home births where oxytocin was used, and changes in cultural belief systems among local people. The exploration reveals significant transitions between (and fluidities of) categories such as local/global, tradition/modernity, past/present and nature/technology, creating a complex and ambivalent narrative of change, in which the voices of mothers should not be ignored.
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Working Paper Series
Lessons from Dharnai, “India’s First Fully Solar Powered Village”: A Case Study
in Azim Premji University
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- Authors
Abstract
This case study is of “India’s First Fully Solar Powered Village”2 — Dharnai. It is a case of the promises of and challenges facing the realisation of “energy democracy” — the idea that distributed renewable energy systems have the potential to democratise the economy and society.
Working Paper Series
One Part Farmers: Villages two decades after land acquisition for the Bengaluru International Airport
in Azim Premji University
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- Authors
Abstract
Constitutional measures to ensure fair compensation and livelihood security to the land losing refugees of development processes, overlook the complexity of ‘public purpose’ — the dominant rationale behind operationalizing ‘eminent domain’ of the state. Popular perception of public purpose as urbanization muffles the de facto social citizenship around plural values of agricultural landscapes. Ignoring the enduring public purposes served by agrarian landscapes aids in underestimating the longterm welfare impacts on displaced farmers.
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Article
Working Paper Series: Urban Wastewater for Agriculture: Farmers’ Perspectives from Peri-urban Bengaluru
in Azim Premji University
- Published
- Authors
- Published
- Authors
- School of Development
Abstract
Modern India has a history of a vibrant and active social sector. Many local development organisations, community organisations, social movements and non-governmental organisations populate the space of social action. Such organisations imagine a different future and plan and implement social interventions at different scales, many of which have lasting impact on the lives of people and society. However, their efforts and, more importantly, the learning from these initiatives remains largely unknown not only in the public sphere but also in the worlds of ‘development practice’ and ‘development education’. This shortfall impedes the process of learning and growth across interventions, organisations and time.
Survey
Report: Covid-19 crisis: Survey on internal challenges faced by social sector organisations
in Azim Premji University
- Published
- Authors
Abstract
This report is based on a study to understand how the Social Sector Organisations (SSOs) are adapting their operations and resources to the challenges posed by the pandemic and the kind of changes they anticipate in the social sector in the next few years as they adjust to a post-Covid world. The study specifically focuses on the internal organisational changes of SSOs both in the short-term and medium-term.
The situation assessment study was carried out over five months during January-May 2021. The study was carried in two parts: (a) A survey of SSOs followed by (b) qualitative in-depth interviews with senior management of select organisations.
Of the 107 organisations that responded to the survey, we identified 28 respondents for the qualitative interviews, covering small, medium and large organisations operating in different states and domains such as livelihoods, health, education, human rights and gender.
The findings are organised into the following categories:
a. Humanitarian work carried out by SSOs
b. Impact of the pandemic on the existing programmes of SSOs
c. Impact of the pandemic on the workforce of SSOs
d. Impact on funding to SSOs