29Jun 2012 by annual

Ashwini Deshpande

Bio Note

Ashwini Deshpande is Professor of Economics at the Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, India. Her PhD and early publications have been on the international debt crisis of the 1980s. Subsequently, she has been working on the economics of discrimination and affirmative action issues, with a focus on caste and gender in India, as well as on aspects of the Chinese economy: role of FDI in the reform process, regional disparities, and gender discrimination. She has published extensively in leading scholarly journals. She is the author of Grammar of Caste: economic discrimination in contemporary India (2011). She has co-edited Global Economic Crisis and the developing world (2012) with Keith Nurse; edited Capital without borders: challenges to development (2010); edited Globalization and Development: A Handbook of New Perspective (2007) and…

29Jun 2012 by annual

Debipriya Chatterjee

Bio Note

Debipriya Chatterjee is an Assistant Professor of Political Economy and Public Policy at the Department of Africology, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She completed her PhD in Economics from Brown University, where her dissertation explored the optimal design of ‘quota’-like affirmative action policies. Prior to joining Brown, she did her Master's in Quantitative Economics at Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata, and her undergraduate from Presidency College, Kolkata. Her research interests lie in the area of inequality, especially inequality along racial, gender and caste lines, development economics and political economy in ethnically fragmented societies.

29Jun 2012 by annual

Neera Chandhoke

Bio Note

Neera Chandhoke is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Delhi. She is the author of Contested Secessions: Rights, Democracy, Self-Determination and Kashmir (2012); The Conceits of Civil Society (2003); Beyond Secularism: The Rights of Religious Minorities (1999); and State And Civil Society: Explorations in Political Theory (1995). She has also co-edited Contemporary India (2009) with Praveen Priyadarshi; edited Mapping Histories (2000); edited Understanding The Post-Colonial World: Theory and Method (1996); and co-edited Grass-Root Politics and Social Transformation (1994) with Ashish Ghosh. Her forthcoming work is Protecting the Unprotected: Social Protection Policies in South Asia which she is co-editing with Sanjay Agrawala.

29Jun 2012 by annual

Khyam Bishwakarma

Bio Note

Khyam Bishwakarma is one of the winners of the Australian Leadership Award 2010, which made it possible for him to pursue a Master's in Development Studies from the University of Sydney, Australia. He has also graduated with a Masters' degree in English Literature from Tribhuvan University, Nepal. Currently he is working as a freelance development consultant that adds to his six-plus years' career in the field of community development and human rights. As a member of the artisan caste group who are marginalized and hence are begun to be termed Dalits, he wants to contribute to the development process of his community with scholarly ideas which is why his research interest lies in the issues related to caste, culture and development.

29Jun 2012 by annual

Ajay Gudavarthy

Bio Note

Ajay Gudavarthy is currently an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His areas of interests include political theory, human rights, and nature of civil society and contemporary political movements in India. He has recently completed editing a critical volume on Partha Chatterjee's concept of political society titled Reframing Democracy and Agency in India: Interrogating Political Society (Anthem Press, London, 2012). He was Charles Wallace visiting Fellow with the Centre for South Asia, SOAS, London in 2008, a visiting Fellow, Goldsmiths College, University of London, 2010, and with the Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law, University of Aberdeen, 2012. He is also a member of the British Academy partnership out of which this conference has grown.

29Jun 2012 by annual

Can Affirmative Action Policies Succeed in the Presence of Social Marginalization?

Abstract

Debipriya Chatterjee The key objective behind implementing affirmative action policies, which often take the form of preferential treatment for members of historically disadvantaged groups in matters of education and/or employment, is to bridge the socio-economic disparities across the different groups in a stratified society. However, the empirical fact remains that even after many decades of pursuing such policies, societies have continued to remain stratified and often highly unequal. This paper aims to ascribe this apparent failure of affirmative action policies to the continued social marginalization faced by the disadvantaged groups. Using a simple framework, where an individual’s ability to acquire useful skills is affected by the ‘social capital’ of the community in which she grows up and the socio-economic status of her parents, it is observed that affirmative action policies,…

27Jun 2012 by annual

22 July: Policy Dialogue

Panels/Sessions 2012

On the last day of the conference, 22 July, 2012, a policy dialogue entitled ‘Health and Nature: A Policy Dialogue on Ayurveda and Medicinal Plant Conservation’ will be held in the morning at Hotel Shanker. Participation in this part of the conference is by-invitation only. This dialogue falls within what is an emerging and dynamic field of study in medical schools, public health programs, and international health care development institutes in the United States, called global health diplomacy. It is an effort to bring together parties working in the still largely separate institutions of indigenous health care and environmental conservation in Nepal. This dialogue seeks to address ways in which health care and biodiversity conservation can be made co-equal partners. It also aims to make health care and conservation co-equal partners…

27Jun 2012 by annual

Dancing Who We Are: The Embodiment of Rai Ethnic Identity in Sakela Performance

Abstract 2

Marion Wettstein When I took my first dance steps and initially began to note them down on paper nine years ago, the Sakela dance of the Rai in Eastern Nepal still was a rural phenomenon, closely interwoven with local mythology and ritual. Nowadays it is the urban youth of Kathmandu dancing a new form of the Sakela on the big festival grounds to celebrate Kirat cultural events organised by the Kirat Rai Yayokkha. But not only in urban and diaspora environments the Sakela dance has seen a revival. Also in the villages and in Rai communities that did hardly know or perform it before, Sakela is booming during the major agricultural rituals. In my currently running research project about the dance – which is based at the University of Vienna…

27Jun 2012 by annual

A Meeting Space for the Living and the Ancestors: The Resting Platforms Chautaara among the Bahing Rai of Eastern Nepal

Abstract 2

Claire Femenias Among many communities of the Kirat of Eastern Nepal the funerary rituals are extended over many months and consist of several steps. The mourning and funerary process is closely linked to notions of local identity that finds one of its most evident expressions in the chautaara, the resting platforms that are built for the deceased and the living alike. Taking the example of the Bahing Rai, among who I am conducting my PhD research, I will analyse these expressions of local identity in the funeral approaching from three perspectives: A first approach will be to examine the importance of religious syncretism in general, as the Bahing funerary process and believes are strongly influenced by both, Hindu and Kirat worldviews. Secondly I will focus on the building of the…

27Jun 2012 by annual

Walking with the Ancestors: Ritual Speech and Sacred Landscapes among the Rai of Eastern Nepal

Abstract 2

Alban von Stockhausen Among the Rai of Eastern Nepal, the recitations pronounced during shamanic rituals include countless references to the natural and sacred topography of the landscape and to aspects of the natural habitat inhabited by the performers. For every Rai group, often even for every clan of it, these references are “localized” to an great extent and therefore every social entity has its own way of being “rooted” in their natural and sacred environment. In a Post-Doc project by the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF) and the Department of South Asian, Tibetan and Buddhist Studies of the University of Vienna, I explore these connections in great detail with a focus on the Dumi Rai, an ethnic group settling in the northern parts of Khotang district in Eastern Nepal. By re-travelling…