Judging Ayodhya
articulated the Sangh’s case, contrast-
Sanjay R Hegde
I
tihasa, the Sanskrit word for history,
is derived from a phrase that simply
means, “so indeed it was.” If you want
to know, what indeed happened through
the years of the Ayodhya campaign, to
bring down a mosque and replace it with a
temple—The Demolition and the Verdict:
Ayodhya and the Project to Reconfi gure
India—Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay’s book on
Ayodhya and the project to reconfigure
India, is a narrative explainer. The veteran
journalist Mukhopadhyay created a unique
beat for himself in the 1980s when he
began covering the rise of Hindu right and
was described by his right-leaning edi-
tor, as “our religious correspondent (p
275).” This book draws upon Mukhopad-
hyay’s decades of reporting and insight
into one of the most important cam-
paigns that have dominated Indian poli-
tics over the past three decades.
Through 274 pages of his entirely
readable book, divided over eight chapters,
Mukhopadhyay deals with the und-
erlying themes in their entire historical,
political, and chronological perspective.
The book covers the whole spectrum from
the transformation of Ram—the mythical
hero—to god, then to political icon fol-
lowed by the silent march ahead towards
India’s future as a defacto Hindu rashtra.
Anyone interested
in understanding not just the Ayodhya conun-
drum, but the entire framework of emerging
majoritarianism in India (p 278)
will find this book an invaluable resource.
Mukhopadhyay not only states facts in
their chronological order but also gives
readers the historical and political con-
text to draw conclusions about the pos-
sible future.
The roots of the Ayodhya problem may
have been lost in antiquity, but the cam-
paign to build a temple there on the site of
a pre-existing mosque was launched with-
in three years of India’s independence.
Barely had India’s secular Constitution
been signed on 26 November 1949 that
26
book reviewS
The Demolition and the Verdict: Ayodhya and
the Project to Reconfigure India by Nilanjan
Mukhopadhyay, New Delhi: Speaking Tiger, 2021;
pp xvii + 317, `699 (paperback).
less than a month later, on the night of 22–
23 December 1949, the idol of Lord Ram
was placed within the Babri Masjid in Ayo-
dhya. It was not apparent then, to the mod-
ernists in Delhi, how significant a blow to
the secular constitution had been forged by
the medievalists in Uttar Pradesh. From
then on, Muslim worship was excluded
and a series of events took place, including
the demolition of the mosque on 6 Decem-
ber 1992 and the Supreme Court’s judg-
ment of 9 November 2019, which has al-
lowed the construction of a grand Hindu
temple on the disputed site, and relegated
the Muslims to a larger site elsewhere.
The regression of India from a sover-
eign, socialist, secular democratic repub-
lic to a de facto Hindu rashtra, via the Ram
Mandir campaign, is chronicled in gran-
ular detail. In addition, the reader bene-
fits from Mukhopadhyay’s prognosis about
an unpromising future. Consider this
passage from his last chapter,
This early notion of nationalism was put on
the back-burner after “inclusive” or “multiple”
subnationalisms (region and religion) were
amalgamated into pan-Indian nationalism
by the Congress, especially with the advent of
Gandhi. The RSS, whose notion of nationalism
was based on the aforesaid framework of the
early years, used the Ram temple agitation to
revive the unitarist view of national identity. It
was put forth that although Ram was a Hindu
god, the demand for a temple was not merely
religious. The contention was that the notion
of Ram as Maryada Purushottam symbolised
the cultural or even national identity of all
Indians irrespective of personal faith. Every
Indian should, consequently, acquiesce to the
need for a Ram temple at Ayodhya, and not
doing so would undermine Indian nationalism
and be indicative of the person’s lack of patri-
otic commitment. It followed from this that any
person not backing the demand was ranged
against national interests. (p 247)
february 25, 2023
Mukhopadhyay has, in this passage,
ed it against the previous consensus of
independent India, and left the reader
in no doubt about where his personal
sympathies lie.
Even as this review is being written,
the slogan Ayodhya toh bas jhaanki hai,
Kashi, Mathura baaki hai, is morphing
into the next campaign of the Hindu
right. The legal fracas in a court in Vara-
nasi, seeking to alter the status quo of
the Gyanvapi Masjid, bears an uncanny
resemblance to the events of December
1949. Mukhopadhyay records
By the time the state government’s instruc-
tions were relayed to Nair, more than 48
hours had passed. Meanwhile, Visharad’s
pamphlets and posters ensured that, not just
in Ayodhya, but even in the countryside and
neighbouring towns and cities, people became
aware of the theory of Ramji prakat hue or
Lord Ram had manifested himself. (p 96)
Substitute the slogan Babaji mil gaye and
the claim that a shivling was found within
the Varanasi mosque, the modus operandi
for Kashi remains the same as that for
Ayodhya 70 years ago. The question to
be asked is, will the state response to the
fresh campaign be the same?
As a lawyer, I found the chapter on
the legal maze of the various court pro-
ceedings slightly lacking in legal analy-
sis. I do, however, think that a certain
editing of legal nuance was entirely nec-
essary for the lay reader’s understanding.
The book contains chapter-wise endnotes,
which guide a more determined reader to
the source material if they are so inclined.
Thus, a reader who wants to know,
what indeed it was or what indeed is
likely to be, will be richly rewarded by
reading this book.
Like Mao’s continuous revolution, India
is seeing a continuous campaign for
demolitions of the old to be replaced with
the older. Mukhopadhyay ends the book
prophetically telling India that
The Ram temple may cease to occupy much
mind space among people. But the new
mindset of Indians, framed in the course of
the political movement for the temple, will
be tough to alter in the years to come. (p 274)
Sanjay R Hegde (sanjayrhegde@gmail.com) is a
senior advocate at the Supreme Court of India.
vol lViii no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

Women’s Contribution in the Rural
Production Process
Sona Mitra
L
ow and declining women’s labour
force participation in India, despite
improvements in fertility rates and
women’s educational outcomes over al-
most two decades, has been a paradox for
the Indian economy. The topic attained
wide attention from academics, practi-
tioners, policymakers, government and
also other international stakeholders,
which has resulted in a huge body of lit-
erature on understanding and answ-
ering the varied questions around wom-
en’s work and their status in the labour
force. The factors range from the struc-
tural inequalities faced by women work-
ers that maintain their inferior status
within the labour force—especially per-
taining to wage differentials, rigid occu-
pational patterns, ghettoised nature of
work in low-paid, low value added sec-
tors of the economy—to non-recognition
of the bulk of unpaid work performed by
women in the economy, measurement
and definitional issues of what consti-
tutes as women’s work.
The pandemic worsened the situation
for women workers. Several research
and media reports have shown that
women’s work suffered the most in
terms of loss of incomes, livelihoods,
increased burden of unpaid work and
lack of access to basic services. Accord-
ing to the Centre for Monitoring Indian
Economy (CMIE), a figure of 21 million
women exiting the labour force between
2017 and 2022 made headlines just a few
months ago.
Agriculture is one of the most impor-
tant sectors of women’s engagement in
the rural areas. The Periodic Labour Force
Survey 2019–20 shows 60% of women
still engaged in agriculture. Thus, the
literature on women’s work in rural areas
has a large share of discourse on women
in agriculture. However, women have
been consistently falling out of agricul-
ture since 2004–05. And the literature on
women’s non-agricultural engagements
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023
Women and Work in Rural India edited by
Madhura Swaminathan, Shruti Nagbhushan and
V K Ramachandran, New Delhi: Tulika Books, 2020;
pp 380, `995.
are rare. In such a context, the edited
volume on Women and Work in Rural
India comes as an important addition
to a very important yet less discussed
aspect of women’s work.
Examining the Complex Nature
of Rural Women’s Work
The volume brings out the different as-
pects of women’s labour in rural produc-
tion process and situates the issues in
the larger context of the conceptual,
theoretical and methodological chal-
lenges tackled by scholars in under-
standing the complexities of women’s
work. It comprehensively explores wom-
en’s work in agriculture and allied activ-
ities highlighting the important role
played by women in the sector, in rural
non-agricultural work, the gender gap
in wage rates, class and caste issues, and
rural women’s access to finance.
The book contributes immensely to
the discourse on women and work in
two very significant strands. The first
section of the book deals meticulously
with the subject of women’s work and
enhances the conceptualisation of the
same by strengthening the theoretical
and methodological foundations of
defining women’s work. It places wom-
en’s work in the core of the rural pro-
duction process and surplus accumula-
tion. Especially women in the rural
labour households who often get invisi-
bilised in the discourse where the
framework treats the household as a
unit of measurement, and categories
do not identify women separately.
The chapter on “Proletarianisation and
Women’s Work” by V K Ramachandran
lays out the premises and opens up a
range of issues that could be explored
vol lViii no 8
BOOK REVIEW
by way of categorising women sepa-
rately in the rural production process,
especially in the general process of pro-
letarianisation among the peasantry.
The non-availability of suitable work for
women in non-agriculture, combined
with higher representation of women in
hired labour relative to family labour
on the farms, not only led to less di-
verse work for women in rural areas
but accelerate the process of proletari-
anisation among rural women workers.
The other significant chapter in the
section by Madhura Swaminathan on
“Measuring Women’s Work with Time-
Use Data from Two Villages of Karna-
taka” focuses on using intensive time-
use methods of recording and enumera-
tion. The richness of the paper lies in the
details of the time-use method used. It
follows a data collection method with a
24-hour reference period twice a day at
12-hour intervals for seven days with
two–three revisits over the period, to
capture seasonality. Such tools help in
identifying the crucial issues in tackling
the limitations of simply conducting time-
use survey based on direct responses or
even maintaining time diaries over shorter
reference periods of a usual day.
While these are indeed resource-
intensive methods and cannot be condu-
cted over large samples even by govern-
ment data collection efforts, but some of
the elements of the survey design and
tools, such as expanding the definitions
of current weekly status or current daily
status workers could be significantly
useful for identifying the range of activi-
ties performed by women as well as
get them counted. The paper is a useful
example of combining approaches to
define work based on both activity and
time criterion which provided higher
estimates of worker–population ratios for
the sample surveyed.
Structural and Systemic Features
of Rural Women’s Labour
The second section includes chapters
that discuss the structural and systemic
features of the labour market that impact
women’s ability, decisions, choices, and
availability of opportunities that facilitate
their entry as well as their retention, from
a sectoral point of view. The collection of
27
BOOK REVIEW
papers focuses on a wide range of sec-
tors such as the ones that have been tradi-
tionally dominated by the presence of
women—the rice economy, tea planta-
tions, and livestock rearing. It also pro-
vides insights on the sectoral shifts that
happened to rural women’s work in the
last decade.
The chapter by Jayan Thomas clearly
articulates the reasons behind women’s
declining numbers in the labour force in
rural areas and highlights the inverse
relationship between the net increase in
proportion of workers and net increase
in the category of those who “attended
to domestic duties” across states. This is
a very important insight emerging out
of the existing government data on
employment and unemployment that
focuses on an urgent need to address
and find mechanisms to reduce wom-
en’s unpaid household chores. This sec-
tion of the book also brings exciting ref-
erences of women’s work across several
geographies. The chapter on rice econo-
mies focuses on Andhra Pradesh, Uttar
Pradesh, Karnataka, Punjab, and West
Bengal, which traditionally has more
women in specific operations such as
transplanting, weeding and harvesting.
It clearly shows the gender disaggre-
gated activities in rice cultivation where
women are rarely involved in land
preparation, irrigation and application
of fertilisers.
The chapter by Jeta Sankrityana on
“Forms of Wages in Assam-Dooars Plan-
tations—A Historical Perspective” focu-
ses on the evolution of the forms of wages
in the tea plantations of Assam-Dooars
region. It provides an excellent historical
overview of the development of tea
plantations and tea trade in the region
and its interlinkages with the domestic
and global markets in determining the
wages. There are three more sections in
the book that incorporate caste and class
issues and women’s work in non-agricul-
ture. The latter has two chapters on
women’s work as front-line workers and
within the Mahatma Gandhi National
Rural Employment Guarantee Act which
shows the unavailability of substantial
work for women out of agriculture.
The last and very interesting section
on women’s wages and earnings discusses
28
the past and present forms of gender Conclusions
gaps. The chapter by Madhavi Jha There also are a few other interesting
on “Women’s Earnings in Nineteenth- chapters on rural women’s access to
Century Rural Bihar” adds significant credit and banking facilities, as well as
value to the volume by drawing atten- some others on women’s identity as a
tion to the process of invisibilisation of factor of discrimination in the labour
women’s contribution to the economy in market. The diversity of chapters and the
19th-century rural Bihar. Women were wide coverage of issues affecting rural
even ploughing—an activity that emerged women form the core strength of the
as a male-dominated one over the dec- book. One of the important ways in which
ades—yet being remunerated at lower it contributes to the existing discourse is
rates than others, especially for agricul- adding to a literature on the status of
tural activities. The paper traces the rural women’s employment and liveli-
process that invisibilised and devalued hood that is rarely discussed. Across all
women’s activities in agriculture, lead- chapters, the book presents insights
ing to gender gaps in wages. The wage that clearly articulates the process of
gaps that persist even today are dis- devaluing women’s contributions to the
cussed separately in two chapters. Arin- economy in several forms, despite being
dam Das uses secondary wage data crucial for social reproduction and
from the government sources as well as maintenance of labour supply. All the
data from the village surveys conducted chapters put together highlight the cri-
between 2005 and 2012. Together, the ses that rural women currently face in
chapters trace the magnitude of the employment and livelihoods and the
gender gaps in wages across India using dire need to address those. This kind of
the rarely used government data set wide range of discussion is a substantial
“Wage Rates in Rural India” in an inno- addition to the existing literature and
vative way. In one paper, it is supp- knowledge on rural women’s labour.
lemented with the village-level survey
data to enquire on the role of wage rates Sona Mitra (sona.mitra@iwwage.org) works
in determining women’s labour supply with IWWAGE in LEAD at Krea University,
in 16 villages of India. New Delhi.
W EPWRF India Time Series
NE
(www.epwrfits.in)
Wage Rates in Rural India
The EPW Research Foundation has added a module on Wage Rates in Rural India to
its online database, EPWRF India Time Series (EPWRFITS).
This module provides average daily wage rates, month-wise, in rupees, for various
agricultural and non-agricultural occupations in Rural India for 20 states starting from
July 1998 (also available, data for agricultural year July 1995–June 1996). Additionally,
it presents quarterly and annual series (calendar year, financial year and agricultural
year), derived as averages of the monthly data.
The wage rates for agricultural occupations are provided for ploughing/tilling, sowing,
harvesting, winnowing, threshing, picking, horticulture, fishing (inland, coastal/deep-
sea), logging and wood cutting, animal husbandry, packaging (agriculture), general
agricultural segment and plant protection.
The non-agricultural occupation segment presents wage rates for carpenters, blacksmiths,
masons, weavers, beedi makers, bamboo/cane basket weavers, handicraft workers,
plumbers, electricians, construction workers, LMV and tractor drivers, porters, loaders,
and sweeping/cleaning workers.
The data have been sourced from Wage Rates in Rural India, regularly published by the
Labour Bureau, Shimla (Ministry of Labour and Employment, Government of India).
With this addition, the EPWRFITS now has 30 modules covering both economic (real
and financial sectors) and social sectors.
For subscription details, visit www.epwrfits.in or e-mail us at its@epwrf.in
february 25, 2023 vol lViii no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
STRATEGIC AFFAIRS
The Land–Sea Conundrum
Connectivity and Contest
Atul Bhardwaj
The world is reorienting away
from its fixation with exclusive
reliance on sea lanes of
communication, as the fulcrum of
international trade and politics,
and its embrace of modern
connectivity imperatives. The
emerging Eurasian land bridges
are now the biggest disrupter of
the existing maritime order and
impacting the global power shift.
The maritime-continental
disequilibrium is once again
determining the contours of
conflicts and contestations
in global politics. The new
transcontinental linkages and
continental value chains are
challenging the monopoly of
international trade management
by Western maritime powers.
Atul Bhardwaj (atul.beret@gmail.com) is a
fellow at Nehru Memorial Museum and
Library.
10
T
he geographic reconfiguration of
international supply chains is
underway, with the world’s long-
est economic corridor, linking the Asia–
Pacific economic pole at the eastern end
of Eurasia and the European pole at its
western end. The emerging Eurasian land
bridges are now the biggest disrupters of
the existing maritime order and impact-
ing the global power shift.
China’s attempt to revolutionise Eurasia’s
strategic geography is not unprecedented.
There are a lot of similarities between
the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and
German-led Berlin–Baghdad Railway
(BBR). The BBR infringed on Pax Britannica
and China’s attempt to connect Eurasia
is impacting Pax Americana.
The dominant maritime power is res-
ponding to this disruption by adopting
strategies that are reminiscent of the
manner in which Britain handled the
threat to its sea power when Germany
embarked on a Eurasian endeavour
through the construction of BBR in the first
decade of the 20th century.
This article examines the question by
peeping into history to understand if the
United States (US) will destroy or partake
in its construction of the upcoming land
bridges in Eurasia? Maritime America’s
involvement or isolation from the Eurasian
project is likely to determine the con-
tours of contemporary geopolitics and
the prospects of war and peace in the
coming decades.
The Berlin Baghdad Railway Line
Towards the tail end of the 19th century,
Madame Tadia, an enterprising immigrant
from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, esta-
blished Hotel Tadia near Eskişehir train
station (Yılmaz et al 2018). The Anatolian
Railroads Ottoman Company completed
the Eskişehir station in 1892, with fund-
ing from the Deutsche Bank of Germany.
february 25, 2023
Trains travelling between Ankara and
Istanbul used the Eskişehir railway station
as a night stop. The hotel’s quality of food
and hospitality attracted Europeans as
well as other tourists. The increased
passenger traffic was a consequence of
the Ottoman Empire’s policy of attract-
ing foreign direct investments and the
development of new transportation net-
works to reinvigorate its imperial reach.
In 1899, Turkey granted the Germans
the right to extend the railway to Baghdad
as well as establish and operate irrigation
projects, harbours, and various indus-
tries along the way. A new hope was
generated in town. Unfortunately, the
prosperity and activity at Eskişehir did
not last long. First, the world war and
then the Greco–Turkish War of 1922,
destroyed it.
The story of the rise and fall of
Eskişehir is linked to the fortunes of Ger-
many and the Ottoman Empire, which
forged a partnership for the construction
of BBR. By the late 19th century, railroads
had become attractive to the great powers
as a tool to extend imperial reach and
control. The Ottoman Empire was in
decline and the race among imperial
powers to establish spheres of influence
in the region intensified.
Germany was seen as a direct threat
to British hegemony as it was rising fast
and was on the verge of surpassing Great
Britain in terms of the gross domestic
product (GDP). Its steel production was
almost as much as that of Britain, Russia,
and France combined. This was also the
time when oil had been found in Mesopo-
tamia and when railroads started
impacting international connectivity
and competition before World War I.
The 2,500 km long BBR route from
Istanbul (Constantinople) to Basra was
to pass through Adana, Angora, Mosul,
Aleppo, Baghdad. Basra, on the Shatt-
al-Arab, was the last train stop because
the British established Kuwait as a pro-
tectorate in 1899 and barred the German
plans to set up a terminus there. As
Russia did not want the railway line
passing through Angora, Germany shifted
the line to pass through Konia instead
of Angora.
vol lVii no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

Despite some Russian objections and
the British efforts to secure their interests
in Kuwait, the opposition against the
German-led BBR project was muted as the
possibility of project fructifying seemed
difficult due to various factors such as
labour, funds, and technological diffi-
culties. To meet the shortage of funds
the German company offered shares in
the railway to France and Britain. Some
British investors showed support for the
“internationalisation” of the project,
however, the British government opposed
BBR mainly due to opposition by ship-
ping magnets.
The alarm bells started ringing in
London after 1904 when the first section
of the Baghdad railway to be added on to
the existing Anatolian railway system was
completed. The BBR was no longer seen
as a highway to India. The British feared
the “Germanisation of Mesopotamia” as
a threat to its position in Egypt and its
business interests in the Mediterranean
towards the Arab Gulf (Maloney 1984).
The BBR offered an alternative land-
based route that would have reduced
the significance of the Suez Canal in
conduct of international trade. It would
have enhanced German connectivity
with its colonies in East Africa and the
Far East helping it avoid the sea lines
of communication controlled by the
Royal Navy.
From 1904 onwards, Britain was acti-
vely involved in blocking the project by
making it difficult for the Germans to
access British and French finances. Britain
also used its influence in Turkey to slow
down the BBR project.
In 1904, the British War Office’s
assessed that the railway line
would furnish Germany with more rapid
means of communication with her colonies
in the Pacific and East Africa and with
Kiaochow, and would enable her to keep a
fleet in eastern waters, independent of the
Mediterranean route ... It would also place
her on the flank of our communications via
Suez with India. (Cohen 1978: 176)
Sensing trouble and delays, Germany
invited Britain for talks to resolve the
issue. Britain put the ball in Germany’s
court by suggesting that Russia and
France be included in BBR talks. The
Germans, fearing to be outvoted, turned
down the British proposal.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023
STRATEGIC AFFAIRS
Nonetheless, Germany tried to accom- not have seen the rise of Hitler and the
modate the three powers. It returned the outbreak of World War II.
Basra section of the railway concession
to Turkey in 1908 and recognised Russia’s Eurasia Returns
Persian sphere of influence in 1910. In The vast space from Eastern Europe to
February 1914, France was given northern Central and East Asia and from the
Anatolia and Syria as spheres of influence, Baltic Sea to the Indian Ocean is now a
while Germany retained its dominance crucial geopolitical chessboard. In this
of railways in most parts of Turkey. region, it is not only Russia and China
In June 1914, the British sanctioned that are laying the ground rules for an
complete German control over the project alternative international order but other
in Basra. Germany had to stop the railway continental powers, including Germany
at Basra and recognise British monopoly and France, are also not averse to seeing
in Mesopotamia, the emergence of an order that can effec-
The negotiations led to delays and tively curtail the American hegemony.
eventual non-completion of BBR, adversely The five continental powers, China,
affecting the Turkish troop movements Russia, Germany, France and India are
during World War I and aiding British leading the revival of the modern trans-
war plans. The constant need to appease continental connectivity networks. The
Britain, Russia and France also heightened rising aspirations of the major continental
German frustration and fears of encircle- powers for strategic autonomy through
ment. These factors became instrumen- greater involvement in managing the
tal in making World War I deadly. channels of communications both on
Had the BBR succeeded, the defeat of land and sea are giving rise to new con-
the Ottoman Empire and the control of flicts rooted in geography.
Mesopotamia by Britain may have been India’s postcolonial strategy has largely
a difficult proposition. If the German been focused on ensuring that free trade
influence had reached Persian Gulf, the flows through the oceans and not across
history of colonialism would have been the borders. Till recently, connectivity with
different and probably the world would Central Asia and Eurasia was neglected.
Review of Urban Affairs
January 29, 2022
Pandemic and the City —Karen Coelho, Vinay Gidwani,
Anant Maringanti, Partha Mukhopadhyay
Recovery as Resilience: Domestic Work and Workers —Kinjal Sampat, Antara Rai Chowdhury,
in the Aftermath of COVID-19 Gautam Bhan
Pandemic Precarity: Life, Livelihood, and Death in the Time of the Pandemic —Aseem Prakash, Hem Borker
Intensifying Urbanities in Karachi: A South Asian City —Adam Abdullah, Soha Macktoom,
in the Time of COVID-19 Nausheen H Anwar, Noman Ahmed
COVID-19 and the State of Exception: Urban Mobility under the Epidemic State —Gaurav Mittal
How Places Matter: Understanding Workers’ Responses to Garment Factory
Closures during the Pandemic in Bengaluru and Srirangapatna —Swathi Shivanand, R Prathibha
COVID-19 and the Women at Work: —Vanshika Singh, Syeda Asia, Shivangi Gupta,
An Ethnographic Account of Sanjay Colony, Bhatti Mines Lakshay Talwar, Aashna Gutgutia, Pushpa
Closure of Schools and Migration of Adolescent Tribal Girls:
A Case Study of Surat —Shilajit Sengupta
For copies write to: Circulation Manager,
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320–322, A to Z Industrial Estate, Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai 400 013.
email: circulation@epw.in
vol lVii no 8 11
STRATEGIC AFFAIRS

Independent India’s strategy has been
influenced by colonial influences and
more importantly because of the contin-
ued dominance of the global political
economy by maritime powers in the
postcolonial era.
New Delhi is currently titled in favour
of Indo–Pacific alliance but engaging
with Russia and reaching out to Eurasia
are important elements in its strategy to
balance China’s hegemony in the region.
New trade routes are also important to
India as it seeks new markets to
realise the full potential of its manufac-
turing sector.
New Delhi’s intent to overcome the
geographical constraints imposed by the
partition in 1947 remains a major road-
block in restoring India’s connectivity with
Central Asia. Prime Minister Narendra
Modi, referring to Pakistan’s refusal to
give India transit trade access by land to
Afghanistan and Central Asia, reiterated
at the 2022 Samarkand summit of the
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO),
that better regional connectivity is only
possible if members grant each other
“full transit rights.”
New Delhi in collaboration with Tehran
and Moscow has operationalised the
International North–South Transport
Corridor (INSTC), a 7,200 km long multi-
modal route, linking the Indian Ocean
and the Persian Gulf to the Caspian Sea
via Iran and onwards to northern Europe
via St Petersburg. The transportation of
goods through INSTC takes considerably
less time than the traditional route via
the Suez Canal and Mediterranean Sea.
Further, New Delhi is pushing the idea
for optimum use of Chabahar Port, dur-
ing its presidency of the SCO in 2023.
Germany is also seeking greater stra-
tegic autonomy in conduct of its external
policy. It is beginning to assert and explore
alternatives that are not solely revolving
around the US. Many in Germany are
demanding an investigation into the alle-
gations made by investigative journalist
Seymour Hersh regarding the US forces’
direct involvement in blowing up the Nord
Stream one and two natural gas pipe-
lines, which run from Russia to Germany.
The US has long opposed the Nord Stream
pipelines, which are majority-owned by
the Russian state gas company, Gazprom,
and supplied Europe with cheap Russian
natural gas. The liquefied natural gas
(LNG) supplies from Russia to Germany
are considered inimical to US business
and strategic interests.
Nord Stream pipelines represent land–
sea equilibrium. This equilibrium is some-
thing that the maritime powers will
always oppose. The grand strategy of
the US and other maritime powers has
revolved around keeping Eurasia divided.
According to Wang Gungwu,
It was really only in the 18th and 19th cen-
tury that maritime power replaced continen-
tal power—and not entirely either. Even the
Cold War was a contest between maritime
and continental powers. (Beng 2015: 7)
Technology played a big role in the
ascendancy of maritime powers about
three centuries ago. First sail and then
steam power enhanced mobility over sea
giving it an advantage over the land
power in terms of mobility as well the
cargo carrying capacity. The construc-
tion of a shorter Suez Canal route fur-
ther accentuated that advantage.
The introduction and spread of the rail-
ways from the middle of the 19th century

Institute of Livelihood Research and Training

Research Associate
Background
The Institute of Livelihood Research and Training – ILRT (www.ilrtindia.org) is an academic institution promoted by the Basix Social Enterprise Group (Basix SEG), a new generation livelihood
promotion institution. The mandate of the ILRT is to build a scientific knowledge base on livelihoods and disseminate the same to livelihood practitioners for enhancing their understanding
and implementation capabilities, which in turn will contribute to promote large number of livelihoods.
In pursuit of its mandate ILRT focuses on thematic research, livelihood mapping, value chain analysis, baseline & impact assessment studies, process and case study documentation of
livelihood innovations. Furthermore, under the knowledge dissemination domain, it develops curriculum including e-Learning courses and offer open national and international training program,
customized training program and learning by digital means. ILRT also engage in action research and policy advocacy on innovative model of livelihood promotion.
The position of Research Associate is required for the Dean’s Office based at Bhopal. The position reports to the Assistant Dean/Dean. This is a full-time position with a probation period of six
months to one year.
Job description:
The incumbent shall manage the core activities of Knowledge Building and Dissemination with specific responsibilities for the following:
Engage and assist in research, publications, trainings, and consulting activities of the Institute.
Documentation of ILRT activities related to Action Research, Training, Studies, Meetings.
Provide Field based support and documentation of field-based activities.
Engage in organizing workshops, seminars, conferences, webinars.
Writing research papers, case studies and other publications.
Develop institutional linkages with other institution engaged in livelihood promotion and research.
Assist in proposal/EOI formulation.
Educational Qualification:
• M.Phil / Ph.D in Economics, Agricultural Economics, Development Studies with 2-5 years’ relevant experience is desirable (for exceptional candidates work experience can be waived off).
Key Skills:
• Have excellent analytical and report writing skills including statistical analysis through SPSS and other software.
• Specific knowledge, understanding and experience of research on livelihood promotion, agriculture sector especially value chain analysis, issues of smallholder farmers, tribal and other
weaker sections, natural resource and climate change.
• Proven record of publication of papers, case studies in referred national and international Journals.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills in English and Hindi is a MUST. An additional language skill will be an additional advantage.
• Adequate presentation skills and operational proficiency in MS Office, Internet etc.
Compensation:
We offer a competitive salary which is at par with the development sector. The Cost to Organization (CTC) that we envisage is in the range of Rs. 2.5–3 Lakh per annum and will depend
upon the experience and profile of the candidate.
ILRT encourages qualified women candidates to apply.
How to apply:
Please send us the following:
(i) Updated resume (Word Format only) with details of work experience in chronological order.
(ii) At least one unedited unpublished article/paper on relevant topics.
This should be mailed to info@ilrtindia.org by close of business hours on 16th March 2023.
Please mention “Research Associate: Bhopal” in the subject line. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.
Institute of Livelihood Research and Training is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of gender, caste, creed, religion, race, ethnicity, LGBT or physical challenge.
It has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. Women candidates are encouraged to apply.

12 february 25, 2023 vol lVii no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

and the prospects of Eurasia becoming
an undivided landmass raised hackles
among maritime strategists. It is at this
stage that Halford Mackinder (1861–
1947) came on the scene in 1904 to
inform the dangers posed by
that vast area of Euro-Asia which is inacces-
sible to ships, but in antiquity lay open to the
horse-riding nomads, and is today about to
be covered with a network of railways.
(Brands 2021)
Mackinder suggested that the geo-
political struggle was one between insular
sea powers and continental land powers.
The British geographer was particularly
concerned about the Russo–German
coalition and its impact on sea power.
Mackinder’s concern was less about
fighting battles at sea and more about
controlling events on land, keeping it
divided. In 1904, Mackinder warned
that if the World Island should be unified
under one command it would constitute a
base for sea power so large that Great Britain
and the other existing insular sea power
bases would be unable to compete with it.
(Hall 1955: 115)
Ever since, keeping the continental
powers away from acquiring primacy in
global affairs has been the mainstay of
the grand strategy employed by sea
powers—Britain and the US.
The British strategy against BBR
ensured that Germany and Russia were
kept apart. Britain built alliances with
Russia in order to keep the two away.
During the Cold War, the US employed a
“slow split” strategy to create a wedge
between China and the Soviet Union.
This time, the threat of communism
suddenly disappeared and the US whole-
heartedly embraced China to keep it
separated from communist USSR.
In Conclusion
China’s look west policy bears a stark
resemblance to Germany’s eastern equi-
valents. China is aspiring for a strong
footprint both on land as well at sea.
One of China’s main motivations in pur-
suing the BRI is similar to Germany’s
BBR—to circumvent its inferiority along
the maritime domain. The overland trade
routes posed a challenge to the predomi-
nant maritime powers in the 20th century.
Once again, the 21st century attempts to
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023
reunite Eurasia through modern rail
networks is a major cause of concern for
sea powers. Despite the unprecedented
growth in overland rail routes over the
past decade, shipping is likely to remain
as the mainstay of international trade for
many more years. Earlier in March 2021,
a 400-metre-long container ship ran
aground and halted transit in both direc-
tions on the Suez Canal, one of the world’s
major seaborne trade chokepoints. Many
of the consignments requiring time-
critical delivery and price sensitivity,
were shifted to rails on the New Silk
Road routes.
Despite the growing significance of
rail freight, it is estimated that it may
take more than a decade of development
and international cooperation to make
Silk Road consignments as smooth as
maritime shipments. Will the land–sea
equilibrium remain titled in favour of
maritime powers?
The twin factors that are likely to
support the restoration of equilibrium
are as follows: First, after the US, there
is no maritime power big enough to take
control of the command of the seas.
China, predominantly a continental power,
is currently the only one capable of lead-
ing the international order. Second, the
land-based transportation technologies
are likely to outpace the new tones being
developed in the marine sector. For
example, Hyperloop is one such technol-
ogy which is most suitable for online
markets that seek faster transportation
means to reach out to their customers.
Moreover, the need to decarbonise
transport through greater use of high-
speed electric trains is making the rail-
roads more attractive than sea-based
transportation. But the maritime powers
are not likely to hand over power with-
out resistance.
We are already witnessing that the US
response to 21st-century Eurasian con-
nectivity is not very different from the
strategy employed by Britain against
BBR. The US is building alliances against
China in the Indo–Pacific. Its policies are
certainly not conducive to the establish-
ment of peace on Ukraine–Russia borders.
Washington is also increasing its
involvement in Central Asia. It intends
to undermine Russia—economically and
vol lVii no 8
STRATEGIC AFFAIRS
militarily—in the long run in order to
weaken China, its peer competitor, and
prevent continental powers from deter-
mining the pace of Eurasian connectivity.
Unlike Britain of the 20th century,
the US is not likely to destroy land
bridges across Eurasia, but will attempt to
establish its hegemony over the new
links and means of communication that
are going to support the fourth industrial
revolution. The US is obsessed with
power—whether that power flows from
land or sea control may not be of much
concern to its strategists. The develop-
ment of land routes is a necessity to
bring landlocked countries into the
global supply chains. The shifting of
some portion of international trade away
from the oceans is likely to reduce ine-
qualities between coastal towns and
landlocked areas of the world.
The world is beginning to orient away
from its fixation with exclusive reliance
on sea lanes of communication, as the
fulcrum of international trade and poli-
tics, and its embrace of modern connec-
tivity imperatives. Connectivity and
contestations are increasingly determin-
ing strategic and geopolitical choices.
History may not repeat but it often
rhymes. The maritime-continental dise-
quilibrium is once again determining the
contours of conflicts and contestations
in global politics. The new transconti-
nental linkages and continental value
chains are challenging the monopoly
of international trade management by
Western maritime powers.
References
Beng, Ooi Kee (2015): “The Eurasian Core and
Edges,” Dialogues with Wang Gungwu on the
History of the World, Institute of South East
Asian Studies, Singapore.
Brands, Hal (2021): “The Eurasian Century, Part I:
What Mackinder Knew,” Engelsberg Ideas,
6 December, viewed on 21 December 2022,
https://engelsbergideas.com/essays/the-eura-
sian-century-part-i-what-mackinder-knew/.
Cohen, Stuart (1978): “Mesopotamia in British
Strategy, 1903–14,” International Journal of
Middle East Studies, April, Vol 9, No 2, pp 171–81.
Hall, Arthur R (1955): “Mackinder and the Course of
Events,” Annals of the Association of American
Geographers, June, Vol0 45, No 2, pp 109–26.
Maloney, Arthur P (1984): “Berlin-Baghdad Railway
as a Cause of World War I,” Center for Naval
Analysis, January, professional paper 401.
Yılmaz, Aysel, Duygu Yetgin and Nazmi Koza (2018):
“A Hotel in Anatolia in the Last Period of the
Ottoman Empire: Hotel Tadia (1892–1922),”
Tourism Management Perspectives, Vol 26,
April, pp 118–25.
13

Making Election Manifestos
Legally Binding
A Wild Goose Chase
Gokul Krishnan, Jehosh Paul, Revati Pillai, Saurabh Raj
An increasing number of lawyers
and parliamentarians have
been mooting to make election
manifestos a legally binding
document by holding the political
parties accountable for their
manifesto promises in order
to strengthen democracy.
This article argues that even if
the election manifestos are made
into a legally binding document,
its implementation would
remain incumbent upon the
Election Commission’s will and
competency to enforce it.
The authors would like to convey their
gratitude to Narayana A and Anshuman
Singh at the Azim Premji University, and
the anonymous reviewer for their insightful
comments and suggestions on the earlier
version of this article.
Gokul Krishnan (gokul.krishnan21_llm@apu.
edu.in), Jehosh Paul (jehosh.paul21_llm@apu.
edu.in) and Revati Pillai (revati.pillai21_llm@
apu.edu.in) hold an LLM (Law and
Development) from the Azim Premji
University, Bengaluru. Saurabh Raj (saurabh.
raj21_mpg@apu.edu.in) is an MA (Public Policy
and Governance) candidate at the Azim Premji
University, Bengaluru.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023
O
n 30 December 1948, during the
Constituent Assembly debates,
Mahavir Tyagi argued that
in a democracy … the administration shall
be run on the lines of the manifesto which
has been approved by the general elector-
ate. (Lok Sabha 1948)
Seven decades later, there seems to be a
vigorous pursuit by some lawyers and
parliamentarians to make his vision
come true. On the one hand, members of
Parliament (MPs), including Manoj Kumar
Jha and Priyanka Chaturvedi from the
Rajya Sabha, urged the union govern-
ment to make manifestos legally en-
forceable during the zero hour in April
2022 (Deccan Herald 2022). While on the
other hand, there has been a mounting
number of cases that seek the Supreme
Court’s intervention in making the man-
ifestos legally enforceable. Over the past
decade, the courts in several landmark
cases like Jagdish Prasad Saini v State of
Election Commission of Rajasthan,1 Mith-
ilesh Kumar Pandey v Election Commis-
sion of India,2 V P Ammavasai v Chief
Election Commissioner,3 and Khurshi-
durehman S Rehman v State of Uttar
Pradesh,4 have been approached to make
the manifesto promises legally enforce-
able. However, the constitutional courts
have reiterated that the election mani-
festos cannot be considered a legally
binding document.
These interventions by the parliamen-
tarians and the lawyers are based upon
two core assumptions: first, the election
manifestos can be an asset for strength-
ening democracy by holding the ruling
party accountable for its programmatic
promises; second, the Election Commis-
sion also shares their vision on manifes-
tos as a tool for strengthening democra-
cy, because the enforcement of the man-
ifesto as a legally binding document ul-
timately has to be carried out by the
vol lViii no 8
COMMENTARY
Election Commission. This article seeks
to test the validity of the second assump-
tion by gauging the Election Commis-
sion’s approach and performance when
it comes to dealing with the election
manifestos under the present legal and
policy framework. Testing this assump-
tion is crucial because even if the elec-
tion manifestos are made into a legally
binding document, its implementation
would be incumbent upon the Election
Commission’s will and competency in
carrying out the enforcement.
Existing Law and Policy
Framework
In 2013, the Supreme Court in the case
of S Subramanian Balaji v Government of
Tamil Nadu5 despite adhering to the est-
ablished line of precedents which held
that the manifesto promises were not
legally enforceable, went a step further
and opined that an exception had to be
made in this case because the purpose of
the election manifesto was directly asso-
ciated with the election process. It, there-
fore, directed the Election Commission
to frame guidelines on the election man-
ifesto after consulting with all the recog-
nised political parties.
In compliance with this direction, the
Election Commission (2019) exercised its
power under Article 324 of the Constitu-
tion to promulgate the following guide-
line, among others:
In the Election Manifestos, the “political parties
should avoid making those promises which
are likely to vitiate the purity of the election
process or exert undue influence on the voters
in exercising their franchise.”
Further, the Election Commission di-
rected (i) all political parties to submit a
copy of their election manifestos within
three days of its release, for the Election
Commission’s record; (ii) all political
parties to submit a declaration stating
that their programme/policies and
promises made in their election mani-
festo are in consonance with Part VIII of
the Model Code of Conduct (MCC); and
(iii) all the chief electoral officers to ob-
tain three copies of the election manifes-
tos and the declaration, from the politi-
cal parties/candidates within three days
of its release, analyse the election mani-
festos (in light of ECI’s guidelines on
23
COMMENTARY
manifestos), and record their comments
(ECI 2019).
Analysis of the RTI Replies
Based on the existing law and policy
framework, we filed right to information
(RTI) queries with the Election Commis-
sion to ascertain the status of its compli-
ance with the above-mentioned guide-
lines and directions in the 2019 Lok Sab-
ha election as well as the legislative as-
sembly elections across 28 states that
were held between 2017 and 2021.
Upon receipt of our RTI queries, the
Election Commission under Section 6(3)
of the RTI Act transferred the parts of
the RTI queries that it deemed the office
of the respective state chief electoral of-
ficer would be the competent authority
to provide the answers.
The following queries were answered
by the Election Commission:
(i) Which political parties have submitted
their manifestos to the Election Com-
mission during the elections in compli-
ance with the manual on MCC (for the
guidance of political parties and candi-
dates) and other related guidelines is-
sued by the Election Commission?
(ii) What actions/measures were taken
against the party/parties whose mani-
festo/manifestos were found to be in vi-
olation of Part VIII of the MCC and other
related guidelines issued by the Election
Commission?
(iii) Were there any manifesto promises
that vitiated the purity of the election
process or exerted undue influence on
the voters in exercising their franchise
as per Part VIII of the MCC?
The replies by the Election Commis-
sion can be analysed as following:
With respect to the first query, the re-
plies by the Election Commission could
be interpreted as that the submission of
the manifestos by the political parties as
per the relevant guidelines was not a
rule but an exception. In other words,
the RTI replies shed light on the fact that
there was a large-scale violation of the
relevant guidelines dealing with the
manifestos. As per the RTI replies, in the
legislative assembly election held across
29 states between 2017 and 2021, “no
Election Manifesto has been received in
the EC” from any of the political parties
24
contesting in the legislative assembly
election in 22 states.6 Arguably as an
anomaly, the Election Commission re-
ceived election manifestos in Mizoram,
Rajasthan, Telangana, and Uttar Pradesh
legislative assembly election.7
In stark contrast to the handful num-
ber of manifestos received by the Elec-
tion Commission during the legislative
assembly elections, the Election Com-
mission received election manifestos of
15 political parties during the Lok Sabha
election (2019).8
With respect to the second and the
third query, not only did these queries
fall flat in cases where the Election Com-
mission had not received the election
manifestos, but even when the Election
Commission had received election mani-
festos in four of the legislative assembly
elections and the 2019 Lok Sabha elec-
tion, the Election Commission had no
information available when it came to
the actions/measures taken by it against
political parties whose election manifes-
tos were in violation of Part VIII of the
MCC or other Election Commission-man-
dated guidelines, and if there were any
promises in the election manifestos that
vitiated the purity of the election pro-
cess or exerted undue influence on the
voters in violation of the Part VIII of the
MCC or any other Election Commission-
mandated guidelines.
Moving on to the RTI replies by the
chief electoral officer of the respective
states, the following queries were an-
swered by them:
(i) Did the chief electoral officer analyse
the election manifestos submitted by the
political parties in the elections as per
the manual on MCC (for the guidance of
political parties and candidates) and
other related guidelines issued by the
Election Commission?
(a) If yes, what was the timeline of the
receipt and analysis of the election man-
ifestos submitted by the political parties
in the elections as per the manual on MCC
(for the guidance of political parties and
candidates) and other related guidelines
issued by the Election Commission?
(b) Did the chief electoral officer find
the manifesto of any party in violation of
Part VIII of the MCC or any other Election
Commission-mandated guideline? Please
february 25, 2023
specify the name of the parties and the
reasons for finding their manifestos in
violation of Part VIII of the MCC or any
other Election Commission-mandated
guidelines?
The replies by the respective office of
the chief electoral officer can be ana-
lysed as following: with respect to the
first query, only the chief electoral officer
of Sikkim answered in the affirmative
when it came to the legislative assembly
election held across 28 states between
2017 and 2021. The chief electoral officer
also provided the timeline of the receipt
and analysis of the election manifestos,
and further stated that none of the man-
ifestos had violated Part VIII of the MCC
or any other Election Commission-man-
dated guidelines.
Further, only the chief electoral officer
of Delhi answered in the affirmative
when it came to the 2019 Lok Sabha elec-
tion. The chief electoral officer stated that
the timeline of the receipt was that with-
in three days of release of manifestos,
these had to be sent to the election office.
Further, upon analysis of the manifestos,
it was found that the Indian National
Congress had not sent their declaration
and the release date of the manifesto
was not mentioned. The chief electoral of-
ficer then requested them to furnish the
same and the Delhi Pradesh Congress
Committee (DPCC) sent the declaration.
Apart from the above-mentioned re-
plies, there were no concrete answers
from the chief electoral officers of the
respective states.
With respect to the 2019 Lok Sabha
elections, two replies stated that there
was no record,9 three replies stated that
manifestos had not been received,10
three replies stated that the information
was not available,11 one reply stated
nil,12 one reply did not answer the ques-
tion,13 two replies declined to answer,14
one reply stated that the manifestos were
sent to the Election Commission for neces-
sary action,15 and one reply stated there
was no compliance because the manifes-
tos were submitted after the elections
were conducted.16
With respect to the legislative assembly
elections between 2017 and 2021, one re-
ply stated that there was no record,17
two replies stated that manifestos had
vol lViii no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

not been received,18 two replies stated
that the information was not available,19
two reply stated nil,20 one reply did not
answer the question directly,21 two replies
declined to answer,22 and one reply out-
rightly stated there was no compliance.23
Not only had the Election Commis-
sion’s directions requested the political
parties to submit their election manifes-
tos within three days of its release, but
also vested the chief electoral officer
with a duty “to obtain” the manifestos
and analyse them vis-à-vis the guide-
lines on manifestos issued by the Elec-
tion Commission. However, apart from a
handful of instances, the Election Com-
mission’s directions on obtaining and
analysing the election manifestos were
not complied with by the Election Com-
mission itself. The evidence gained
through the RTI replies point that the
Election Commission does not take elec-
tion manifestos seriously, let alone view-
ing it as a device for strengthening de-
mocracy. Therefore, the truth value of
the second assumption that we set out to
test in this article is “false.”
Making Manifestos Legally Binding
While the reasons for the Election Com-
mission’s non-compliance with its own
directions are open to interpretations,
any endeavour to make the election
manifesto a legally binding document is
most likely to not yield any tangible out-
come because of the Election Commis-
sion’s lackadaisical attitude towards the
election manifestos.
One might argue that the Election
Commission has failed to act on the di-
rections because they are merely guide-
lines and not strict statutory laws; there-
fore, passing a legislation would be an
optimal solution. However, we would still
argue that it is not that the Election Com-
mission has failed to comply with the
Supreme Court’s guidelines, it is a case
of the Election Commission disregard-
ing its own guidelines on scrutinising
the election manifestos. One can only
infer here that the Election Commission
has been either unwilling or incapable
in complying with its own guidelines.
Instead of seeking to make the elec-
tion manifestos a legally binding docu-
ment, one might consider undertaking
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023
initiatives that would entail civil society
organisations acting as a watchdog for
tracking the implementation of the man-
ifesto promises and building pressure on
the ruling political party to implement its
manifesto promises. To take a leaf from
the past, when it seemed like the then
ruling government was not serious about
adhering to its Lok Sabha election mani-
festo promise of introducing the employ-
ment guarantee act, the public campaign
by civil society activists played a significant
role in ensuring that the National Rural
Employment Guarantee Act, 2005 was
passed by Parliament (Hasan 2018).
The policy paper titled “Manifestos as
a Tool for Accountability: A Content Ana-
lysis of the 2004–19 UPA and NDA Poll
Manifestos” also broadly supports our
suggestion as it remarks that “a step in
the right direction are certain initia-
tives by entities such as the Associa-
tion of Democratic Reforms (ADR) to
monitor elections” (ORF 2022).
K G Kannabiran, although in a differ-
ent context, had remarked that the “his-
tory of free India has been that they
never try to resolve any political issue
politically” (YouTube 2013). It is perti-
nent even in this case because, arguably,
holding the ruling political party acc-
ountable for their manifesto promises is
a political issue and it has to be resolved
through political intervention by the
civil society for an optimal solution.
Notes
1 D B civil public interest litigation No 7060/2019.
2 2014 (4) RCR (civil) 526.
3 W P (MD) No 7708 of 2019.
4 MANU/UP/0646/2022.
5 (2013) 9 SCC 659.
6 As per the RTI replies, the Election Commis-
sion did not receive manifestos in the following
legislative assembly elections: Andhra Pradesh
(2019), Arunachal Pradesh (2019), Assam
(2021), Chhattisgarh (2018), Goa (2017), Gujarat
(2017), Haryana (2019), Jharkhand (2019), Kar-
nataka (2018), Kerala (2021), Madhya Pradesh
(2018), Maharashtra (2019), Manipur (2017),
Meghalaya (2018), Mizoram (2018), Nagaland
(2018), Odisha (2019), Sikkim (2019), Tamil
Nadu (2021), Tripura (2019), Uttarakhand (2017),
West Bengal (2021).
7 The Election Commission received election mani-
festos by the following political parties in the fol-
lowing state legislative assembly elections: Mizo
National Front–Mizoram (2018), Bhartiya Bahu-
jan Kranti Dal and Rashtra Vahini Party–
Rajasthan (2018), Anarakshit Samaj Party–Telan-
gana (2018), Samajwadi Party—Uttar Pradesh
(2017). With respect to the Himachal Pradesh
legislative assembly election (2017), the Punjab
legislative assembly election (2017), and Bihar
vol lViii no 8
COMMENTARY
legislative assembly election (2020), the RTI
application was transferred to the respective
chief electoral officer.
8 The political parties that submitted their elec-
tion manifestos during the Lok Sabha elections
(2019) are: Aam Aadmi Party, Indian National
Congress, Bharatiya Janata Party, Sikkim Kranti-
kari Morcha, Spaks Party, Ambedkarite Party of
India, Bharatiya Rashtriya Morcha, Haakim
Apna Party, Sarvodaya Bharat Party, Dravida
Munnetra Kazhagam, All India Forward Bloc,
Justice Party, and Uttar Pradesh Republican
Party.
9 Chief electoral officer of Jharkhand and Nagaland.
10 Chief electoral officer of Chandigarh, Gujarat,
Jammu and Kashmir.
11 Chief electoral officer of Karnataka, Madhya
Pradesh, and Uttarakhand.
12 Chief electoral officer of Chhattisgarh.
13 Chief electoral officer of Odisha.
14 Chief electoral officer of Punjab and Puducherry.
15 Chief electoral officer of Tamil Nadu.
16 Chief electoral officer of Haryana,
17 Chief electoral officer of Jharkhand.
18 Chief electoral officer of Gujarat and Tamil Nadu.
19 Chief electoral officer of Karnataka and Maha-
rashtra.
20 Chief electoral officer of Chhattisgarh and
Meghalaya.
21 Chief electoral officer of Odisha.
22 Chief electoral officer of Andhra Pradesh and Goa.
23 Chief electoral officer of Uttar Pradesh.
References
Deccan Herald (2022): “Rajya Sabha Urges Govern-
ment to Make Election Manifesto Legally En-
forceable,” https://www.deccanherald.com/
national/rajya-sabha-urges-government-to-
make-election-manifesto-legally-enforcea-
ble-1097879.html.
ECI (2019): “Manual on Model Code of Conduct,”
https://eci.gov.in/files/file/9375-manual-on-
model-code-of-conduct/.
Hasan, Zoya (2018): Agitation to Legislation: Nego-
tiating Equity and Justice in India, New Delhi:
Oxford University Press.
Lok Sabha (1948): “Constituent Assembly Debates
(Proceedings) Volume VII,” http://loksabhaph.
nic.in/writereaddata/cadebatefiles/
C30121948.html.
ORF (2022): “Manifestos as a Tool for Accountabil-
ity: A Content Analysis of the 2004-2019 UPA
and NDA Poll Manifestos,” https://www.orfon-
line.org/research/manifestos-as-a-tool-for-ac-
countability/#_edn6.
YouTube (2013): “Deepa Dhanraj, the Advocate—
K G Kannabiran Part 1,” https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v= haGd9ICmD8w.
available at
Gyan Deep
Near Firayalal Chowk,
Ranchi 834 001,
Jharkhand
Ph: 09470564686
25
COMMENTARY
Does EWS Reservation Redraft
the Principles of Social Justice?
Harish S Wankhede
The reservation for the
economically weaker section has
received wider political support,
and now with the Supreme
Court’s pronouncement in its
favour has made it infallible.
However, the judiciary is under
scrutiny for ignoring the historical
context and constitutional
principles under which the
prospect of social justice policy is
constituted. Interestingly in the
Court’s 3:2 bench decision, the
two judges in opposition have
raised pertinent questions on
the ethical aspect of the
reservation policy. It appears
that the sole criterion of economic
backwardness would not
supplement the constitutional
principles and will defeat
the basic purpose of the
reservation policy.
Harish S Wankhede (enarish@gmail.com)
teaches at the Centre for Political Studies,
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
20
A
s the third decade of the post-
liberalisation policies in India
begins, we witness that the bold
hopes of India’s rapid economic growth
and prosperity have come under severe
doubts. The liberalised market has visi-
bly introduced a niche class and an up-
ward mobile professional elite in India.
However, a vast majority of the popula-
tion, especially a large section among
the Dalit–Bahujan–Adivasi masses, still
survive in precarious socio-economic
conditions. Poverty, growing inflation,
lack of employment opportunities and
the recent crises and tragedies, like the
demonetisation and COVID-19 pandem-
ic, have burdened the lives of the com-
mon people exponentially, making them
more vulnerable and depressed. It is ob-
vious to argue that along with the social-
ly marginalised communities, the grow-
ing economic depravity must have en-
gulfed the social elites too, making them
a part of the poor mass.
As a response to this growing economic
crises, the Bharatiya Janata Party led
current regime at the centre has become
more welfarist in the last few years. It
has announced multiple policies for the
poor, including the extension of the res-
ervation policy for the economically
weaker section (EWS). It acknowledges
that a significant section among the so-
cial elites survives in wretched poor con-
ditions and hoped that such institutional
support may bring some solace to the
upper-caste downtrodden. The govern-
ment jobs and admission in the institu-
tions of higher education have still re-
mained crucial symbols of middle-class
status and the lower classes look upon
these sectors with aspirational values.
The government’s announcement to
implement the 103rd amendment of the
Constitution, providing 10% reservation
for the EWS has been seen as a major tool
to appropriate the aspirations of the
poorer groups among the upper castes.
february 25, 2023
However, doubts were raised about its
legal validity and the attempt was seen
as a political ploy to impress the social
elite constituencies. Surprisingly, the
Supreme Court endorsed the amendment
by suggesting that reservation for the
poor sections does not harm the basic
structure of the Constitution. Though
the EWS reservation received wider po-
litical support and now legal sanction
too, the judiciary is under scrutiny for
ignoring the historical context and con-
stitutional principles under which the
prospect of the social justice policy is
constituted. Interestingly in the Court’s
3:2 bench decision, the two judges in op-
position have raised pertinent questions
supplementing the ethical aspect of the
reservation policy. It appears that the
sole criterion of economic backwardness
would not supplement the constitutional
principles and will defeat the basic pur-
pose of the reservation policy.
The Social Justice Directives
There are three major guidelines and
historical background that led to the
drafting of the reservation policy in India.
First, it acknowledges that the social his-
tory of caste relationships in India has
allowed exclusive privileges to the social
elites whereas the lower strata remained
perpetually burdened under precarious
social and class conditions. The untouch-
able castes suffered the worst kind of reli-
giously ordained social practices that
forced them into surviving under subhu-
man conditions. Under the Hindu social
and customarily laws, they were disal-
lowed even the access of basic human
entitlements (like access to portable wa-
ter) and has remained excluded from
every civic engagement (access to edu-
cation). It was a moral duty of the post-
colonial state to challenge such oppressive
social system and build the new nation
on the modern values of inclusion, justice
and equality. In the new nation, multiple
constitutional safeguards, policies of af-
firmative actions and reservation were
announced in order to invite the worst-
off social groups to become integral part
of the nation-building exercise. The res-
ervation policy thus endorses the ethical
duty of the state that invites and engages
the socially deprived communities to
vol lViii no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

become part of the mainstream civic
and political life.
Second, the nation builders acknowl-
edged that the institutions of the state
shall not be dominated by particular caste
combinations (the upper castes), instead
the Constitution directs that the public
institutions shall represent the social
pluralities in its workforce, making the
institutions inclusive and responsible to-
wards the vulnerable communities. The
reservation policy thus mandated to de-
mocratise the bureaucratic apparatus by
welcoming the Dalit and Adivasi candi-
dates (extended later on to the Other
Backward Classes/Castes [OBCs] in 1989)
making the modern institutions of the
state more representative and heteroge-
neous. Though, the structures of power
remained dominated by the presence of
the social elites, the representation of
socially deprived communities in the
corridors of power has helped in creating
a robust Dalit–Bahujan middle-class,
and empowered them as crucial civil so-
ciety and political actors.
Third, during the formation of reser-
vation policy for the OBCs (especially
during the deliberation on the Mandal
Commission report), the state empirical-
ly substantiated that the backward caste
identity shall be based upon the multiple
criterions of deprivation that includes
the lower-caste identity, economic and
educational backwardness. The Supreme
Court in the Indra Sawhney judgment
(1992) has overtly notified that the caste
and class inequalities are overlapped
and in combination creates the logic of
backwardness and vulnerability. The
OBC groups were extended constitutional
safeguards and were made subjects of
reservation policy. Though the criterion
of the “creamy layer” among the OBCs
was applied here, the reservation on the
basis of group’s “backward” social iden-
tity remained the essential principle.
The Making of ‘Disadvantaged’
Social Elites
The EWS case is different from the socio-
historic exigencies that has made socially
marginalised communities a core sub-
ject of reservation policy. In contrast to
other marginalised groups, the EWS quota
is also sanctioned without following the
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023
COMMENTARY
required constitutional and democratic overcome by state-led remedies (like free
deliberations. Interestingly, till the recent education, health facilities, affirmative
times, there is negligible public pressure, actions, etc) or philanthropic activities
social movements or popular political by the big corporates (financial aid, hous-
claims demanding reservations for the ing facilities, legal protections, etc). Im-
upper caste poor. The government has portantly, though the upper caste poor
crafted and implemented this policy not can surely claim affirmative actions by
only to cater and impress the upper caste the state to reduce their vulnerabilities,
constituencies, but it has deeper inten- they hardly fulfil the basic requirements
tions that is to undermine the foundational to become the part of reservation policy.
principles of social justice policies. Its ar- Extending the reservation for the EWS
rival has disturbed the conventional po- makes the policy look like a programme
litical guidelines and constitutional prin- for poverty alleviation (which it is not)
ciples that have crafted the social justice and will now be open for numerous other
agenda and policy framework in the past. interpretations and claims.
In comparison with the lower caste
groups, the general (upper caste) poor The New Challenges
are not challenged because of historic The EWS decision alerted that the foun-
disadvantages, or face discriminatory prej- dational characteristics of the social jus-
udices in everyday civic relations or are tice agenda or the principles applied to
affected by the perpetual neglect of the draft the reservation policy will undergo
state. There are no empirical evidences a dramatic change. Importantly, there is
that would demonstrate that being an a growing fear that the decision will
upper caste poor, the candidate has faced have an immediate impact in examining
discrimination and exclusion in the job the criterion and conditions under which
market, especially in the state institutions. the reservation for the Scheduled Castes
Instead, such spaces are overwhelmingly (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) are
dominated by the social elites. The claim granted by the Constitution. Among the
that they equally face structural discrim- critics of reservation policy, often it is
ination and exclusion (like the Dalit– highlighted that a dominant and well-
Bahujan counterparts) has little merit. off section within the Dalits (in the case
Instead, the poverty-ridden upper-caste of Maharashtra, the Mahars) has been
households are accidental and can be appropriating the reservation for the SCs
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vol lViii no 8 21
COMMENTARY

and therefore a creamy-layer criterion
shall be introduced. Such a banal sug-
gestion neglects the historic context of
policy formation and refuses to acknowl-
edge that caste-based social inequalities,
including newer forms of untouchability,
are practised even in the urban spaces.
Similar allegation is posed against the ST
reservation, claiming that a rich domi-
nant section (like the Meena tribe in
Rajasthan) exploits the social justice
policies meant for the vulnerable Adivasis.
A subtle demand is evoked suggesting
the introduction of a creamy-layer catego-
ry within the SCs and STs.
On the flip side, the new conditions
applied in the Supreme Court’s decision
may be utilised to claim separate reser-
vation for the Jain, Muslim, and Christian
communities, as the bulk of EWS quota
will obviously be appropriated by the
Hindu upper castes only. There is a
growing demand that the Muslim mi-
norities shall be made beneficiaries of
reservation policy. The Sachar Committee
report (2006) overtly demonstrated that
the Muslim minority suffers communal
prejudice, survive in deplorable class
conditions and a section among them
also belonged to the lower and untouch-
able castes (Arzal Muslims). Similarly,
the Dalit Christians are demanding
special social status and separate quota
on the basis that they suffer identical so-
cial exclusions, like the Hindu Dalits.
Though many of these demands are evi-
dence-based substantive claims and are
democratically raised by the struggling
groups quite often, the decision-makers
in the political and judicial system have
relegated these issues as unconstitutional.
By exclusively attaching the idea of
the “poor” to the upper-caste groups and
cornering the others as socially margin-
alised sections offers a dangerous binary.
Here, the “poor” appears as an abstract
term, blind towards multiple deprivations
associated with the poor class, mainly of
the Dalits, Adivasi and other lower caste
groups. The idea of poor would be more
substantive if it is also open to discuss
the issues of social oppression, cultural
marginalisation and promises to empow-
er the worst-off social and class groups
from perpetual depravities. Instead, the
EWS framework neglects such discussion
and is categorically motivated to expand
the domination of the social elites within
the state institutions.
In Conclusion
With the arrival of the EWS policy, it is
obvious that the reservation policy is
here to stay. However, the foundational
mandate of the policy to examine to-
gether the social, educational and eco-
nomic backwardness of the group in or-
der to make it a beneficiary of the reser-
vation policy has been compromised and
tampered. The decision on the EWS quo-
ta has overtly disturbed the directive
principle and introduced economic back-
wardness as the sole criterion to avail the
benefits, making it a policy for the bene-
fits of the social elites only. The idea of
“poor” may sound more universal and
commonly linked to the vast depleted
population, however, it is mainly moti-
vated to uphold the upper-caste privileges
and to complicate the established princi-
ples of social justice policy.

Institute of Livelihood Research and Training

Senior Faculty/Faculty
Background
The Institute of Livelihood Research and Training – ILRT (www.ilrtindia.org) is an academic institution promoted by the Basix Social Enterprise Group (Basix SEG), a new generation livelihood promotion
institution. The mandate of the ILRT is to build a scientific knowledge base on livelihoods and disseminate the same to livelihood practitioners for enhancing their understanding and implementation capabilities,
which in turn will contribute to promote large number of livelihoods.
In pursuit of its mandate ILRT focuses on thematic research, livelihood mapping, value chain analysis, baseline & impact assessment studies, process and case study documentation of livelihood innovations.
Furthermore, under the knowledge dissemination domain, it develops curriculum including e-Learning courses and offer open national and international training program, customized training program and learning
by digital means. ILRT also engage in action research and policy advocacy on innovative model of livelihood promotion.
The position of Faculty/Senior Faculty is required for the Dean’s Office based at Bhopal. The position reports to the Dean. This is a full-time position with a probation period of six months to one year.
Job description:
The incumbent shall manage the core activities of Knowledge Building and Dissemination with specific responsibilities for the following:
• Engaging in research proposal development, leading research studies and presentation.
• Engaging in case study documentation and organizing case writeshops and publications.
• Curriculum development and organizing trainings at national and international levels
• Organizing workshops, seminars, conferences, webinars.
• Writing research papers, books and other publications.
• Develop institutional linkages with other institution engaged in livelihood promotion.
• Ensure compliance: systemic and programmatic.
Desired profile:
• M. Phil and/or Ph. D degree in Economics, Agricultural Economics or Developmental Studies.
• At least 10–15 years of experience of qualitative and quantitative research including case study documentation.
• Have excellent analytical and report writing skills including statistical analysis through SPSS and other software.
• Specific knowledge, understanding and experience of research on livelihood promotion, agriculture sector especially value chain analysis, issues of smallholder farmers, tribal and other weaker sections,
natural resource and climate change.
• Proven record of publication of papers in referred national and international Journals.
• Excellent written and oral communication skills in English and Hindi is a MUST. An additional language skill will be an additional advantage.
• Demonstrable experience of building effective linkages
• Proven managerial and interpersonal skills.
• Skills to manage knowledge processes.
• Adequate presentation skills and operational proficiency in MS Office, Internet etc
Compensation:
We offer a competitive salary which is at par with the development sector/academics and will depend upon the qualification and experience of the candidate.
ILRT encourages qualified women candidates to apply.
How to apply:
Please send us the following:
(i) Updated resume (Word Format only) with details of work experience in chronological order.
(ii) A one-page note on why you think you are suitable for the position and how best you can contribute to the organisational mission.
(iii) At least two published article/paper on relevant topics.
This should be mailed to info@ilrtindia.org by close of business hours on 16th March 2023.
Please mention “Senior Faculty/Faculty: Bhopal” in the subject line. Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted.
Institute of Livelihood Research and Training is an equal opportunity employer and does not discriminate on the basis of gender, caste, creed, religion, race, ethnicity, LGBT or physical challenge. It has a
zero-tolerance policy on conduct, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. Women candidates are encouraged to apply.

22 february 25, 2023 vol lViii no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

The Dam Safety Act, 2021
Asymmetry in Indian Federalism
Rajeesh C S, Ashwati C K, Manu Sharma
The asymmetrical arrangements
in political and administrative
aspects of the act rooted
in historico-geographical,
institutional, and constitutional
obscurities are interrogated,
especially emphasising on the
amount of authority held by the
union government by forming
two new bodies—the National
Committee on Dam Safety and
National Dam Safety Authority.
Rajeesh C S (rajeeshsasjnu@gmail.com)
teaches at the Department of Political Science,
Kristujayanti College, Bengaluru. Ashwati C K
(ashwatick@gmail.com) has completed PhD
from the Centre for South Asian Studies,
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
Manu Sharma (manu.16179@lpu.co.in)
teaches at the Department of History, Lovely
Professional University, Punjab.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023
P
rojecting up the centripetal incli-
nation of Indian political system,
the Dam Safety Act, 2021 has been
added as a new chapter. This article posits
some significant consequences of the act
in the forms of intensifying the process
of centralisation of power in the hands
of the union government which system-
atically disregards the peculiar interest of
the states over dam construction, mainte-
nance, and water-sharing issues. The
article argues that the Dam Safety Act,
2021 instils unequal political–executive
power and legal arrangements, which
will result in greater disharmony and
instability not only in centre–states rela-
tions but interstate too. It wages a seri-
ous interrogation into the “asymmetri-
cal arrangements in political and ad-
ministrative” aspects of the act (Rao and
Singh 2004), especially emphasising on
the amount of authority held by the union
government in surveillance, mainten-
ance, operation, and inspection of all the
large dams, establishment of the National
Committee on Dam Safety (NCDS) as well
as the commissioning of the National
Dam Safety Authority (NDSA).
Intrusion of Union Government
The act edicts the formation of the af-
orementioned national committee and
the NDSA to frame policies, recommend
vol lViii no 8
COMMENTARY
regulations for dam safety standards,
and resolve disputes between the states.
The provisions on the establishment of
NCDS reflect the unilateral decision-
making authority of the union govern-
ment. Provisions, including the authority
of the union government to constitute a
national committee, nominate all its
members, reconstitute the national com-
mittee every three year, disseminate the
information collected and knowledge
generated, prepare expenditure outline
incurred on the national committee as well
as to have the representative of the con-
cerned dam, etc, have been strengthening
the union government’s role on a highly
“conflictual federal” context of centre–
state relations in India (Ghosh 2020b).
Chapter 3 of the act has assigned the
union government with an authority to
form an NDSA, choose an officer as its
head, establish its headquarters in Delhi
and other places in India, direct and dis-
charge functions, including inspection,
surveillance along with safeguarding of
particular dams and to sort out any is-
sues that possibly erupt between parties
like the State Dam Safety Organisation
(SDSO) on the one side and other party
being the dam owner located in the state
concerned or any dispute involving the
SDSOs of specific states. Moreover, the act
added that every decision of the NDSA
shall be binding upon all the parties to the
issue. It loads the union government with
additional power to appoint such a num-
ber of employees and officers that it may
consider necessary. The act solely relies on
the union government to recruit expertise
in the field of dam safety, including hydro-
mechanical engineering, dam design,
17
COMMENTARY
hydrology, instrumentation, geo-technical
investigation, and dam rehabilitation.
Therefore, the setting up of these two
centrally-controlled specialised bodies
and complete possession of power by the
union government to evolve, recom-
mend, and regulate policies seem to be a
direct political, administrative, and exe-
cutive intrusion of the union govern-
ment into the matters mentioned in the
state list. Constitutionally, river water
harnessing comes under entry 17 of the
state list in Schedule 7 of the Indian Con-
stitution. Still, when expedient in public
interest, the union government, with
Parliament’s nod, can initiate and make
laws on interstate rivers as per entry 56
of the union list. But, before passing such
a bill in Parliament, Article 252 of the
Constitution mandates the union gov-
ernment to take approval of the riparian
states’ legislative assemblies. In addition,
in the purview of public interest under
Article 263, an interstate council can also
be established by the president to recom-
mend and enquire about the disputation
among the states of India. Therefore, the
introduction of the Dam Safety Act, 2021
can be considered as a complete dis-
mantling of the existing centre–state
legislative and executive arrangement
on water-sharing issues.
Impact on Interstate Relations
Moreover, the establishment of the NCDS
and NDSA may badly affect the interstate
relations and “federal consensus” in
India, particularly in the context of the
Cauvery river dispute between Tamil Nadu
and Karnataka; Mullaperiyar dam issue
between Tamil Nadu (tn) and Kerala;
Krishna water disputes among Andhra
Pradesh (AP), Maharashtra, Karnataka,
and Telangana; Vansadhara water dispute
between Odisha and AP; Mahadayi water
dispute among Goa, Maharashtra, and
Karnataka; and Mahanadi water disputes
between Odisha and Chhattisgarh (Ghosh
2020a). It is to be added here that Kerala
and tn have been trading charges against
each other over the safety, operation and
maintenance of the Mullaperiyar dam.
For Kerala, it is an existential crisis
but for tn, water from Mullaperiyar dam
is a livelihood issue. Together, it consti-
tutes “hydro–political vulnerabilities” in
18
both states where the risks of political
disputes over shared water systems have
already been rampant (UNEP 2005).
Heavy floods in Kerala in the last few
consecutive years warned the residents
of Idukki and Ernakulam districts that
they have been living on the edge of
threat which, at any time, could take
lakhs of lives on the banks of Periyar.
Both the National Centre for Earth Science
Studies (NCESS) and the Central Water
Commission (CWC) reported that the
water storage lake behind the Mullaperi-
yar dam had developed several cracks
and could breach, which would result in
massive floods that could inundate many
acres of land leading to major disasters
downstream (CWC 2021; NCESS 2022). At
the same time, water from Periyar river
through Mullaperiyar dam acts as a
source of irrigation and drinking for the
residents of Dindigul, Sivagangai, Theni,
Madurai, and Ramanathapuram districts.
That could be possible only by the raising
of the water level to 152 feet in the dam.
Therefore, in an environment where
conflict over water allocation and utili-
sation issues is almost inevitable, assign-
ing unilateral powers to the union gov-
ernment to take a final decision would
invite more political discontent and dis-
sent (Seenivasan 2014).
The inception of disputation over Cau-
very river’s water sharing can be traced
from the history of co-riparian states,
Karnataka and tn, over their user and
property rights. The contradictory posi-
tion maintained by both states requires
an analytical observation. tn claims that,
historically, it has made use of Cauvery
water for rice cultivation which they
consider as “prescriptive rights” of the
users at the downstream and demands
that their rights be protected. Karnataka
presents a counterargument that tn’s slow
pace of irrigation-related developmental
progress does not produce a rational
claim for the former to forgo its instru-
mental claim over the usage of Cauvery
river. This argument by Karnataka is
based on its water requirement for their
economic development, on the one hand,
and the inadequacy of river water for the
upstream population on the other.
Therefore, the union government’s inter-
vention in such highly politicised areas
february 25, 2023
of contention between states may invite
more power disparities. Here is the pos-
sibility of weakening the existing federal
arrangements between the states of
India or between the union government
and the states. According to some scho-
lars, under federal arrangements, the
union and states tend to coexist on a mu-
tual understanding while recognising
each other’s positions; to some extent,
they display principles of equality and
sustenance based on non-interventionist
policy into their respective ambit of
jurisdiction and powers to make laws;
thus, unilateral position is seen as detri-
mental to the survivability of the federa-
tion (Rao and Singh 2004). But the act
again proves the fact that only the union
is indestructible, not the states.
The act lists out several mandatory
conditions in the construction and main-
tenance of dams. These conditions on
crest length, reservoir capacity, and maxi-
mum flood discharge have direct ramifi-
cations on dam constructions, safety,
and maintenance regulations of many of
the states in India. The act provides de-
tailed clauses on punishment in the case
of violations of provisions. It dictates
that if anybody is found obstructing cen-
tral and state officers or an authorised
person by the national and state com-
mittee in the discharge of their duties or
if anyone refuses to comply with any di-
rection/order given by them, they will
face a maximum of two years in jail and
a fine or both. This clause will definitely
invade into the “legislative and execu-
tive domains” of the states (Rao and Sen
1996; Rao and Singh 2004). Doubling
the crippling effects of the union’s domi-
nation on states, Chapter 11 of the Dam
Safety Act, 2021, titled “Miscellaneous,”
hands over undisputed authority only to
the union government to provide direc-
tions to the state governments con-
cerned for the effective vindication of
the provisions of this act. In addition, it
profusely spills more power to the union
government to amend the First, Second,
and Third Schedule of the act, if it is nec-
essary or expedient to do so.
Moreover, the act seems to be hege-
monic in its explanation on the union
government’s power to remove hindran-
ces in its vindication. The act added that
vol lViii no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

if any difficulty arises in giving effect to
its provisions, the union government
can unilaterally, by an order, make pro-
visions for removing such hurdles. It
does mean that any dissenting opinion
of the states may remain unheard. An-
other provision of the act mandates the
union government to disqualify any
agency for taking up investigation, con-
struction or alteration, and design of the
specified dams. This particular provi-
sion can be seen as authoritarian as it
empowers the union government to
muzzle the media and civil society’s
freedom to report environment-related
issues to the public.
Political Discontentment
In India, dam construction, maintenance,
interstate rivers, and water sharing are
already becoming sites of confrontations
and contestations bet ween states, fuel-
led by flawed economic instruments for
food security, conflicting views of prop-
erty rights, the predominance of reduc-
tionist hydrology for the development of
water resources and poor ecosystems
approach. Therefore, the new act has ex-
acerbated the issue into a contentious
political debate in Parliament. Opposi-
tion parties, including Dravida Munnet-
ra Kazhagam (DMK), Telangana Rashtra
Samithi (TRS), and the Indian National
Congress pressed that the bill should be
sent to a parliamentary select commit-
tee for further scrutiny. They argued
that since water falls under the state list,
passing such acts seem to be an uncon-
stitutional approach by the union gov-
ernment to take control of the dams in
the states. It is to be noted that in India,
92% of the major dams are on interstate
rivers, most of which are maintained,
built, operated, and owned by the re-
spective state governments. Pointing out
this situation, the members of Parlia-
ment (MPs) from tn collectively opposed
the act claiming that it practically does
not take cognisance of the states’ rights
associated with the water-related infra-
structures built and maintained by it in
adjacent states.
tn fears that the vindication of the
Dam Safety Act will definitely result in
losing its command over dams along with
its rights over assets. This may develop
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023
disproportionate arrangements or may
lead to unequal or special handling for
some or particular states in the federa-
tion. One DMK politician argued that the
bill would potentially prove detrimental
to the rights of states as at the primary-
level states are entitled to legislate and
execute laws pertaining to the discharge
of waters, and maintenance of drainage
systems. Another politician from the Con-
gress party mentioned that the act
would encroach upon the state’s powers
regarding control over dams. To the oth-
er extreme, the MP of Telangana’s prom-
inent regional party, TRS, stated that the
union government’s powers should be
limited to that of an advisory one rather
than taking direct control or command
over the governance of dams. In short,
many of the provisions in the act may
perpetuate perennial problems bet ween
states over water sharing and develop a
new set of political scores bet ween the
union and states.
In Conclusion
To be precise, the Dam Safety Act, 2021
brings out a plethora of provisions re-
flecting the confl ictual federal nature
of the Indian political system. Rooted
in historico-geographical, institutional,
and constitutional obscurities, this act
helps only to prolong the existing con-
flicts involving the union and states as
well as among states. Pluralistic ar-
rangements are essential for a multicul-
tural state in order to accommodate dif-
ferent group interests; for this purpose,
a necessary tool is to design symmetric
governance structures and special pow-
ers as it would strengthen federal princi-
ples and minimise the possibilities of
discontentment. Nevertheless, such ac-
commodative principles and norms should
be adjudicated while maintaining the
EPW Index
An author-title index for EPW has been prepared for the years from 1968 to 2012. The PDFs of the
Index have been uploaded, year-wise, on the EPW website. Visitors can download the Index for
all the years from the site. (The Index for a few years is yet to be prepared and will be uploaded
when ready.)
EPW would like to acknowledge the help of the staff of the library of the Indira Gandhi Institute
of Development Research, Mumbai, in preparing the index under a project supported by the
RD Tata Trust.
vol lViii no 8
COMMENTARY
values of equality and fairness. And this
is possible by preventing any set of laws
that favours centralisation of power and
requires novel ventures to foster institu-
tional trust and requires initiation of in-
strumental methods to facilitate public
narrative formation directed towards
building public consensus and solutions
to issues and disputation through a co-
operative federal framework.
ReferenceS
CWC (2021): “Annual Report 2020–21,” Depart-
ment of Water Resources, River Development
and Ganga Rejuvenation, Central Water Com-
mission, Ministry of Jal Shakti, Government of
India, New Delhi: Government Press, http://
www.cwc.gov.in/sites/default/files/annual-re-
port-2020–21.pdf.
Ghosh, Ambar Kumar (2020a): “Delhi Assembly
Elections: A Reinforcement of Electoral Feder-
alism in India?,” ORF Expert Speak, 14 Febru-
ary, https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/
delhi-assembly-elections-a-reinforcement-of-
electoral-federalism-in-india-61410/.
— (2020b): “The Paradox of ‘Centralised Federal-
ism’: An Analysis of the Challenges to India’s
Federal Design,” ORF Expert Speak, 17 Septem-
ber, https://www.orfonline.org/research/the-
paradox-of-centralised-federalism/.
NCESS (2022): “Annual Report 2020–21,” National
Centre for Earth Science Studies, Ministry of
Earth Sciences, Government of India, New
Delhi: Government Press, https://www.ncess.
gov.in/images/NCESS_Annual_Re-
port_2020-21_English_Comp.pdf.
Rao, M Govinda and Nirvikar Singh (2000): “In-
dia’s Federal Institutions and Economic Re-
form,” paper presented at the conference on
India’s Public Institutions, Harvard University.
— (2004): “Asymmetric Federalism in India UC
Santa Cruz International Economics Working
Paper No 04–08,” April, https://ssrn.com/ab-
stract=537782 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/
ssrn.537782.
Rao, M Govinda and Tapas Sen (1996): Fiscal Feder-
alism in India: Theory and Practice, New Delhi:
Macmillan India.
Seenivasan, R (2014): “Historical Validity of Mulla-
periyar Project,” Economic & Political Weekly,
Vol 49, No 4, pp 22–26.
UNEP (2005): “Hydro-political Vulnerability and
Resilience along International Waters: Africa,”
United Nations Environment Programme Re-
port: Kenya, https://transboundarywaters.sci-
ence.oregonstate.edu/sites/transboundarywa-
ters.science.oregonstate.edu/files/Database/
ResearchProjects/HydropoliticalVul/Hyd-
ropolitical_Vulnerability_%20Resilience_Afri-
ca.pdf.
19
COMMENTARY
Four-year Undergraduate
Programme
Boon or Bane of the NEP 2020
Sudhanshu Bhushan
The plan to transition from
a three-year to a four-year
undergraduate programme has
implications on the standard
of higher education. Many
universities have adopted the
FYUP by an executive order of
the government without any
regulation of the University
Grants Commission or proper
deliberation. The article notes
that FYUP is not a boon and
rather may adversely affect the
quality with a greater move
towards the vocationalisation of
undergraduate education. It may
also lead to a chaotic situation
with the multiple entry and exit
options, and create a hierarchy
of degree structures causing
confusion in the labour market.
Sudhanshu Bhushan (sudhanshu@niepa.ac.in)
teaches and is the Head of Higher and
Professional Education at the National Institute
of Educational Planning and Administration,
New Delhi.
14
T
he National Education Policy (NEP),
2020 suggests four-year under-
graduate programme (FYUP) with
multiple entry and exit options to the
students, allowing certificate, diploma,
and degree at the end of first, second,
and third year, respectively. It notes that
the FYUP shall allow “the opportunity to
experience the full range of holistic and
multidisciplinary education in addition
to a focus on the chosen major and mi-
nors as per the choices of the student”
(NEP 2020: 37). The FYUP shall be a degree
with a research component provided
that the student completes a rigorous re-
search project in the major. The argu-
ment in favour of a shift to FYUP is that it
will provide opportunities for multidis-
ciplinary work as per the needs of the
labour market. It is claimed it will pro-
mote higher specialisation in the four-
year programme with research in major.
The currently prevalent rigid bound-
aries between the subjects will be done
away with and thereby allow greater
freedom of choice to the students. It is
believed to create possibilities of lifelong
learning allowing the learner to enter
the portals of higher education learning.
Besides these advantages, the NEP
2020 further notes the preconditions for
the programme, making faculty and in-
stitutional autonomy in curricula essen-
tial. With respect to pedagogy, it sug-
gests that there shall be increased em-
phasis on communication, discussion,
debate, research, and opportunities for
cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary
thinking. It encourages the faculty to
think of an imaginative and flexible cur-
ricular structure for creative combina-
tions of disciplines and multiple exit op-
tions. It suggests the projects and intern-
ship in the curriculum on issues such as
february 25, 2023
community engagement, environment,
value, global citizenship education. For
incorporating projects and internship,
the credit system needs to be revised. The
assessment system in the FYUP shall be
such that each learning goal will be
transparently and continuously assessed,
removing the possibility of rote learning.
While many universities are still
struggling to develop FYUP based on the
draft of the University Grants Commis-
sion (UGC) model issued in March 2022,
Andhra University launched it in 2021–22.
The University of Delhi, amid protests,
has come out with the curricular struc-
ture of the FYUP for 2022–23. Admission
notification dated 5 September 2022 of
the University of Kashmir notes the ad-
mission to first- and second-semester un-
dergraduate programme allowing tran-
sition to FYUP with multiple entry and
exit options. All central universities have
received instructions to start the pro-
gramme. Cluster University of Jammu has
also admitted students in the first se-
mester under FYUP. The Cluster Universi-
ty of Srinagar (CUS), having first launch-
ed FYUP and then scrapping it, has de-
cided to start a five-year integrated pro-
gramme. Similarly other such institu-
tions, like the Jamshedpur Women Uni-
versity, Gauhati University, University of
Mumbai, Jawaharlal Nehru University,
Bangalore University, and Savitribai Phule
Pune University have either also launch-
ed or are in the process of doing so for
the next academic year. The majority of
the state governments, however, are either
indecisive or the universities have not
been able to figure out the implementation
design. Amid indecisions, UGC has issued
guidelines of curricular and credit frame-
work for the undergraduate programme
on 12 December 2022 (UGC 2022).
Curricular Structure
Most universities have followed the UGC
model curricular structure. The UGC is-
sued a draft curricular framework of
FYUP in March 2022. Under the guide-
lines, levels five to eight pertains to
FYUP—five, six, and seven being an en-
try point also for the certificate, diploma,
three-year bachelor programme. At the
vol lViii no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

end of each year exit points are open
and lateral entry for succeeding years of
study is open, too. Three blocks are sug-
gested; the first block for one to three
semesters, the second block for four to six
semesters, and the third block of seven
and eight semesters. The proposed dis-
tribution of credits from the draft curric-
ulum is total 160 credits, to be earned in
four years or eight semesters. The cred-
its are distributed across common cours-
es (48), one major (48), two minors (36),
and the research component (28). An-
other important feature of the draft cur-
ricular framework issued in March 2022
is the addition of outcome-based educa-
tion in the structure of the programme.
In the three-year choice-based credit
system (CBCS) curricular structure, out
of a total of 140 credits, the distribution
is into core courses (84), electives (48),
ability enhancement (4), and skill enhan-
cement (4). A comparative picture of
three-year CBCS and FYUP curricular
structures is given in Table 1.
The comparative picture reveals that
in the three-year CBCS curricula core
course consists of 60% weightage, elec-
tives have 34% weightage and ability
and skill enhancement have 6% weight-
age. In the FYUP UGC model curricular
structure core courses consist of 30%
weightage, which after adding research
component adds up to 40.5%, electives
have 22.5% weightage and the rest (abil-
ity, skill, internship/apprenticeship/pro-
ject/community outreach value added,
etc) have 33% weightage. It is clear that
even after additional one year the core
course weightage falls from 60% to
40.5%. The weightage of electives falls
from 34% to 22.5%. On the other hand,
ability, skill, internship, etc, and value
added goes up from 6% to 33%. Hence,
even after the addition of one year there
is a loss of specialisation as core course
weightage falls. There is of course gain
in ability, skill, internship and value ad-
dition courses. In the latest FYUP guide-
lines issued by the UGC in December
Table 1: Percentage Distribution of Credits
Programme
Three-year CBCS
FYUP draft UGC (four-year) issued in March 2022
FYUP UGC guidelines issued in December 2022
Source: Author.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023
2022, the emphasis on core has been
given up to minimum 50%.
It is important to note that even after
some damage control, in favour of core
course in the UGC guidelines in Decem-
ber 2022, it may be concluded that spe-
cialised education is reduced to voca-
tionalisation of education in the FYUP.
Multidisciplinarity
Generic electives are a pool of courses
which is meant to provide multidiscipli-
nary or interdisciplinary education to
students. Earning 22.5% credits in the
Generic electives under the UGC model of
FYUP will enable a student to obtain two
minors. Earning 18 credits in each minor
allows to have two electives (minors) in
the FYUP of the draft UGC curricular
structure. It is claimed that adding two
minors enhances the scope of multidisci-
plinary education. Latest UGC guidelines
issued in December 2022 have allowed
20% weightage to the electives. In the
CBCS three-year curricular structure
there are discipline-specific and generic
electives of 34 credits. Hence, the scope
of multidisciplinary education already
exists in the three-year CBCS course
structure. The FYUP does not, therefore,
add more to the multidisciplinarity, rather
it reduces the scope of multidisciplinari-
ty in terms of weightage of credit from
34% to 22.5% or 20% in the latest UGC
guidelines. It simply adds more skill,
ability, internship and value-based cour-
ses for an extra year. Hence, it is incor-
rect to say that a transition from a three-
year CBCS curriculum prevailing in the
higher education system to the FYUP
shall be a move towards multidiscipli-
nary education. In fact, FYUP is more
geared towards earning skilled-based
courses and compulsorily a student see-
king specialisation is forced to earn
common course credit.
The NEP 2020 draws its inspiration
from the FYUP prevalent in the United
States (US). The FYUP allows the scope for
specialisation through majors, whereas
Core Electives Others
60 34 6 ates. Those who can afford a four-year
30 +10.5 (research component) 22.5 33
50% + 8% (research component) 20 22
vol lViii no 8
COMMENTARY
it provides a multidisciplinary education
through the minors. However, there is a
stark difference that needs to be noted.
In the US, students can design their own
programme allowing choices of earning
credit from a large menu of courses of-
fered by the faculty across large depart-
ments. However, the focus on specialisa-
tion is not lost sight of even in the multi-
disciplinary programmes. This aspect is
missing from the FYUP programme in
India as it suffers from two main prob-
lems of multiple entries and exits, and
limited choice of courses to opt from. In
the Indian context, a three-year bache-
lor and two-year postgraduate based on
the European model allows to have two
levels of specialisation which the nation-
al job market has understood well.
Employability
There is an assumption that because of
multidisciplinary education and more
preference for vocational or skill-based
courses, the FYUP enhances employ-
ability. However both these reasons may
not necessarily guarantee employability
or employment. These are entirely dif-
ferent concepts former referring to skills
necessary for employment and latter to
the structure and conditions of the la-
bour market. For example, multidiscipli-
nary centres, such as women’s study
centre, area study centres, and multidis-
ciplinary courses in the universities have
added to the knowledge component but
there is no guarantee that graduates of
such courses have higher level of empl-
oyment. Further, a certificate and diplo-
ma holder with more skills may not have
higher employment given the fact that
unemployment is high among the highly
educated. If unemployment is high at
the higher level, it means that for the
same level of wages the labour market
will first prefer the highly educated. In
such a case there will be a tendency to
stay in the education sector for the fear
of being unemployed after holding a cer-
tificate or diploma, or remain dropouts if
they exit after one or two years. There
are possibilities of hierarchy of gradu-
undergraduate will have better chances
of employment than those who cannot
afford and make an exit after one, two
15
COMMENTARY
or three years who will have lower prob-
ability of employment. Thus, the multi-
ple exit possibility suffers from the dan-
ger of legitimate reserve army of drop-
outs and unemployed—a phenomenon
encouraged by the introduction of FYUP.
Challenges
Delivering course curriculum: Under
generic electives and ability, skill, intern-
ship and value-added courses, wide choi-
ces are given in order to encourage mul-
tidisciplinarity. Existing affiliating col-
leges may not have a sufficient number
of teachers to deliver the course curricula
to satisfy the choices of students. Given
the shortage of teachers, choices will be
limited. One way to overcome the diffi-
culty could be to form a cluster of colleg-
es from which expertise could be drawn.
However, if colleges are not in proximity,
then it would be difficult to yield the ad-
vantages of the cluster. Another way out
could be the online mode of learning to
be delivered to the students. It might
overcome the challenges of physical dis-
tance, however, given the limited acces-
sibility of technology, the multidiscipli-
nary choices could be exclusionary. For
example, it was noted that University of
Mumbai has 850 affiliated colleges
spread over 600 km, many located in
remote regions where online learning
will exclude a large number of students.
Frequent changes in curricular struc-
ture: It was noted that the university
system took over a decade to adjust to the
CBCS (UGC undated). Later UGC asked
universities to change curricular struc-
ture to learning outcome-based educa-
tion (UGC 2020). Under the NEP 2020,
the FYUP draft curricular structure is be-
ing suggested by UGC (2022). Even before
the UGC draft of FYUP, the University of
Delhi issued a draft undergraduate cur-
riculum framework in 2022, based on
NEP 2020 (University of Delhi 2022). It
was later passed by the Executive Council
of the University of Delhi in June 2022.
The Bangalore University was quick
enough to issue the FYUP curricular frame-
work in October 2021. It is important to
note that in a hurry to implement FYUP,
universities, based on the instruction
16
from the government, even bypassed
UGC in designing the FYUP curricular
structure. Frequent changes in the cur-
ricular structure and different models
of FYUP are confusing to the teachers
and students. Besides, competing FYUP
curricular structures by different uni-
versities has led to a curricular war in the
Indian higher education system leading
to a chaos with least understanding of
the implementation strategy. A fear is
being expressed in academia that UGC’s
recent guidelines issued in December
2022 may further add to the chaos of
curricular restructuring of FYUP.
Top-down approach: A curriculum evol-
ves over a long period of time by the ac-
tion of teachers who incorporate new
ideas that are interesting and meaning-
ful to them. It is essentially a bottom-up
process. It has been noticed that in order
to implement the FYUP, the curriculum
is now given to the university by the gov-
ernment and even curricular structure is
served by the bureaucrats. University
authorities have the compulsion to im-
plement them and directives are issued by
the university authorities to the teachers
to frame a syllabus in accordance with
the FYUP curricular structure. Delibera-
tions do take place, but these are me-
chanical exercises to follow. Under the
top-down approach, curriculum and syl-
labus are framed knowing little about
the implementation strategies. Autonomy
of the university is easily surrendered to
the top authorities.
Curricular structure from depth to
breadth: Most of the European universi-
ties offer a depth of courses with more
focus on specialisation in a three-year
programme. The universities in the US
offer more breadth, with more general
courses, which are completed in four
years. The FYUP is clearly a move from
European to American curriculum—a
move from depth to breadth. In addi-
tion, the FYUP model with exit possibili-
ty will not be beneficial, as there is al-
ways a premium attached to four-year
courses for which employment opportu-
nities will be higher than the three-year
courses. This will mean that those who
will be able to afford an extra one year will
february 25, 2023
always be in an advantageous position
than those who cannot afford it. This will
add elitism to Indian higher education.
Standardisation of curriculum struc-
ture: FYUP has further led to the process
of standardisation of curriculum. In the
model draft of FYUP by UGC there is a
rigid distribution of credit, as noted
above. While other universities are var-
ying in terms of the number of credits
for the major or minor, the common
course requirement is followed by al-
most all the universities. Compulsory
common courses pertain to language,
understanding India, environmental sci-
ence, digital solutions, mathematical
thinking, health and wellness, sciences,
social sciences, humanities and voca-
tional. Choices to the students are made
available within a rigid and standard-
ised curriculum structure.
Proliferation and hierarchy of degrees:
FYUP with multiple entries and exits al-
lows the possibility of proliferation of
various degrees and hierarchies, such as
one, two, three and four-year certification
of degrees along with one and two years’
masters-level degrees. In practice, the
labour market may not distinguish between
them as in spite of credit requirement
differences, the learning-outcome differ-
ences may be indistinguishable. Employ-
ers may find it difficult to always prefer a
four-year degree holder to a three- or two-
year passout. Under such circumstances,
the labour market may move towards
competitive entry for the job. This will
further burden the job seekers.
Conclusions
The FYUP, following from the NEP 2020,
is proposed to be a boon to the higher ed-
ucation system in India. It is argued that
FYUP shall encourage multidisciplinary
education, reduce dropouts, and add to
the employability and employment of
available at
Forum Book House
170/1, Rastreeya Vidyalaya Road
Visveshwarapuram
Bengaluru 560 001
vol lViii no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

the students. It shall encourage speciali-
sation through the addition of research
component. A deeper examination re-
veals that the transition from a three-
year curricular structure to the FYUP
shall encourage vocationalisation of
higher education. There is no assurance
that there will be necessarily greater
employment opportunities through the
vocationalisation of education. In fact, it
will add to the cost and become elitist
allowing only a small section to afford
the four-year programme. Moreover, the
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023
manner in which the FYUP is being im-
plemented in a top-down manner, it is
leading to a chaos and leaves teachers
and students in confusion. This is prov-
ing to be a bane to the higher education
system in India.
References
MHRD (2020): “National Education Policy 2020,”
Ministry of Human Resource and Develop-
ment, Government of India, https://www.edu-
cation.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/
NEP_Final_English_0.pdf.
University of Delhi (2022): “Undergraduate Cur-
riculum Framework—2022 Based on National
vol lViii no 8
COMMENTARY
Education Policy, 2020,” New Delhi, http://
du.ac.in/uploads/UGCF_22.pdf.
UGC (2020): “Learning Outcomes-based Curriculum
Framework for Undergraduate Education,” Janu-
ary, University Grants Commission, New Delhi,
https://www.ugc.ac.in/e-book/locf.pdf.
— (undated): “Minimum Course Curriculum for
Undergraduate Courses under Choice Based
Credit System,” https://ugc.ac.in/pdfnews/
8023719_Guidelines-for-CBCS.pdf.
— (undated): “Curricular Framework and Credit
System for the Four-Year Undergraduate Pro-
gramme,” https://www.ugc.ac.in/pdfnews/
8126011_Draft--curriculum-framework-credit-
struture-FYUGP.pdf.
— (2022): “Curriculum and Credit Framework for
Undergraduate Programmes,” https://www.
ugc.ac.in/pdfnews/7193743_FYUGP.pdf.
17
CURRENT STATISTICS EPW Research Foundation

Wholesale Price Index Foreign Trade

The year-on-year (y-o-y) WPI-based inflation rate decreased to 4.7% in January
2023 from 13.7% registered a year ago and 5.0% a month ago. The index for
primary articles grew by 3.9% compared to 15.6% a year ago but was higher
than 2.4% a month ago. The rate of inflation of food articles decreased to 2.4%
from 10.4% a year ago. The index for fuel and power grew by 15.2% compared
to 34.4% a year ago while that for manufactured products grew by 3.0%
compared to 9.5%.
The trade deficit widened to $17.8 bn in January 2023 from $17.3 bn registered a
year ago. Exports decreased by (-)6.6% to $32.9 bn from $35.2 bn a year ago and
imports by (-)3.6% to $50.7 bn from $52.6. Oil imports stood higher at $14.7 bn
while non-oil imports was lower at $36.0 bn compared to $12.4 bn and $40.2 bn,
respectively. During April–January 2022–23, the cumulative exports rose by
8.5% to $369.3 bn and imports by 21.9% to $602.2 bn compared to their
respective figures of $340.3 and $494.1 bn during the same period last year.

Consumer Price Index Index of Eight Core Industries

The CPI-inflation rate rose to 6.5% in January 2023 from 6.0% reported a year ago
and 5.7% a month ago. The consumer food price index increased by 5.9% compared
to 5.4% a year ago and 4.2% a month ago. The CPI-rural inflation rate increased to
6.9% and urban inflation rate to 6.0% from 6.1% and 5.9% a year ago. According to
Labour Bureau data, the CPI for agricultural labourers (CPI–AL) increased to 6.8%
in January 2023 from 5.5% a year ago and the CPI for industrial workers (CPI–IW)
decreased to 5.5% in December 2022 from 5.6%.
The index for eight core industries increased by 7.4% in December 2022
compared to 4.1% reported a year ago. Growth rate in the coal segment rose to
11.5%, steel to 9.2%, electricity generation to 10.0% and fertiliser to 7.3% from
their respective growth rates of 5.2%, -0.6%, 2.9% and 3.5% a year ago.
Production of petroleum refinery products grew by 3.7%, natural gas by 2.6%,
cement by 9.1% compared to 5.9%, 19.5% and 14.2%, respectively,. Production
of crude oil stood at -1.2% compared to -1.8% reported a year ago.

Movement of WPI-Inflation Rate January 2022–January 2023 Merchandise Trade January 2023
Year-on-Year in % January 2023 Over Month Over Year April–January
50
($ bn) (%) (%) (2022–23 over 2021–22) (%)
Exports 32.9 -4.6 -6.6 8.5
Fuel and Power
Imports 50.7 -13.0 -3.6 21.9
Trade balance -17.8 -25.3 2.4 51.5
25 Data is provisional. Source: Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
15.2%
Primary Articles
Trade Balance January 2022–January 2023
0 $ billion
3.9%
3.0% 7
Manufactured
Products 0
-25
Jan F M A M J J A S O N D Jan* Non-oil -$8.0 bn
2022 2023 -7
Oil
* Data is provisional; Base: 2011–12 = 100.
-14 -$9.7 bn
Trends in WPI and Its Components January 2023* (%) -$17.8 bn
-21
Financial Year (Averages)
Weights Over Month Over Year 2019–20 2020–21 2021–22
All commodities 100 0.1 4.7 1.7 1.3 13.0 -28

Primary articles 22.6 0.9 3.9 6.8 1.7 10.2 Total Trade Balance
-35
Food articles 15.3 0.9 2.4 8.4 3.2 4.1 Jan F M A M J J A S O N D Jan
2022 2023
Fuel and power 13.2 -1.4 15.2 -1.8 -8.0 32.5
Oil refers to crude petroleum and petroleum products, while non-oil refers to all other commodities.
Manufactured products 64.2 0.1 3.0 0.3 2.8 11.1
*Data is provisional; Base: 2011–12=100. Source: Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
Movement of Index Values of Components of IIP January 2021–December 2022
Index Value
Movement of CPI Inflation January 2022–January 2023 210
Year-on-Year in % Electricity 179.4
168
15 143.5
126
12 132.2
Mining
Consumer Food 84
9 Manufacturing
6.5% 42
CPI
6
0
Miscellaneous 6.2% Jan F M A M J J A S O N D Jan F M A M J J A S O N Dec*
3 2021 2022
5.9%
* December 2022 are quick estimates; Base: 2011–12=100.
0
Index for Eight Core Industries December 2022* (%)
-3 Weights Over Over Financial Year (Avgs) in %
Jan F M A M J J A S O N D Jan*
2022 2023 Month Year 2020–21 2021–22
* Data is provisional. Source: National Statistical Office (NSO), Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation,
Base: 2012=100. Infrastructure industries 40.27@ 9.2 7.4 -6.4 10.4
Coal 10.3 9.4 11.5 -1.9 8.5
CPI: Rural and Urban January 2023* (%)
Latest Over Over Financial Year (Avgs) Crude oil 9.0 3.2 -1.2 -5.2 -2.6
Month Index Month Year 2020–21 2021–22 Natural gas 6.9 3.9 2.6 -8.2 19.2
CPI Combined 176.5 0.46 6.52 6.16 5.51 Petroleum refinery products 28.0 16.4 3.7 -11.2 8.9
Rural (2012=100) 177.8 0.40 6.85 5.94 5.43 Fertilisers 2.6 0.6 7.3 1.7 0.7
Urban (2012=100) 174.9 0.46 6.00 6.45 5.58 Steel 17.9 5.6 9.2 -8.7 16.9
CPI: Occupation-wise Cement 5.4 12.2 9.1 -10.8 20.8
Industrial workers (2016=100) 132.3 -0.2 5.5 5.0 5.1 Electricity 19.9 7.2 10.0 -0.5 8.0
Agricultural labourers (1986–87=100) 1170 0.3 6.8 5.5 4.0 (Base: 2011–12=100); *Data is provisional; @ The revised eight core industries have a combined weight of 40.27% in the IIP.
* Provisional. Source: NSO (rural and urban); Labour Bureau (IW and AL). Source: Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
Comprehensive current economic statistics with regular weekly updates are available at: http://www.epwrf.in/currentstat.aspx.

68 february 25, 2023 vol lViii no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
 CURRENT STATISTICS EPW Research Foundation
India’s Quarterly Estimates of Final Expenditures on GDP
2020–21 2021–22 2022–23
` Crore | At 2011–12 Prices Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2
Private final consumption expenditure 1532170 (-23.7) 1839177 (-8.3) 2169131 (0.6) 2223256 (6.5) 1753400 (14.4) 2031624 (10.5) 2330425 (7.4) 2262405 (1.8) 2207981 (25.9) 2229572 (9.7)
Government final consumption expenditure 429241 (13.6) 322530 (-22.9) 344609 (-0.3) 441224 (29.0) 408789 (-4.8) 351138 (8.9) 354889 (3.0) 462316 (4.8) 414210 (1.3) 335844 (-4.4)
Gross fixed capital formation 654479 (-45.3) 1044735 (-4.5) 1128117 (-0.6) 1303947 (10.1) 1063543 (62.5) 1197408 (14.6) 1152014 (2.1) 1371090 (5.1) 1277806 (20.1) 1321667 (10.4)
Change in stocks -1995 (-107.4) -3048 (-111.3) -3040 (-111.7) -3490 (-112.4) 43907 (-2301.0) 47531 (-1659.6) 45050 (-1581.7) 51450 (-1574.2) 36262 (-17.4) 38305 (-19.4)
Valuables 3790 (-91.4) 52356 (18.3) 50917 (37.2) 100918 (156.9) 23329 (515.6) 142228 (171.7) 77891 (53.0) 51597 (-48.9) 34839 (49.3) 108764 (-23.5)
Net trade (Export–Import) 6189 -28433 -119730 -167215 -96309 -174012 -227446 -205582 -298413 -328687
Exports 523643 (-25.5) 659753 (-6.4) 645694 (-8.6) 724592 (3.7) 737146 (40.8) 795994 (20.7) 794990 (23.1) 846715 (16.9) 845323 (14.7) 887678 (11.5)
Less Imports 517454 (-41.1) 688186 (-17.9) 765424 (-5.2) 891807 (11.7) 833455 (61.1) 970006 (41.0) 1022436 (33.6) 1052297 (18.0) 1143736 (37.2) 1216365 (25.4)
Discrepancies 79724 (17.0) 83612 (-8.0) 56217 (-6963.7) 19085 (-92.0) 49775 (-37.6) -6738 (-108.1) 89056 (58.4) 84749 (344.1) 12439 (-75.0) 111114 (-1749.1)
Gross domestic product (GDP) 2703598 (-23.8) 3310930 (-6.6) 3626220 (0.7) 3917725 (2.5) 3246434 (20.1) 3589178 (8.4) 3821878 (5.4) 4078025 (4.1) 3685125 (13.5) 3816578 (6.3)

India’s Overall Balance of Payments (Net): Quarterly

2021–22 ($ mn) 2022–23 ($ mn) 2021–22 (` bn) 2022–23 (` bn)
Item Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2
Current account 6559 -9734 -22167 -13424 -18178 -36391 484 [0.9] -721 [-1.3] -1661 [-2.6] -1010 [-1.5] -1403 [-2.2] -2904 [-4.4]
Merchandise -30715 -44511 -59750 -54483 -63020 -83546 -2266 -3298 -4477 -4099 -4864 -6667
Invisibles 37275 34777 37583 41059 44842 47155 2750 2577 2816 3089 3461 3763
Services 25808 25579 27809 28319 31070 34432 1904 1895 2084 2130 2398 2748
Of which: Software services 25136 26781 28356 29266 30692 32681 1854 1984 2125 2202 2369 2608
Transfers 19013 18991 21312 21132 22851 24751 1403 1407 1597 1590 1764 1975
of which: Private 19222 19212 21447 21350 23065 24991 1418 1423 1607 1606 1780 1994
Income -7547 -9792 -11538 -8392 -9079 -12028 -557 -726 -865 -631 -701 -960
Capital account 25392 39622 22500 -1707 22094 6918 1873 [3.7] 2936 [5.2] 1686 [2.7] -128 [-0.2] 1705 [2.6] 552 [0.8]
of which: Foreign investment 11956 12575 -1283 -1439 -1048 12969 882 932 -96 -108 -81 1035
Overall balance 31870 31189 465 -16024 4595 -30379 2351 [4.6] 2311 [4.1] 35 [0.1] -1205 [-1.8] 355 [0.5] -2424 [-3.7]
Figures in square brackets are percentage to GDP.

Foreign Exchange Reserves Variation

10 February 11 February 31 March Over Over Financial Year So Far Financial Year
Excluding gold but including revaluation effects 2023 2022 2022 Month Year 2021–22 2022–23 2017–18 2018–19 2019–20 2020–21 2021–22
` crore 4281410 4409699 4237617 19935 -128288 474667 43794 353270 68050 668976 590416 302585
$ mn 518941 584738 559615 -4942 -65797 46558 -40674 53217 -14168.4 56831.4 94535 21435

Monetary Aggregates Variation

Outstanding Over Month Over Year Financial Year So Far Financial Year
` Crore 2023 2021–22 2022–23 2019–20 2020–21 2021–22
Money supply (M3) as on 27 January 21894248 34890 (0.2) 1946564 (9.8) 1103106 (5.9) 1400519 (6.8) 1367897 (8.9) 2044615 (12.2) 1649151 (8.8)
Components
Currency with public 3169461 47442 (1.5) 237540 (8.1) 180092 (6.5) 133772 (4.4) 297539 (14.5) 402080 (17.1) 283860 (10.3)
Demand deposits 2296346 -45566 (-1.9) 245849 (12.0) 55377 (2.8) 83355 (3.8) 111179 (6.8) 257428 (14.8) 217871 (10.9)
Time deposits 16364620 32126 (0.2) 1451992 (9.7) 862350 (6.1) 1178015 (7.8) 952412 (8.1) 1376262 (10.9) 1136327 (8.1)
Other deposits with RBI 63821 889 (1.4) 11183 (21.2) 5287 (11.2) 5377 (9.2) 6765 (21.3) 8844 (23.0) 11093 (23.4)
Sources
Net bank credit to government 6657374 91902 (1.4) 723223 (12.2) 83777 (1.4) 179745 (2.8) 571872 (13.0) 890012 (17.9) 627255 (10.7)
Bank credit to commercial sector 14076583 32166 (0.2) 1901679 (15.6) 506438 (4.3) 1460063 (11.6) 655925 (6.3) 629822 (5.7) 948054 (8.1)
Net foreign exchange assets 4792608 46180 (1.0) -48782 (-1.0) 262543 (5.7) -61455 (-1.3) 730196 (23.8) 777811 (20.5) 275216 (6.0)
Banking sector’s net non-monetary liabilities 3661917 135574 (3.8) 631392 (20.8) -249497 (-7.6) 179421 (5.2) 590557 (24.2) 253595 (8.4) 202474 (6.2)
Reserve Money as on 10 February 4250583 48078 (1.1) 429716 (11.2) 220886 (6.1) 181696 (4.5) 259224 (9.4) 570275 (18.8) 468906 (13.0)
Components
Currency in circulation 3324515 42855 (1.3) 250599 (8.2) 220153 (7.7) 190799 (6.1) 310541 (14.5) 406451 (16.6) 279953 (9.8)
Bankers’ deposits with RBI 862238 3719 (0.4) 167871 (24.2) -4501 (-0.6) -14488 (-1.7) -58081 (-9.6) 154980 (28.5) 177858 (25.4)
Other deposits with RBI 63830 1504 (2.4) 11245 (21.4) 5234 (11.1) 5386 (9.2) 6765 (21.3) 8844 (23.0) 11093 (23.4)
Sources
Net RBI credit to Government 1216727 -37205 (-3.0) 24609 (2.1) 92432 (8.4) -233870 (-16.1) 190240 (23.7) 107495 (10.8) 350911 (31.9)
of which: Centre 1214368 -22918 (-1.9) 31080 (2.6) 86943 (7.9) -234604 (-16.2) 189267 (23.6) 106605 (10.8) 352627 (32.2)
RBI credit to banks & commercial sector 27651 94950 (-141.1) 676884 (-104.3) -279876 (75.8) 571353 (-105.1) -353744 (-231.4) -168464 (0.0) -174345 (0.0)
Net foreign exchange assets of RBI 4511642 22357 (0.5) -63620 (-1.4) 375863 (9.0) 69163 (1.6) 741814 (26.0) 608997 (17.0) 243080 (5.8)
Govt’s currency liabilities to the public 29791 191 (0.6) 2026 (6.6) 852 (3.2) 1778 (6.3) 461 (1.8) 565 (2.1) 1100 (4.1)
Net non-monetary liabilities of RBI 1535228 32215 (2.1) 210183 (15.9) -31615 (-2.3) 226728 (17.3) 319547 (30.2) -21682 (-1.6) -48160 (-3.5)

Scheduled Commercial Banks’ Indicators ( ` Crore) Variation

Outstanding Over Month Over Year Financial Year So Far Financial Year
(As on 27 January) 2023 2021–22 2022–23 2019–20 2020–21 2021–22
Aggregate deposits 17718901 -15223 (-0.1) 1686375 (10.5) 919014 (6.1) 1253588 (7.6) 993721 (7.9) 1546019 (11.4) 1351801 (8.9)
Demand 2156302 -45426 (-2.1) 244065 (12.8) 51044 (2.7) 83555 (4.0) 105716 (7.0) 244190 (15.1) 211554 (11.4)
Time 15562600 30204 (0.2) 1442310 (10.2) 867970 (6.5) 1170033 (8.1) 888005 (8.0) 1301831 (10.9) 1140247 (8.6)
Cash in hand 110500 11885 (12.1) 21682 (24.4) -1930 (-2.1) 24574 (28.6) 12385 (16.5) 3487 (4.0) -4822 (-5.3)
Balance with RBI 813573 -28039 (-3.3) 132236 (19.4) 138644 (25.5) 130136 (19.0) -29521 (-5.2) 6507 (1.2) 140744 (25.9)
Investments 5194630 98586 (1.9) 613953 (13.4) 118151 (2.6) 465682 (9.8) 366292 (10.8) 715177 (19.1) 266422 (6.0)
of which: Government securities 5193777 98587 (1.9) 614331 (13.4) 117814 (2.6) 465598 (9.8) 359695 (10.6) 722935 (19.3) 266547 (6.0)
Bank credit 13341662 37269 (0.3) 1872685 (16.3) 621689 (5.7) 1450348 (12.2) 496916 (5.1) 578649 (5.6) 1044026 (9.6)
of which: Non-food credit 13291496 41075 (0.3) 1904909 (16.7) 600553 (5.6) 1455193 (12.3) 486763 (5.0) 569159 (5.6) 1050269 (9.7)

Capital Markets 17 February Month Year Financial Year So Far 2021–22 End of Financial Year
2023 Ago Ago Trough Peak Trough Peak 2019–20 2020–21 2021–22
S&P BSE SENSEX (Base: 1978–79=100) 61003 (5.4) 60656 57892 (12.0) 51360 63284 47706 61766 29816 (-21.8) 49009 (63.7) 57362 (18.4)
S&P BSE-100 (Base: 1983–84=100) 18166 (3.4) 18345 17565 (14.2) 15563 19137 14482 18800 8693 (-25.2) 14689 (68.2) 17423 (20.1)
S&P BSE-200 (1989–90=100) 7608 (1.9) 7823 7469 (15.7) 6603 8145 6136 8025 3614 (-25.1) 6211 (71.1) 7412 (20.9)
CNX Nifty-50 (Base: 3 November 1995=1000) 17944 (3.7) 18053 17305 (13.8) 15294 18813 14296 18477 8660 (-24.3) 14507 (67.9) 17153 (19.7)
CNX Nifty-500 15004 (1.6) 15396 14772 (17.3) 12951 16004 12024 15886 7003 (-26.3) 12149 (73.7) 14652 (22.2)
Figures in brackets are percentage variations over the specified or over the comparable period of the previous year. | (-) = not relevant | - = not available | NS = new series | PE = provisional estimates
Comprehensive current economic statistics with regular weekly updates are available at: http://www.epwrf.in/currentstat.aspx.

Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023 vol lViii no 8 69
 CURRENT STATISTICS EPW Research Foundation

Secondary Market Transactions in Government Securities and the Forex Market—Weeks Ending 3, 10 and 17 February 2023
1 Settlement Volume of Government Securities (G-Sec) Transactions (Face Value in ` Crore)
Week Ended 17 February 2023 10 February 2023 3 February 2023 18 February 2022 2022–23* 2021–22**
Number Volume Number Volume Number Volume Number Volume Number Volume Number Volume
of Trades of Trades of Trades of Trades of Trades of Trades
Outright 16761 215152 17466 232336 18581 242539 16157 205622 714833 8874667 562270 7973639
Repo 4685 790973 4954 848227 4490 785250 3230 563728 177358 29597373 134949 22116392
TREP 5157 1884782 5348 1902805 5289 1923232 7040 2114509 265911 84847388 256334 72122991
Total 26603 2890906 27768 2983367 28360 2951021 26427 2883858 1158102 123319429 953553 102213022
Daily Avg Outright 3352 43030 3493 46467 3716 48508 3231 41124 3294 40897 2627 37260
Daily Avg Repo 937 158195 826 141371 898 157050 646 112746 736 122811 572 93714
Daily Avg TREP 1031 376956 891 317134 1058 384646 1408 422902 1103 352064 1082 304316

2 Instrument-wise Outright and Repo Details (Amount in ` Crore) 3 Top 5 Traded Central Govt Dated Securities (17 February 2023)
Security Description Trades Value (` Crore) % Value to Total
Outright Repo Outright Repo Outright Repo Outright Repo
7.26% GS 2032 7629 76781 41.99
Central Government 182850 548261 193319 586854 214191 538932 155348 405237
7.38% GS 2027 2505 31341 17.14
State Government 9135 137402 14104 134738 8622 129081 17113 93458 7.41% GS 2036 1933 21087 11.53
Treasury Bills 23167 105311 24913 126634 19726 117237 33161 65032 7.10% GS 2029 1019 14322 7.83
Total 215152 790973 232336 848227 242539 785250 205622 563728 7.26% GS 2033 802 7780 4.25

4 Category-wise Buying/Selling Activity (Market Share %) (17 February 2023)

Outright Reverse Repo Repo TREP Lending TREP Borrowing NDS Call IRS MIBOR IRS-MIFOR
Category Buy Side Sell Side Buy Side Sell Side Buy Side Sell Side Buy Side Sell Side Buy Side Sell Side Buy Side Sell Side
Cooperative Banks 2.36 2.19 0.26 0.27 0.25 0.77 55.08 0.67 - - - -
Financial Institutions 0.80 0.00 1.28 0.13 0.99 2.96 - - - - - -
Foreign Banks 31.87 30.91 30.53 27.16 2.69 6.30 1.80 1.67 53.79 56.88 91.14 83.89
Insurance Companies 2.30 2.32 2.24 0.00 11.20 0.00 - - - - - -
Mutual Funds 10.44 6.86 49.64 0.00 68.18 1.04 - - 0.62 0.43 0.00 0.00
Others 5.99 5.51 0.07 2.15 14.29 1.89 - - - - - -
Primary Dealers 15.55 20.60 2.91 41.91 0.00 3.98 0.00 65.75 26.51 20.90 0.00 0.00
Private Sector Banks 19.12 19.88 9.00 21.15 2.15 17.76 33.73 2.62 13.67 15.81 8.86 16.11
Public Sector Banks 11.57 11.75 4.09 7.24 0.25 65.31 9.39 29.28 5.41 5.98 0.00 0.00

5 Trading Platform Analysis—Trading Value (Face Value in ` Crore) (17 February 2023)
Week Ended OTC NDS-OM Brokered Deals Total
Number Volume Market Number Volume Market Number Volume Market Number Volume
of Trades Share (%) of Trades Share (%) of Trades Share (%) of Trades
Central Government 480 27093 14.36 15144 161527 85.64 130 8495 4.50 15624 188620
State Government 359 5901 74.80 373 1988 25.20 63 1700 21.55 732 7888
Treasury Bills 135 14254 61.74 298 8833 38.26 35 4710 20.40 433 23087
Total 974 47248 21.52 15815 172348 78.48 228 14905 6.79 16789 219596

6 Settlement Volume of Forex Segment

Segment 17 February 2023 10 February 2023 3 February 2023 18 February 2022 2022–23* 2021–22**
Number Volume Number Volume Number Volume Number Volume Number Volume Number Volume
of Deals ($ mn) of Deals ($ mn) of Deals ($ mn) of Deals ($ mn) of Deals ($ mn) of Deals ($ mn)
Cash 1586 25431 1596 28221 1936 35682 1498 17887 76132 1187471 64620 982272
Tom 2040 33226 1948 31626 2526 43028 2030 24676 94710 1358164 86240 1238060
Spot 89142 87150 112102 101336 112666 108965 90584 92817 4091177 4240984 3155541 3283074
Forward 702 8618 560 7611 17294 151938 748 5803 175302 1809674 136656 1429080
Total 93470 154424 116206 168794 134422 339613 94860 141184 4437321 8596293 3443057 6932486
Average 18694 30885 23241 33759 33606 84903 18972 28237 21436 41528 16633 33490

7 Tenor-wise Forward Trades

Tenor 17 February 2023 10 February 2023 3 February 2023 18 February 2022

Number Value % to Total Number Value % to Total Number Value % to Total Number Value % to Total
of Deals ($ mn) Value of Deals ($ mn) Value of Deals ($ mn) Value of Deals ($ mn) Value
< 30 Days 97 2736 31.75 117 4081 53.62 1198 34956 23.01 59 1299 22.39
> = 30 Days & < = 90 Days 132 3655 42.42 50 1903 25.01 2050 44038 28.98 127 1537 26.49
> 90 Days & < = 180 Days 54 1006 11.68 38 481 6.32 1306 25174 16.57 68 915 15.76
> 180 Days & < =365 Days 40 837 9.72 51 992 13.03 3397 40407 26.59 85 1666 28.71
> 1 year 28 383 4.44 24 154 2.02 696 7363 4.85 35 386 6.65
Total 351 8618 100 280 7611 100 8647 151938 100 374 5803 100
* Data pertain to 1 April 2022–17 February 2023. ** Data pertain to 1 April 2021–18 February 2022.
(i) Tables 1 to 5 relate to Securities Segment, and (ii) Tables 6 and 7 relate to Forex Segment.
Source: Clearing Corporation of India Limited (CCIL).

70 february 25, 2023 vol lViii no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
 FEBRUARY 25, 2023
Death of a Dream
The administrative response to student suicides remains managerial at best and indifferent at worst.
T
he recent death by suicide of Darshan Solanki, an 18-year-
old Dalit student at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)
Bombay, points towards certain festering problems in the
higher educational institutions in India in general and IITs in parti-
cular. In 2021, the union minister of education had stated in Parlia-
ment that 122 students had died between 2014 and 2021, with 101
students dying in central universities, IITs, and National Institutes
of Technology combined. The IITs alone accounted for 34 student
suicides, and the data also revealed that students belonging to
Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), and Other Backward
Classes (OBCs) comprised 58% of all student suicides since 2014.
Student suicides have no singular reason. The circumstances
that make a student take the tragic step of ending their own life
emerge from a variety of sources—social as well as pedagogical,
economic as well as curricular, political as well as psychological.
The response elicited by the student suicides in IITs from the
university administration is highly deficient as it mainly looks
at the problem of suicides as caused by a singular reason of ex-
cessive stress. Although stress is an unmistakable part of the
many problems faced by students, it cannot merely be taken as
the only factor causing student suicides in India. The response
which mainly cites stress as causing suicides in educational in-
stitutions also advocates for remedies that seem thoroughly in-
effective in front of the sheer magnitude of the problems repre-
sented by student suicides. Remedies like counselling may be
effective for students reeling under anxiety and stress, however,
it may fail in front of other reasons—most prominently, social
and economic reasons—which become a thorn in the flesh of
many students attending these institutions of higher learning.
Another fact emerging from the data about student suicides is
the large number of SC, ST, and OBC students dying by suicides
in higher educational institutions. A majority of students coming
from socially marginalised backgrounds are first-generation
learners, because of which acquainting oneself with the curricular
work and pedagogical interactions in the classroom takes rela-
tively more time than other, more privileged students. However,
other than fulfilling the constitutional obligation of reservations
of seats—which is also not fulfilled at times—higher educational
institutions rarely do anything to acknowledge and remedy this
problem at the curricular and pedagogical levels. There is a lack
of institutional will to resolve the glaring inequalities between
students attending the university institution.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 25, 2023 vol lViIi no 8
For example, an undergraduate student died by suicide in the
Lady Shri Ram College for Women in New Delhi in 2020, citing
financial troubles like not having a laptop for online classes and
unaffordable private accommodation. The guilt that one’s dream
of pursuing higher education is a tremendous financial burden on
one’s family is an emotion that resonates in the higher education
journeys of most first-generation learners. Such guilt often makes
many students drop out of their degree programmes as well. With-
out material interventions like providing adequate scholarships
and affordable hostel accommodation, such guilt cannot be washed
away even if one provides psychological interventions like therapy
or counselling to first-generation learners. This is not to under-
mine the importance of counselling services for students; rather,
this instance points towards the deficiencies of the mainstream
view that misdiagnoses the problem of student suicides in India.
Similarly, the death of Solanki also points towards the discrimi-
natory social and material circumstances that tragically define
the lives of Dalit students in higher educational institutions in
India. After spending a mere four months at the campus, it was
alleged by Solanki’s family members that he had complained of
caste discrimination after his friends and classmates came to
know about his caste background. Student organisations in the
campus have suggested various measures to tackle the problem
of caste discrimination in higher educational institutions—from
increasing the representation of SC/ST/OBC members among the
faculty and counsellors, to having a robust and functional anti-
discrimination policy that works towards sensitising the domi-
nant caste students in such spaces against bullying, ragging,
and harassing students from marginalised backgrounds. How-
ever, the administrative response to this suicide has been mana-
gerial at best. Not only have the administrators not taken note
of the possibility of caste discrimination existing in spaces of
higher learning, there is also a stark institutional indifference
towards the layered and complex reasons behind the problem of
student suicides. An inability to realise how the category of
“stress” cannot possibly cover all these reasons would only sug-
gest that the administration is not serious about reducing the
spate of student suicides in higher educational institutions,
much less improving the quality of life of these students.
Finally, the majority of student suicides occurring in central
universities also points towards the extent to which these insti-
tutions represent an aspirational value for marginalised students
7
EDITORIALS

and their families. An IIT degree is nothing short of a dream for families so long as education remains key to viable social mo-
many families, and the burden of such a dream is often placed bility in India. The tragedy of student suicides marks the death
on the vulnerable shoulders of young students. However, high- of such a dream, even if the sorrow of these deaths is felt only
er education will continue to be a shimmering dream for many by a few people.

8 FEBRUARY 25, 2023 vol lViIi no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK
From 50 Years Ago trade-off between some of the aims (such as
between growth and distributive justice or,
relatedly, between growth and employment),
is by no means easy. In such a situation, deter-
Vol VIII, No 8 February 24, 1973 mination of the level of even any particular
tax instrument — like the income-tax which
Priorities for a Tax Programme
is optimal with respect to all the goals in view
Amaresh Bagchi and not merely one of them (like maximisa-
Devising an ‘optimal’ tax system when there tion of work effort) — presents formidable
is a multiplicity of aims to pursue, and espe- problems unless the weights to be attached to
cially when there is no very easily definable each of the objectives are clearly specified;
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 25, 2023 vol lViIi no 8
and the problem may yet be insoluble unless
the instrument has at least as many control
levers as there are aims. […]
Where the tax system is expected to se-
cure a relatively larger proportion of the
resources required from the better-off sec-
tions of the people, such an outcome can-
not but be regarded as evidence of ineffi-
ciency of the structure, whatever may be at
its root. This is perhaps inevitable if the
system is burdened with too many tasks.
9
EDITORIALS
Political Developments in Maharashtra
Ironically, installing rule by manipulation is likely to be counterproductive.
A
fter nearly eight months since the defection of 40 mem-
bers of the legislative assembly caused the fall of the
Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government consisting of the
Shiv Sena, Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), and the Congress
in Maharashtra, the Election Commission has decided that the
name “Shiv Sena” and the symbol of bow and arrow shall be-
long to the faction led by the current chief minister of Maha-
rashtra. Political claims about loyalty, treason, and legacy are
being made from all sides in this dispute, however, the role of
the Election Commission and allegations about political bias are
what are most noteworthy in this controversy over symbols.
It also raises another question: Do symbols matter in poli-
tics? They used to matter a lot when education was not a mass
resource in the early decades of electoral democracy in India.
What matters today is the commitment to a party, personality,
and ideology. The election symbols of left parties have not
undergone any changes. But other parties have adopted newer
symbols. Arguably, the communist party may not require a
change in symbols because their ideology has been embodied
in their consciousness. Their electoral base was almost con-
stant until the rise of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) in West
Bengal, however, it is still constant in Kerala. It should also be
noted that the parties formed out of such splits like the TMC or
NCP and the altogether new parties such as the Aam Aadmi
Party could consolidate their support base despite having to
contest on new or relatively lesser-known symbols. Hence, the
Election Commission, which, on very flimsy grounds, has allot-
ted the symbol of bow and arrow and the party name of “Shiv
Sena” to the faction led by Eknath Shinde seems to be func-
tioning with a naïve logic, though certain sinister motives can-
not be ruled out.
Ideally, the dispute between two factions claiming the same
name and symbol should have been put to the test of the public
mandate before such a hasty decision was made. Elections could
have given a clearer picture about who is considered by the people
as a more legitimate claimant of the name and symbol of Shiv
Sena. Hence, it becomes the moral responsibility of the Election
Commission to organise the elections of the Brihanmumbai
Municipal Corporation and the Maharashtra Legislative Assem-
bly on priority and ascertain whether the Shinde group has the
majority or not. Their decision should not have depended on the
convenient calculations done on the basis of the number of de-
fectors from the Shiv Sena. Rather, their decision should have
taken the people’s mandate into consideration. Without giving
the people a chance to decide upon the Shiv Sena’s fate, the
8 FEBRUARY 25, 2023
Election Commission’s decision only seems to have given the
Shinde faction an unfair political advantage.
Will the Election Commission now call for elections? Perhaps
not on its own. This gives a scope for the second assumption
that, perhaps, the Election Commission and those who support
it fully know that the decision is not going to yield the desired
result in the elections. The common voters are likely to consoli-
date their moral consciousness that whatever has been done in
this case has not happened according to the Constitution and
the Election Commission, and those who are alleged to have
been supporting them are aware that Uddhav Thackeray has
been at the receiving end of the sympathy of not only the tradi-
tional base of the Shiv Sena, but also a newer bloc of people who
recognise that a wrong has been done to him. Moreover, region-
al consciousness, which has been very strong against the sub-
versive activities of the union government’s power, particularly
in Bihar, West Bengal, and Tamil Nadu, would act as a boomer-
ang even in Maharashtra. The anti-defector consolidation is
likely to take place on this ground of an increasingly vocal re-
gional assertion as well. An assumption could be cited here that
this will help the MVA alliance to further consolidate its collec-
tive strength in all the elections slated to happen in Maharash-
tra. This would also put a break to the union government’s at-
tempts to use its usual subversive tactics to woo away some of
the leading opposition politicians into its fold.
However, this would not happen automatically, and the opposi-
tion—particularly the Thackeray-led Shiv Sena—must show po-
litical urgency to mobilise people to save Mumbai, Maharashtra,
and Indian democracy. Some of its leaders have been committed
to follow this broader agenda which may not be welcomed by the
Sangh Parivar. The atmosphere of sympathy that at present is
seen to be growing in favour of the Thackrey-led Sena may trans-
form the power of sympathy into electoral power. On the contra-
ry, the Shinde group seems to be encouraged by the union govern-
ment’s help in gaining a hold over administrative power, which, as
political observations suggest, may only have a temporary life.
Ironically, the more the subversive power wielded by the
ruling party at the union comes to the aid of these groups, the
more the chances to make inroads into the electoral base in
Maharashtra become remote. Electoral or political mobilisa-
tion, which is expected to serve as an antidote to the subver-
sive design of authoritarian political power, is likely to be or-
ganised around a deep sense of injustice and a sincere scepti-
cism that such injustice is less likely to be mitigated within the
current institutional practices.
vol lViIi no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
FROM THE EDITOR’S DESK
Should Sympathy Matter in Politics?
T
he desperate desire to capture power in ways that run
contrary to the democratic ethos has its own consequenc-
es for politics inasmuch as it brings an element of sympa-
thy into the political domain. Sympathy, in turn, gives rise to
contradictory forms of competitive political dynamics. On the
one hand, sympathy suggests contesting free elections, and on
the other, it also suggests a competitive form of elections. Put
differently, an appeal of sympathy made either directly or indi-
rectly tends to stand on moral grounds that are mutually exclu-
sive. For example, for most of the political parties and their can-
didates, it has been a usual practice to make appeals based on
sympathy for the purposes of unopposed elections for the seats
that, due to the demise of the sitting legislators, fell vacant. Such
an appeal is made particularly by the incumbent who had kin-
ship ties with the departed member of the elected houses.
There is another and a wider electoral context in which
political players make an appeal of sympathy rather indirectly;
it does, however, play a vital role in shaping the electoral con-
sciousness of the people. In such a context, such an appeal acquires
its moral significance through the narrative of victimhood.
Such a narrative is expected to generate a sympathy wave, as it
were, for those who have been tormented by the ruling powers.
The social basis of such a sympathy wave is not limited either to an
incumbent candidate or to a single constituency. As the recent
narrative of victimhood that is being shared by the political
group led by Uddhav Thackeray and supported by the leaders
from the Maha Vikas Aghadi shows, unlike the incumbent fac-
tion, the former has been asking for an early election.
As has been observed by the political commentators of the
current scenario in Maharashtra, the institutional power is al-
legedly being used to decimate one political group in order to
favour another. This, according to the observers, is likely to gen-
erate sympathy for the group which has been rendered embat-
tled by a constant threat of unhealthy and unreasonable institu-
tional and political interventions. The group that is at the re-
ceiving end of an unfair intervention seems to be seeking the
resolution of political injustice in early elections that are expect-
ed to bring a definite victory to the embattled group. Thus, it is
the blatant forms of injustice caused by the political interest of
the dominating party that, in effect, creates a wider appeal of
sympathy, especially for the group that is facing political deci-
mation. It has been commonly perceived that the moral source
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 25, 2023 vol lViIi no 8
of sympathy resides in such emotions that are already permeat-
ing among the common people, who also think that the victimi-
sation of a group is unfair and in excess.
It is in this context that sympathy connects itself to transcen-
dental reason inasmuch as it aids the latter in ameliorating
injustice. For removing injustice, the embattled political group,
perhaps for a right reason, puts its faith and confidence in com-
petitive electoral politics rather than contest a free election.
In the appeal of sympathy made by the incumbent kin of the
departed legislator, the progressive connection between sympa-
thy and transcendental reason is missing. This is because an ap-
peal of sympathy motivates both the incumbent and their party
to use such appeals for instrumental rather than transcendental
reasons. Put differently, the sympathy appeal also has a weak
ground because it stands on the foundation of an emotional need,
which suggests that the common voters should feel touched by
the human loss that an incumbent candidate has personally suf-
fered. Touch, as a collective compassion, comes to be expressed
here for the incumbent who would expect the latter to demon-
strate the same fellow-feeling for those human beings who are
tortured and tormented by the party activists who belong to the
same party as the current incumbent.
The candidate who desires to contest free elections using “fellow-
feeling” as the moral plank, needs to oppose such party politics
that feeds on the killing of other human beings. But the party ideol-
ogy and programme that militates against such a fellow-feeling
tends to warp the very virtue of sympathy. Thus, an investment
in the ethical resources such as a commitment to sympathy is
nothing more than a simple instrument that is expected to perform
in favour of the electoral victory of the candidate who is less likely
to stand by the value of fellow-feeling or would not show the moral
courage to oppose their party activists who have been involved in
communal killings. It is in this sense that those, particularly from
the right-wing parties who are desperate to use fellow-feeling as
the emotional basis for seeking unopposed elections, would deviate
from this principle after they take advantage of the public com-
passion ex gratia. The resources of public sympathy, thus, create
a moral challenge for its user to leverage their political presence
for ensuring the fellow-feeling.
9

Issn 0012-9976
Ever since the first issue in 1966,
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and research in the social sciences.
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by Sachin Chaudhuri,
who was also the founder-editor of EPW.
As editor for 35 years (1969–2004)
Krishna Raj
gave EPW the reputation it now enjoys.
Editor
GOPAL GURU
SENIOR Assistant editor
INDU K
Assistant editors
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Sahba Fatima
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Editor: Gopal Guru (Editor responsible for
selection of news under the PRB Act)
4 february 25, 2023
LETTERS
Artificial Intelligence and Art
T he relationship between art and
technology has long been a subject
of debate, with some arguing that the
two are incompatible, raising questions
about the nature of creativity, aesthet-
ics, and the role of the artist, and others
seeking to integrate technology into the
artistic process. The question of whether
the harmonisation of art and technology
is possible is a complex and multifaceted
one that requires careful consideration
of the potential benefits and drawbacks
of such an integration.
On the one hand, technology has the
potential to expand the possibilities for
artistic expression in new and exciting
ways. Digital technologies, for example,
have opened up new avenues for artists
to experiment with interactive and im-
mersive installations, augmented and
virtual reality experiences, and other
forms of multimedia art. Technology
can also provide artists with new tools
and techniques for creating and manip-
ulating images, sounds, and other sen-
sory inputs. At the same time, there are
concerns that technology can under-
mine the traditional values and practic-
es of art. Some critics raise the argument
that technology can result in the com-
modification of art, turning it into a mass-
produced product that can be easily rep-
licated and distributed. Others worry
that technology can dehumanise the ar-
tistic process, reducing the role of the
artist to that of a mere technician or pro-
grammer. The question of harmonisation
of art and technology is further compli-
cated by the fact that technology is con-
stantly evolving, which means that its
possibilities and limitations are always
changing. As a result, the relationship
between art and technology is a dynam-
ic one that requires ongoing exploration
and experimentation.
Philosophers have provided a range of
interpretations of art created through
artificial intelligence, offering insights
into the ethical, epistemological, and
ontological implications of this new art
form. One of the key philosophical de-
bates surrounding artificial intelligence
art concerns the nature of creativity.
Some philosophers believe that artificial
intelligence cannot be truly creative,
since it is ultimately the product of a ma-
chine rather than a human being. Phi-
losopher Stephen Davies argues that
“there is a deep sense in which only
humans can be creative, because only
humans can have a genuine sense of
purpose, be self-aware, and reflect on
the nature and quality of their creations.”
Claire Bishop, an art historian, critic, and
professor of art history at the City Uni-
versity of New York Graduate Center,
also notes that artificial intelligence art
lacks the emotional depth and human
experience necessary to qualify as genu-
ine art. In a 2018 interview with Art in
America, Bishop stated, “The real value
of art is the way it produces emotions and
meaning in a viewer.”
In a recent article for the New York
Times, art critic Jason Farago wrote, “Ar-
tistic creation is a process that involves
the entire life of an artist, from her
lived experiences to the tactile sensa-
tions of making things.” He believes that
artificial intelligence art cannot replace
this process, and that it cannot truly be
considered art because it is not created
by humans. David Hockney, in an inter-
view with the Guardian, also expressed
scepticism about artificial intelligence
art, stating, “I’m not sure it’s actually
made by anything, you know? It’s just a
series of codes that can be repeated.”
There are also others who take a more
expansive view of creativity, and assert
that artificial intelligence art can be seen
as a new form of creative expression and
can be used as a tool for artists, rather
than a threat to their work. Margaret Ann
Boden, professor of cognitive science in
the Department of Informatics at the Uni-
versity of Sussex remarks that artificial
intelligence art can be creative in a dif-
ferent way than human art, by generating
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vol lViii no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

new and unexpected forms, patterns,
and designs that were not previously im-
agined by humans. In a blog post for Art-
work Archive, Jordan Brown argued that
artificial intelligence is offering artists
new ways of doing things that were not
possible before. He writes, “It is not a
question of whether AI is replacing art-
ists. It is about whether it is offering art-
ists new ways of doing things that were
not possible before.” Another philosoph-
ical debate concerns the aesthetic value
of artificial intelligence art and how it
lacks emotional depth and human experi-
ence necessary to qualify as genuine art.
By contrast, some philosophers also ar-
gue that artificial intelligence art can be
aesthetically valuable precisely because
of its lack of human subjectivity, and its
ability to generate new and unexpected
aesthetic experiences.
While there is no consensus on the
philosophical implications of artificial
intelligence, the debates surrounding this
new art form have opened up new ave-
nues for philosophical inquiry and re-
flection. By exploring these questions,
we can better understand the implica-
tions of artificial intelligence for human
creativity and artistic expression.
Using deep learning techniques, ma-
chines are able to learn from massive
amounts of data and produce unique
pieces of art that can range from ab-
stract compositions to realistic portraits.
Artificial intelligence-generated art is
often a reflection of the data it has been
trained on, leading to unexpected and
unique results. In this way, artificial
intelligence art provides a new lens
through which we can view the world
and inspire new perspectives on tradi-
tional art forms.
Artificial intelligence art is not meant
to replace human artists but rather to
augment human creativity and push the
boundaries of what is possible in art.
There are also concerns about the poten-
tial implications of artificial intelligence-
generated art. Some worry that artificial
intelligence art may lead to a devalua-
tion of human creativity or even a loss of
jobs in the art industry. Others question
the ethics of using artificial intelligence
for commercial purposes without giving
proper credit to the original creators.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023
However, the field of artificial intelli-
gence art is still in its early stages, but
it holds great promise for the future of
art and human creativity. As machines
continue to evolve and learn, they will
undoubtedly play an even greater role in
the production and appreciation of art.
Neerej Dev, Vipula P C
Bengaluru
Concerning Rise of Private
Healthcare in India
I t is concerning to note that despite the
challenges posed by private hospitals,
such as increased healthcare costs, ineq-
uitable access to quality healthcare, and
the exploitation of healthcare workers,
the government seems to be encourag-
ing their growth. This trend is reflective
of a broader trend in the country where
the government is increasingly out-
sourcing its responsibilities regarding
healthcare to the private sector.
While it is understandable that the
government may not have the resources
to provide quality healthcare to all its
citizens, it is crucial that it regulates the
private sector effectively to ensure that
healthcare is affordable and accessible
to all. It is also important to recognise that
healthcare is a fundamental right, and it is
the government’s responsibility to ensure
that this right is protected and upheld.
Thus, it would be useful to explore the
reasons why private hospitals are being
encouraged by the government. For ex-
ample, is it the lack of resources, a belief
that the private sector is more efficient,
or pressure from private healthcare pro-
viders? Understanding the motivations
behind this trend could help develop
more effective solutions. Moreover, one
also notices the exploitation of health-
care workers in private hospitals, and it
would be valuable to explore this issue
in more detail. What are the working
conditions like in private hospitals, and
how do they compare to public hospi-
tals? What can be done to protect the
rights of healthcare workers and ensure
that they are treated fairly? Also, private
hospitals are contributing to rising
healthcare costs, and it would be useful
to explore this issue further. How much
more expensive are private hospitals
vol lViii no 8
LETTERS
compared to public hospitals, and
how does this impact the affordability
of healthcare for the average citizen?
What are the long-term implications
of this trend for the overall health of
the population?
It would be beneficial to examine how
private hospitals are affecting the rural
areas in India, where access to health-
care is already a challenge. Are private
hospitals expanding into these areas,
or are they primarily focused in urban
centres? What are the implications of
this trend for rural communities?
Finally, it would also be interesting to
explore potential solutions to the chal-
lenges posed by private hospitals. For
example, could the government estab-
lish more stringent regulations for pri-
vate hospitals, or invest in public–pri-
vate partnerships to ensure that health-
care is accessible to all? What role can
civil society and healthcare providers
play in addressing these issues?
I urge the government to take a closer
look at the challenges posed by the
growth of private hospitals and take
steps to regulate them effectively. The
government must ensure that private
hospitals do not operate as profit-mak-
ing entities at the expense of the health
of the citizens. It must also invest in
strengthening the public healthcare sys-
tem, which can provide quality health-
care to all its citizens.
In conclusion, I would also like to
highlight the need for a robust regulatory
framework for private hospitals, and
the government must act promptly to
address the challenges posed by their
growth. I hope this letter will help
start a conversation on this critical is-
sue and encourage the government to
take steps to protect the fundamental
right to healthcare.
S Baranidharan
Bengaluru
In Memoriam
EPW fondly remembers the sustained
contributions of Ajit K Ghose towards the
journal, who unfortunately passed away
before his Special Article titled “India’s
Exclusive Growth” (EPW, 11 February
2023) was published. We pay our condo-
lences to his family and friends.
5
LETTERS
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6 february 25, 2023 vol lViii no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

Issn 0012-9976
Ever since the first issue in 1966,
EPW has been India’s premier journal for
comment on current affairs
and research in the social sciences.
It succeeded Economic Weekly (1949–1965),
which was launched and shepherded
by Sachin Chaudhuri,
who was also the founder-editor of EPW.
As editor for 35 years (1969–2004)
Krishna Raj
gave EPW the reputation it now enjoys.
Editor
GOPAL GURU
SENIOR Assistant editor
INDU K
Assistant editors
Nachiket kulkarni
Sahba Fatima
editorIAL Assistant
Ankit Kawade
Editorial Coordinator
Shilpa Sawant
copy editor
jyoti shetty
production
suneethi nair
Chief Administrative and Finance Officer
J DENNIS RAJAKUMAR
Advertisement Manager
Kamal G Fanibanda
General Manager & Publisher
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4 february 25, 2023
LETTERS
Artificial Intelligence and Art
T he relationship between art and
technology has long been a subject
of debate, with some arguing that the
two are incompatible, raising questions
about the nature of creativity, aesthet-
ics, and the role of the artist, and others
seeking to integrate technology into the
artistic process. The question of whether
the harmonisation of art and technology
is possible is a complex and multifaceted
one that requires careful consideration
of the potential benefits and drawbacks
of such an integration.
On the one hand, technology has the
potential to expand the possibilities for
artistic expression in new and exciting
ways. Digital technologies, for example,
have opened up new avenues for artists
to experiment with interactive and im-
mersive installations, augmented and
virtual reality experiences, and other
forms of multimedia art. Technology
can also provide artists with new tools
and techniques for creating and manip-
ulating images, sounds, and other sen-
sory inputs. At the same time, there are
concerns that technology can under-
mine the traditional values and practic-
es of art. Some critics raise the argument
that technology can result in the com-
modification of art, turning it into a mass-
produced product that can be easily rep-
licated and distributed. Others worry
that technology can dehumanise the ar-
tistic process, reducing the role of the
artist to that of a mere technician or pro-
grammer. The question of harmonisation
of art and technology is further compli-
cated by the fact that technology is con-
stantly evolving, which means that its
possibilities and limitations are always
changing. As a result, the relationship
between art and technology is a dynam-
ic one that requires ongoing exploration
and experimentation.
Philosophers have provided a range of
interpretations of art created through
artificial intelligence, offering insights
into the ethical, epistemological, and
ontological implications of this new art
form. One of the key philosophical de-
bates surrounding artificial intelligence
art concerns the nature of creativity.
Some philosophers believe that artificial
intelligence cannot be truly creative,
since it is ultimately the product of a ma-
chine rather than a human being. Phi-
losopher Stephen Davies argues that
“there is a deep sense in which only
humans can be creative, because only
humans can have a genuine sense of
purpose, be self-aware, and reflect on
the nature and quality of their creations.”
Claire Bishop, an art historian, critic, and
professor of art history at the City Uni-
versity of New York Graduate Center,
also notes that artificial intelligence art
lacks the emotional depth and human
experience necessary to qualify as genu-
ine art. In a 2018 interview with Art in
America, Bishop stated, “The real value
of art is the way it produces emotions and
meaning in a viewer.”
In a recent article for the New York
Times, art critic Jason Farago wrote, “Ar-
tistic creation is a process that involves
the entire life of an artist, from her
lived experiences to the tactile sensa-
tions of making things.” He believes that
artificial intelligence art cannot replace
this process, and that it cannot truly be
considered art because it is not created
by humans. David Hockney, in an inter-
view with the Guardian, also expressed
scepticism about artificial intelligence
art, stating, “I’m not sure it’s actually
made by anything, you know? It’s just a
series of codes that can be repeated.”
There are also others who take a more
expansive view of creativity, and assert
that artificial intelligence art can be seen
as a new form of creative expression and
can be used as a tool for artists, rather
than a threat to their work. Margaret Ann
Boden, professor of cognitive science in
the Department of Informatics at the Uni-
versity of Sussex remarks that artificial
intelligence art can be creative in a dif-
ferent way than human art, by generating
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vol lViii no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

new and unexpected forms, patterns,
and designs that were not previously im-
agined by humans. In a blog post for Art-
work Archive, Jordan Brown argued that
artificial intelligence is offering artists
new ways of doing things that were not
possible before. He writes, “It is not a
question of whether AI is replacing art-
ists. It is about whether it is offering art-
ists new ways of doing things that were
not possible before.” Another philosoph-
ical debate concerns the aesthetic value
of artificial intelligence art and how it
lacks emotional depth and human experi-
ence necessary to qualify as genuine art.
By contrast, some philosophers also ar-
gue that artificial intelligence art can be
aesthetically valuable precisely because
of its lack of human subjectivity, and its
ability to generate new and unexpected
aesthetic experiences.
While there is no consensus on the
philosophical implications of artificial
intelligence, the debates surrounding this
new art form have opened up new ave-
nues for philosophical inquiry and re-
flection. By exploring these questions,
we can better understand the implica-
tions of artificial intelligence for human
creativity and artistic expression.
Using deep learning techniques, ma-
chines are able to learn from massive
amounts of data and produce unique
pieces of art that can range from ab-
stract compositions to realistic portraits.
Artificial intelligence-generated art is
often a reflection of the data it has been
trained on, leading to unexpected and
unique results. In this way, artificial
intelligence art provides a new lens
through which we can view the world
and inspire new perspectives on tradi-
tional art forms.
Artificial intelligence art is not meant
to replace human artists but rather to
augment human creativity and push the
boundaries of what is possible in art.
There are also concerns about the poten-
tial implications of artificial intelligence-
generated art. Some worry that artificial
intelligence art may lead to a devalua-
tion of human creativity or even a loss of
jobs in the art industry. Others question
the ethics of using artificial intelligence
for commercial purposes without giving
proper credit to the original creators.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023
However, the field of artificial intelli-
gence art is still in its early stages, but
it holds great promise for the future of
art and human creativity. As machines
continue to evolve and learn, they will
undoubtedly play an even greater role in
the production and appreciation of art.
Neerej Dev, Vipula P C
Bengaluru
Concerning Rise of Private
Healthcare in India
I t is concerning to note that despite the
challenges posed by private hospitals,
such as increased healthcare costs, ineq-
uitable access to quality healthcare, and
the exploitation of healthcare workers,
the government seems to be encourag-
ing their growth. This trend is reflective
of a broader trend in the country where
the government is increasingly out-
sourcing its responsibilities regarding
healthcare to the private sector.
While it is understandable that the
government may not have the resources
to provide quality healthcare to all its
citizens, it is crucial that it regulates the
private sector effectively to ensure that
healthcare is affordable and accessible
to all. It is also important to recognise that
healthcare is a fundamental right, and it is
the government’s responsibility to ensure
that this right is protected and upheld.
Thus, it would be useful to explore the
reasons why private hospitals are being
encouraged by the government. For ex-
ample, is it the lack of resources, a belief
that the private sector is more efficient,
or pressure from private healthcare pro-
viders? Understanding the motivations
behind this trend could help develop
more effective solutions. Moreover, one
also notices the exploitation of health-
care workers in private hospitals, and it
would be valuable to explore this issue
in more detail. What are the working
conditions like in private hospitals, and
how do they compare to public hospi-
tals? What can be done to protect the
rights of healthcare workers and ensure
that they are treated fairly? Also, private
hospitals are contributing to rising
healthcare costs, and it would be useful
to explore this issue further. How much
more expensive are private hospitals
vol lViii no 8
LETTERS
compared to public hospitals, and
how does this impact the affordability
of healthcare for the average citizen?
What are the long-term implications
of this trend for the overall health of
the population?
It would be beneficial to examine how
private hospitals are affecting the rural
areas in India, where access to health-
care is already a challenge. Are private
hospitals expanding into these areas,
or are they primarily focused in urban
centres? What are the implications of
this trend for rural communities?
Finally, it would also be interesting to
explore potential solutions to the chal-
lenges posed by private hospitals. For
example, could the government estab-
lish more stringent regulations for pri-
vate hospitals, or invest in public–pri-
vate partnerships to ensure that health-
care is accessible to all? What role can
civil society and healthcare providers
play in addressing these issues?
I urge the government to take a closer
look at the challenges posed by the
growth of private hospitals and take
steps to regulate them effectively. The
government must ensure that private
hospitals do not operate as profit-mak-
ing entities at the expense of the health
of the citizens. It must also invest in
strengthening the public healthcare sys-
tem, which can provide quality health-
care to all its citizens.
In conclusion, I would also like to
highlight the need for a robust regulatory
framework for private hospitals, and
the government must act promptly to
address the challenges posed by their
growth. I hope this letter will help
start a conversation on this critical is-
sue and encourage the government to
take steps to protect the fundamental
right to healthcare.
S Baranidharan
Bengaluru
In Memoriam
EPW fondly remembers the sustained
contributions of Ajit K Ghose towards the
journal, who unfortunately passed away
before his Special Article titled “India’s
Exclusive Growth” (EPW, 11 February
2023) was published. We pay our condo-
lences to his family and friends.
5
LETTERS
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6 february 25, 2023 vol lViii no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

Economic & Political Weekly
POSTSCRIPT
LITERATURE, PATRIARCHY, PARTITION
Behula Never Can Be
a Widow
The legend of Behula relates the pre-partition
migration of people and their cultural cohesion
through West Bengal, Bangladesh, and Myanmar.
Mrinmoy Pramanick
B
ehula, a character from the Manasamangal Kāvya of
medieval Bengali literature, challenged the conflict of
egos between her father-in-law Chandsadagar and god-
dess Manasa, which resulted in the killing of her husband on
their first night together. Manasa, the snake-goddess, teaches
Chandsadagar, a wealthy trader and a follower of Shiva, a
lesson for refusing to worship her. In order to prove that her
husband was killed as a result of a conflict between the goddess
Manasa’s ego and the merchant Chandsadagar, she went all
the way to the court of Indra in heaven.
Behula is a popular legend among Muslims in Bangladesh
and other regions of West Bengal, as well as in oral and
performance storytelling. When I visited Birbhum district in
West Bengal to archive tales from Dalit communities there, I
came across a family performing Behula tales under the
name Laila–Majnu, a popular romantic legend among Bengali
Muslims. The family had learnt the tales from a Muslim per-
former who was selling tiny books with such songs at a village
fair—a result, no doubt, of the syncretic Hindu–Muslim tra-
dition across South Asia.
Jibanananda Das, Sabyasachi Deb, and Kalyani Thakur Charal
are among the many modern and contemporary Bengali poets
who used the Behula legend in their works to discuss Bengal’s
syncretic beauty and highlight the resilience of women in literary
traditions. Behula emerges as a symbol of female resistance to
patriarchy. Dalit poet Kalyani Thakur Charal presented Behu-
la in different contexts—sometimes a woman from a lower
caste fighting Brahminical patriarchy, and other times a woman
fighting against everyday hardship and grief. Singer Kabir
Suman composed a song explaining that Behula was not a
widow and was never regarded as one because she brought
her deceased husband to the court of the gods and won his
EPW february 25, 2023 vol lViII no 8 73
 POSTSCRIPT
LITERATURE, PATRIARCHY, PARTITION

life back: “Behula never can be widow, this is the tradition of regions of West Bengal, Assam, and Tripura. How could the
Bengal” (behula kakhano bidhaba haina/eta banglar riti). ‘Desh’ be there if my neighbours are not present”? Some have
A variety of poems like Manasamangal Kāvya, Chandi- the “luxury” of remembering their homeland, some are better
mangal Kāvya, Dharmamangal Kāvya, and Annadamangal off not remembering.
Kāvya, dedicated to various gods and goddesses, are includ- On the border of Tripura between India and Bangladesh,
ed in the genre of narrative poem known as Mangal Kāvya in the small village of Lankamura, I met a widow named
from mediaeval Bengal. These texts, which are Behula emerges as Kiranbala Sarkar, displaced from Noakhali dur-
documented in writing, are performed and a symbol of female ing the riots in 1946. She will soon turn 100 years
passed down orally, all profoundly ingrained in resistance old, always wears a red saree, is unable to speak
Bengali society. Bengalis from West Bengal, to patriarchy much, has forgotten much of her past, and only
Tripura, Assam, Bangladesh, and even Myanmar vaguely remembers some of the family members
are connected by Manasamangal Kāvya. While premodern who live with her. For a Bengali Hindu widow, wearing a red
cultural exchanges keep people connected across borders, saree is not very typical or common in some generations, and
contemporary boundaries separate nations with borders. certainly not for those in her generation. Kiranbala has long
Even today, those who fled to Myanmar from Chattogram since forgotten that she had lost her husband. She consumes
and those Bengalis who fled Myanmar and took refuge in fish and asks for it practically daily, again very uncommon
different regions of India still recite Manasamangal Kāvya for a widowed Bengali Hindu woman. She does not practise
and worship goddess Manasa. The Behula legend relates the widowhood and does not recall her past. I was suddenly
pre-partition migration of people and their cultural cohe- reminded of Behula, who never became a widow, existing as
sion through West Bengal, Bangladesh, and Myanmar. myth and legend in written, oral and performance traditions
Manasa is a prominent goddess, especially among Bengalis in both parts of Bengal and Myanmar. Kiranbala is like Behula
in rural areas, because of the existence of venomous snakes to me; her memory erased the death of her husband and her
in wet lands, and agricultural fields, places and spaces of displacement from East Bengal, making her dress like the
the working class. Lower-caste and working-class communi- blessed Hindu wife she was before partition, in her red saree.
ties in Bengal revere her as their protector against venom- How beautifully this forgetting comes to her as bliss and
ous snake bites. allows her to survive in the past, in happier days.
Behula’s story makes me think of a seemingly unrelated Manasamangal Kāvya and the Behula legend can be read
tale. West Bengal, Assam, and Tripura are dealing with within and naturally beyond partition narratives, but I argue that
the effects of the Bengal partition even today. Tripura’s this medieval text can be read very much within the narrative
sociolinguistic constitution and literary language strongly and history of partition. Because of Kiranbala’s “forgetfulness,”
display the linguistic ramifications of the partition and partition is no longer important to her life; she now lives in the
the Bangladesh Liberation War. When I visited Tripura in pre-partition era of her pre-widowered married existence.
November 2021 for my fieldwork and archival work, I met a
Mrinmoy Pramanick (mpcill@caluniv.ac.in) teaches in the Department of Comparative
few authors there from very ordinary social and cultural Indian Language and Literature, University of Calcutta.
backgrounds. They carry the linguistic features of the
districts from which they had been displaced during or after
LAST LINES
partition and the war. They resist mainstream Bengali liter-
ary diction and vocabularies with colloquial language from
their ancestors who moved from East Bengal. Local literary
magazines and publishing houses publish fiction and poems in
the language they carried from East Bengal—some write in
variants of the language spoken in Noakhali, Brahmanbaria,
and Coomilla districts of today’s Bangladesh. This is how au-
thors in Tripura who/whose families migrated from Bangla-
desh are rebuilding their identity with the memory of lan-
guage. These journeys of language from one nation to anoth-
er along with its people connect nations that are divided
along political lines but not entirely separate.
The people who had to fight for their food and shelter did
not talk much about how much they missed the place they
had to leave behind. When I asked a woman I had met about
nostalgia—a very common theme in partition research—she
responded, “Why should I think of Noakhali? All of the
neighbours moved out from the village and settled in different
74 february 25, 2023 vol lViII no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
 POSTSCRIPT
FRIENDSHIP, RESEARCH

him in the local thana. Since they could not press charges of
illegal smuggling, fearing self-incrimination, Rashidun only
served time for his “lesser” misdemeanours. Following his
arrest, residents of the village grew cautious of interacting
with Rashidun, labelling him “bad company.”
It was clear that Rashidun’s present was a far cry from his
life as a smuggler. The lack of viable opportunities in the village,
for the adulterer cattle smuggler, left his days wide open.
This was a serendipitous alignment of circumstances, as it
eventually brought us together. When we met the first time,
Rashidun inquired about the purpose of my stay. He volun-
teered to help in finding people to interview and access
porous sectors of the border—the vestigial remnants of his
past occupation. But his help came with cautionary advice
that felt close to the experiences of his ostracisation from the
local community: “People here are nice. They are simple. Do
not take advantage of them and they will take care of you.”
As our association gained more visibility, I would fre-
quently be addressed as shaheb (master) and him as mokkel
(client) whenever we would pass through the market on our
way to an interview site. It proved difficult to ignore how ap-
pellations of an alluded financial agreement were affecting
Rashidun. During one of our regular winter-afternoon walks
across the dried-up Teesta riverbed, he explained how these
The Myth of Rashidun insinuations stabbed at his unrelenting financial anguish
and his isolation from the village, still quite raw and fresh in
A researcher reflects on his friendship with a his memory. The allusions to an employer–employee dynamic
down-on-luck adulterer–cattle smuggler—his aggravated the loss of control that was consuming his life.
primary contact in the field. Rashidun’s next great plan was to fish the local stream.
The weight of the expected catch would net a profit that
would be sufficient to see out the year. The dearth of initial
Surya Sankar Sen
capital to rent motorised pumps required for the effort

F
or my doctoral research, I spent a year studying local prompted him to search for local investors. Within days,
communities in the north Bengal borderland. During Rashidun had assembled a crew of six villagers, also down on
this time, I became friends with Rashidun who eventu- luck and money. The burden of success grew heavier now. The
ally became my primary contact and a gateway to my experi- crew started draining a catchment of the stream at night so
ences there. As we peeled back the layers of our pasts, it that by dawn, they could move in with their nets. Without
revealed traces of a friendship that would come to be tested any interviews scheduled the following morning, I headed
during my stay in his village. It took less than a week for us to over to the stream hoping to see Rashidun and his crew
open our lives to each other, although mine paled in com- drawing in their catch. As I neared the culvert to secure a
parison to his experiences. good view, I saw a crowd had already gathered there. Word
Before becoming a cattle smuggler, Rashidun tried Allusions to an of Rashidun’s plans had spread wide and fast to
his best to stay on the straight and narrow path of employer–employee neighbouring villages as well. I gathered from the
limited opportunities available in that area. From dynamic aggravated hubbub that this was not the first time Rashidun
what I could tell, the underlying risks of an illegal the loss of control tried to fish this stream—a detail he kept from
occupation contributed to its temptation for him. that was consuming me. A year ago, his efforts were thwarted by the
Over a short—yet profitable—stint in smuggling his life incoming Kalboishakhi storm, which replenished
bovines, Rashidun claimed control of his life and the volume he had managed to drain out.
destiny. He said he felt like a “hero” from a movie when he The stream was an outlet for run-off from Teesta river,
ventured out in his rickety van, under the dense cover of the usually rediverted to local rice and tobacco fields. Whenever
winter fog. Emboldened, he had begun an extramarital affair there was an overflow in the municipality catchment, instead of
with a woman whose father rented out their home as a half- diverting it to the fields and flooding them, the excess volume
way house for smugglers. Rashidun’s refusal to promise mar- was channelled through the stream, back to the river. These
riage to her prompted the father to file a complaint against releases were not planned, and without warning, Rashidun’s
72 february 25, 2023 vol lViII no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
 POSTSCRIPT
FRIENDSHIP, RESEARCH

crew was caught unaware when a percolating rill, distinctively to chippings and shingle for construction projects in the
muddier than what they were fishing in, eventually turned into north Bengal and Sikkimese hills. It seemed as though this
an incoming torrent. I watched from the culvert as the team trade, carrying boulders washed down by the river, back to
scampered to pick off fish that was caught in the mud, trying to the mountains could only choose Rashidun as the agent of
beat the tide that would eventually submerge the exposed redeposition. A Sisyphean end, for someone whose attempts
stream. The crowd began to laugh at this sudden turn of events, to take charge of his life brought him back to the point
even those initially convinced of Rashidun’s success joining in. where he first started.
Eventually, the chides and rebukes from the crowd found
Surya Sankar Sen (surya.sen@sju.edu.in) teaches in the Department of Political Science,
their way towards me. My identity as someone from the city St Joseph’s University, Bengaluru.
and a daaktar (doctor) was leveraged in comments, ridiculing
my inability to see the eventuality of failure in Rashidun’s plan.
I was more concerned about Rashidun, as the barrage of con-
tempt from onlookers grew suggestively in response to his
desperation to forestall failure, by scooping up hapless
snakeheads and climbing perch, wriggling their bodies to
make it back into the water. Gathering their infinitesimal haul,
a far cry from what they had dreamt of through the hours
they put into draining the pool, Rashidun’s crew made a
hasty exit from the eye of this gathering tempest of derision,
more unforgiving than last year’s Kalboishakhi.
Rashidun’s inability to accept his failures would destroy
the final vestiges of his relationship with the village, and our
association as well. The next day as I ventured out, Rashidun
was nowhere to be seen. I tried calling, but as usual, his mo-
bile phone was unreachable, suspended because of the non-
payment of dues. Inquiring about this, I found out from a lo-
cal acquaintance that Rashidun returned to the pool, late in
the night with a bottle of pesticide, and released its contents
into the stream. He skimmed off whatever fish was shocked
by the chemicals, in a last-ditch attempt to break even on his
investment. He took me to the culvert from where the verac-
ity of his account became evident, sans Rashidun’s alleged
involvement. The surface of the pool was littered with stiff,
dead fish. The extent of the damage he claimed to have wit-
nessed at the first light of day was no longer apparent, as he
stated that the bigger fish had been scavenged off by villag-
ers, despite the obvious perils of consuming poisoned flesh.
The criminal nature of his offence, in poisoning a local water
source, gathered momentum as Rashidun’s character was
once more textured with shades of his past notoriety. I heard
the police were searching for him, and his conspicuous ab-
sence fuelled local speculations of his motives and where-
abouts. Rashidun’s advice to not mistake the locals’ simplici-
ty as naïveté was enough for me to prematurely conclude our
association, a separation I had anticipated coming forth upon
my departure from the village.
The paucity of time, created by the distractions of Rashidun’s
misadventures, necessitated a deep dive into my work
over the final weeks of my stay. I thought his exile would be
temporary, concluding once things settled back to normal,
but I never saw Rashidun again. I found out after my depar-
ture from a resident I remained in contact with, that Rashid-
un was now a truck-driver. He transported boulders from the
Teesta’s banks to factories, where it would be broken down
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023 vol lViII no 8 73
 POSTSCRIPT
FOOTBALL, SPORT, MEMORY

Memories of Football
A Reverie
A football fan revisits football history and reminisces about changing allegiances, patron saints and
football greats.

Tapas Mitra

O
ne fateful night in 2015, M N Buch, the “patron in Sweden (1958), Chile (1962) and Mexico (1970) to watch
saint” of Bhopal, had passed away. He would have them take the Jules Rimet cup forever to Brazil! They insisted
hated the epithet, I am sure, being aggressively that Brazilian football reflected the true spirit of the team sport
anti-institutional. Writer, orator, administrator and one of that football is, where everyone plays a specific part in the
our last polymaths, he was the man behind the preservation grand orchestra of football. A few years later, in the final stages
of Bhopal’s lake system and urban forestry. On that night I of school, I came to embrace Albert Camus and his detached and
was in Naples, searching for a value-for-money restaurant, yet emotionally intense prose. I seemed to have become a Brazil
salivating at the prospect of a fish and squid and octopus fan quoting Camus’s famous dictum on football, “Everything
dinner while the whole town was out on the streets to watch I know about morality and the obligations of men, I owe it to
a football match—Italy’s Juventus was playing a star-studded football.” Personal tragedies and heartbreaks have always
Barcelona in the finals of the Union of European Football been part of our lives around football. A brief romance in the
Associations (UEFA) championship in Berlin after four years. life of a dear friend was summarily terminated by his lady-
The restaurants extended outdoors with large screens on love since she decided she couldn’t settle for anyone who
the streets and fans crowded all over town. I told Personal tragedies didn’t look as good as Paolo Maldini, from the
my daughter not to cheer Barcelona’s first goal in and heartbreaks 90’s golden generation of Italian football.
the presence of so many Italian fans cheering have always been In 1986, watching Maradona almost single-
Juventus. Or so I assumed. part of our lives handedly pulling off a world cup victory, my
Barcelona scored the first goal as expected in the around football thoughts (and those of many others) on the team
fifth minute and for a while there was a lull in the sport came under question. But then we agreed
streets. And then a large part of the crowd huddled together that he was a phenomenon which happens once in a long while
on our right, broke into a deafening cry of victory they could in every sport, or for that matter in every aspect of life and art.
sense was coming so early in the game. They were evidently After many world cups when the sport was reinvented in a
supporting Barcelona and I was able to decode the mystery unique “Tiki-taka” way by the Spanish in the 2010 World Cup,
only when I met our homestay owner the next morning. A allegiances changed once again overwhelmingly. Purists
Barcelona fan himself, he said that the support for Barcelona would of course maintain that this was merely an extension of
stemmed from the fact that Lionel Messi, the Barcelona for- the 1974 Dutch innovation of “total football,” and they were ac-
ward, hails from the country of Diego Maradona. Maradona, tually right since the style was developed in the hands of Dutch
who placed the Napoli football club on top of the Italian na- managers coaching in LaLiga from 1988 onwards. Johan
tional league twice from constantly fighting relegation battles, Cruyff expectedly became the first among them to coach the
was considered the patron saint of football of Naples, he went Barcelona team. Not just allegiances, narratives changed too.
on to add. I was amazed to see Maradona depicted as Adam The tragic hero of world football hitherto was Garrincha, the
in Michelangelo’s Genesis in the “private altars” of most cafes in dribbler par excellence and a key player for Brazil in the 1958
the city. The fact that football crosses limits of nationalities and 1962 World Cups, going back home to play barefoot in his
and political boundaries had never played out more clearly in native village with his childhood mates after the wins. At this
front of my eyes than it did on that evening in Naples. time, he took to alcohol and eventually died a pauper whilst
Many of us watching world cup football since 1978 in black most of his illustrious teammates lived lives of glory under
and white mode, when India telecast the matches live be- the sun in the world cup hall of fame.
came supporters of Argentina immediately (colour television Many of us remember life events with reference to world cup
was introduced in 1982 when India hosted the Asian Games). years. With the easing of telecast rights, private channels com-
This was because of their artistry with the ball and the short ing in and the internet, access to international football has in-
ground passes they played, which we perhaps identified with creased significantly. Entire upper-middle-class households
our style of playing the game. Our previous generation read these days watch European club football on television and are
about the exploits of Brazil “live” in newspapers and would aware of the transfer norms and fees of the superstars in a
nostalgically relate to us their wins from 1958, as if they were transnational labour market. Old-fashioned followers like me
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023 vol lViII no 8 71
 POSTSCRIPT
FOOTBALL, SPORT, MEMORY

feel that this is not so different from having one more game in
their PlayStations. And when I hear that Qatari oil barons own
some of the best clubs in Europe, it doesn’t come as a shock.
It’s akin to business houses owning an abstract expressionist
masterpiece as part of their portfolio and image building.
The politics of the record €12 million transfer fee that the
ailing Napoli paid to get Maradona in Naples in the summer of
1984 is known to most followers of world football. But more
important than the fee amount was the fact that a new era be-
gan in the football of Napoli. A new emotion which transcends
monetary transactions. If one doesn’t respect this emotion, in-
ternational football venues may no doubt remain packed to
capacity, but this may mean nothing more than merely a busi-
ness venture well executed. Pelé had been the longest stand-
ing god of football since the first Brazilian World Cup win of
1958, only to be partially displaced by Maradona in 1986.
Since his death on 29 December, 11 days after the World Cup
final of 2022, there seems to be a silence, a kind of interval, an
emptiness in the debate of the GOAT—the greatest of all time.
Tapas Mitra (tapasmitra@spabhopal.ac.in) is an academic, urbanist and artist. He
teaches urban design at the School of Planning and Architecture, Bhopal.

72 february 25, 2023 vol lViII no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
Community Capital
Socio-spatial Relations in Delhi’s Seelampur E-waste Market
Aakansha Jain, Vinay Gidwani
Seelampur in north-east Delhi is one of the largest
e-waste markets in India. Featured in numerous
non-governmental organisation reports and journalistic
accounts, mainly to highlight the environmental perils of
informal e-waste dismantling, the e-waste market’s
spatial history and underlying social relations have never
been systematically studied. Combining 10 months of
ethnographic fieldwork in 2021–22 with a quantitative
primary survey of 115 traders in Seelampur, this paper
offers new insights on the caste segmentation of
commerce in urban India and, specifically, the role of
kin networks and “community capital” in consolidating
Seelampur’s status as a key node within India’s
e-waste economy.
The authors are grateful to Seelampur’s traders for their time, patience,
and generosity. Two anonymous reviewers helped to substantially
improve our paper’s arguments.
Aakansha Jain (aj9344a@american.edu) is a PhD student at the
American University, Washington, DC, US. Vinay Gidwani (gidwa002@
umn.edu) teaches geography and global studies at the University of
Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, US.
62
There used to be wooden crushers, and pairs of buffaloes to run
it. The crushers would run all day. The entire family worked hard.
When we left the oil business, we started selling the metal parts of
the crusher.
— Haji Salman Malik, a trader and landlord in Seelampur
S
eelampur, a neighbourhood in Shahdara district of Delhi,
features regularly in policy reports, academic writings,
and popular media for its informal settlements, crowded
and narrow streets, communal tensions, poor sanitary condi-
tions, and—most prominently—as a “toxic sink” where elec-
tronic waste or e-waste from around the world is dismantled
and processed. This paper strives to alter and amend this
largely negative representation by showing the underlying so-
cial relations and rich spatial history of “place-making” that
has produced Seelampur as a key node within India’s e-waste
economy. Based on 10 months of ethnographic and survey
research, we extend the scholarship on the caste/community
segmentation of petty production and commerce in urban India;
specifically, the role of “familial capitalism” and kin networks
(Yanagisako 2002) in consolidating Seelampur’s distinctive
economy trajectory. We introduce the term “community capital”
to conceptualise the operations of kin networks in building
and sustaining Seelampur’s economy.
Seelampur is often identified with the large expanse of East
Delhi known as jamna-paar (trans-Yamuna). This imagined
Seelampur is in fact a coalition of various Muslim-majority
neighbourhoods: Shahdara, Old Seelampur, New Seelampur,
Jafrabad, and Maujpur. Thus, what is often called “Seelampur”
is a heterogeneous set of neighbourhoods with distinctive
histories of habitation and social divisions of labour. The
e-waste market in Seelampur, which is only one portion
of this diverse tract, is located along the Shahdara Drain
(the erstwhile Yamuna Canal) in the Old Seelampur area.
Adjoining the drain is the famous Gali Number Chaar (Lane
Number 4), which is the market’s oldest and most lucrative
trade centre. Various cross-sectional lanes make up the
remainder of the market. The traders in Gali Number Chaar
are generally the most established, purchasing large volumes
of stock through Metal Scrap Trade Corporation (MSTC)1
auctions and operating a dense network of pheriwalas to keep
their stocks replenished. During our survey of the market,
one of the traders mentioned that he employs as many as
150 pheriwalas, all of whom belong either to his extended
kin network or are acquaintances from his native village
in Uttar Pradesh.
february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

While the segmentation of urban markets and commodity
chains by caste and community is noted in the literature,
grounded explanations of its emergence are fewer. Aided
by the life history of a key e-waste trader in the Seelampur
market, as well as ethnographic and survey data, we show
how migrants from the Other Backward Classes (OBC) Muslim
Malik community from villages around Meerut and Muzaffar-
nagar, where they were historically called Teli for their rural
profession of oil pressing, were able to carve out a niche in
e-waste in Delhi’s Seelampur area. Without any specialised
education in dismantling discarded electrical appliances and
electronics, the Malik community’s journey from oil pressing
to e-waste as a path of capital accumulation is remarkable. Our
research reveals how “community capital” that confers eco-
nomic and social advantages—and creates barriers to entry by
outsiders—has been pivotal in consolidating and preserving
the niche monopoly of the Maliks in one portion of the urban
and regional e-waste value chain; correspondingly, how social
gatekeeping by non-Muslim entrepreneurs prevents the Maliks
from moving up in the chain.
Methodology
The fieldwork for this research began in June 2021, soon after
the second COVID-19 lockdown ended. The first phase included
visits to 10 specialised waste clusters in Delhi-National Capital
Region (NCR). These clusters can be classified into two catego-
ries—organised, for example, the PVC market in Tikri Kalan
and the Junk Market in Mayapuri (which were relocated by
the government in the 1990s to designated industrial areas on
the outskirts of the city) and unorganised, such as Old Seelam-
pur, New Seelampur, Shastri Park, Mustafabad, Behta, and
Turkman Gate for e-waste; Madanpur Khadar for plastic waste;
and Shastri Nagar for cardboard waste.2
In the second phase, we conducted oral history interviews
with 30 traders in the Old Seelampur market, along with
focus group discussions and conversations, animated by
cognitive mapping exercises, to understand the history of
the market and its place within a nationwide network. This
qualitative research was supplemented with a survey of
115 traders, who constitute 30% of the estimated total number
of shops in the market.3
‘Community Capital’ in the Emergence of Seelampur
Existing political economy and anthropological scholarship
has established the importance of caste and community in the
organisation of economic activity in urban India, particularly
markets and production clusters. Munshi (2019) hypothesises
that “internal cooperation allows castes to support the eco-
nomic activity of their members when market institutions are
missing or function imperfectly” (p 786). Informal caste-based
and kinship networks, he contends, solve “information and
commitment problems” (Munshi 2014: 49) in the recruitment of
workers and the maintenance of cooperation, via effective
sanctioning of transgressions. Networks can also provide a
system of risk-sharing and insurance. However, such short-term
efficiency gains must be counterposed to potential long-term
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
distortions in market competitiveness, as community “outsiders”
are prevented from entering; and as working-class members
of caste monopolies experience constraints on occupational
and spatial mobility, due to clientist relations with wealthier
members of their community and the economic and political
risk aversion it engenders.
Asking what sets apart caste groups who transitioned
into a business model based on their traditional profession
and those who did not, Munshi (2019) proposes that princi-
pally it is not difference in business acumen but, rather, a
lack of a large enough common shock that inhibits such
group mobility. For Seelampur’s Maliks, a historically agrarian
community, this collective shock was the advent of metal
crushers for oil pressing in the 1950s. 4 Baniya caste groups,
who were traditionally grocers and moneylenders and had
the financial wherewithal, were able to practise a form of
vertical integration by investing in this new technology and
instead of purchasing oil from the Malik Telis, they now set
up their own crushers. The Telis, whose traditional wooden
crushers were less efficient, were pushed out from the oil
business as a result.
When we asked Seelampur traders how Telis moved into the
scrap business when their oil business petered out, one of them
said, “When we had nothing, we had no shame.” On the face of
it, there is no obvious connection between the Maliks’ speciali-
sation in e-waste with their traditional occupation—except
that Muslim communities have often carved out niches in ac-
tivities that either involve unskilled manual labour (Epstein
1964), skilled labour that is labour-intensive and handed
down through systems of apprenticeship (Khalidi 1995), or
entail dealing with “polluting” materials shunned by Hindu
caste groups (Harriss-White 2002: 147; also Table 6.2, p 151).
Harriss-White, for instance, notes the complex trade networks
developed by Muslims for recycling plastic, cardboard, paper,
metal, and other forms of waste that caste Hindus or Jain
Baniyas were reluctant to handle. The earliest Malik migrants
to Seelampur, very likely in the 1970s, launched its informal
waste economy—a small number as traders and the rest as
pheriwalas, making a living from collecting and trading mixed
scrap. Haji Salman Malik, who first came to Seelampur in 1981
as a 15-year-old boy, remembers:
It was just like the village. People reared buffaloes and sold milk …
There were 5–10 Maliks in Seelampur back then, all of whom were in
waste work. Together they had around five shops and employed close
to fifty pheriwalas—all of whom were Maliks.
Gradually, a critical mass came to specialise in metal and elec-
trical scrap.
Early on, Timberg (1978) discusses how Marwari traders
were able to leverage traditional community institutions to
become industrial entrepreneurs. Harriss-White (2002: 15)
highlights how groups mobilise “social structures of accumu-
lation” (SSA)—“a range of non-state social structures, and the
ideas and cultural practices attached to them”—for economic
advantage and profit. She identifies class, gender, religion, and
caste as four principal SSA s in the Indian context but has less
to say on the ways in which social structures are mobilised.
63
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
Progression from workers to capitalists is a broader phenomenon.
Chari (2004) shows how the agrarian caste of Gounders in
Tamil Nadu was able to transition into Tiruppur’s urban knit-
wear sector and over time become a globally significant node
in the garment industry. Notably, it was the peasant–worker
class fraction of Gounders rather than the wealthier, landown-
ing ones who became proprietors and, in some instances,
hugely successful businesspersons of knitwear firms; suggest-
ing that landowning castes/classes with capital may have
social inhibitions for some forms of activity.
In the 1990s, after approximately two decades of dealing in
metal and electrical scrap, Seelampur’s Maliks began a transi-
tion to their current specialisation in e-waste. On being asked
how the e-waste business became popular, one of the traders
stated, bhedchal hai, aur kuch nahi (“it is nothing but herd
mentality”). This casual remark effaces the toil and imagina-
tion of Malik traders, who realised early the prospective value
that could be generated from materials found in discarded
electronic items and utilised their extensive kin networks to
identify sources of e-waste as well as markets for materials
salvaged from that detritus. The reference to “bhedchal”—a
bandwagon effect—also likely captures the benefits of grow-
ing numbers of transactors. The escalating likelihood of buyers
and sellers finding each other for mutual gain lubricates a
“virtuous cycle” of development—attracting more participants,
who can sustain even more trading activity.
As mentioned, there is a sturdy literature on the importance
of communal networks in capital accumulation. While Timberg
(1978), Rudner (1994), Harriss-White (2002), Chari (2004),
Birla (2008), Gill (2009), Munshi (2014), Basole (2015), and
Saraf (2020) are some exemplars from India, Yanagisako (2002)
and Rofel and Yanagisako (2019) offer keen insights into the
“familial capitalism” that underbeds firm production and
reproduction within the silk industry in Como, Italy. Yanagisako
(2002) generatively extends the concept of “sentiment”—
“emotional orientations and embodied dispositions”—to cap-
ture the dialectical relationship of economy and culture,
realms that she refuses to concede as separate. Illustratively,
the affective processes that saturate the extended kin network
of the Maliks has enabled them to establish trading outposts
staffed by kin and kin-based acquaintances across India. This
guarantees them a regular supply of e-waste “raw materials”
from which they have been able to generate value, either via
arbitrage or transformation (dismantling and/or processing)
to sustain their market primacy. In interviews, Seelampur
traders frequently stated something along the lines of, Aaj
poore Hindustan mei koi aisa shehar nahi hai jahan humara
aadmi pheri na phirta ho (“There is not a single city in Hindustan
where our man does not do pheri”). Prominent trade nodes in
terms of the volume of e-waste flows that lie within the orbit of
the Maliks’ sprawling kin network include Karnataka, Delhi-
NCR, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, and
Rajasthan (in that order).
We coin the term “community capital” to summarise the
range of economic advantages that are conferred by virtue of
belonging to a community and the complex of “sentiments”
64
(as per Yanagisako 2002) that accompany it, which facilitate a
process of capital accumulation, while creating barriers to
entry by outsiders. Advantages include the way by which
kin relations provide solutions to what Munshi (2014) calls
“information and commitment problems”: whether this is in-
formation about a current or prospective pheriwala’s reliability
and character; or trust in long-distance market transactions,
when distantly located pheriwalas procure maal of a stipulated
quality; or the ability to employ peer pressure to thwart or
sanction conduct that is transgressive. Other economic
advantages may include (although this is not uniformly the
case) a well-established path of entry into the e-waste business
for young Malik men, preferential access to credit, risk mitigation
through participation in rotating savings schemes with kinfolk,
infusion of capital through marriage alliances, information
sharing about new raw material sources and markets, market
collusion during auctions (for instance, when e-waste is pur-
chased from corporate entities), collective lobbying of officials
and politicians, and putting up a common front in the face of a
perceived external threat (whether from market rivals, state
authorities, or other social groups).
Consider one key advantage of “community capital”: when a
young man from the Malik community decides to move to the
city, he starts off as a pheriwala for an established trader in
Seelampur. Depending on the trade networks of the Seelampur
trader, he may be assigned to go to any city in India to begin
his journey in the e-waste business. Through this process, he
not only learns the “tricks of the trade” but often several new
languages that can be an asset in negotiations. De Neve (2008)
highlights how the caste and kinship model of labour mitigates
class conflict, while at the same time ensuring peer accounta-
bility and compliance. Crucially, since the Maliks involved in
the e-waste sector are all connected to each other through
common village and family ties, it is also easier for an aspiring
entrepreneur to secure start-up capital. The importance of kin
networks to “make it” in the waste business echoes Timberg’s
observation about the Marwari community’s intergeneration-
al success. “Communal customs,” he writes, “provided for ap-
prenticeships in which youngsters could learn the techniques
of business, and profit-sharing schemes by which they could
accumulate enough capital to start their own enterprises”
(Timberg 1978: 6).5 In our survey of Seelampur’s traders,
46% reported inheriting their business from a family member,
whereas the remaining leveraged community resources to
gain a market foothold.
An Oral History of Seelampur
There used to be farms owned by Gujjars here, where we are sitting
right now. This sewage drain used to be a canal used for irrigating the
fields. When I was 5 years old, there was a little water in it, but it was
not so black in colour
—Ali Baksh Chaudhary
Ali Baksh belongs to one of the oldest families in Seelampur
and is from a Muslim Chaudhary family. As a child growing
up in Seelampur, he witnessed first-hand its transformation
from an agrarian tract to a commercial one. His first memories
february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

of the market date back to the early 1980s, with four to
five scrap shops dealing in mixed waste but primarily metal.
The earliest known items to be traded included refrigerators,
electrical transformers, desert coolers, ceiling fans, transis-
tor radios, tape recorders, landline phones, and rubberised
wires. Over time, Old Seelampur evolved into the specialised
e-waste market that currently exists, trading mainly in
computer parts, television sets, cathode ray tubes, mobile
phones, X-ray films, copper wires, and white goods. The
highest value items are the ones with the most volume of
metal components, and the lowest value are plastics, card-
board, and batteries. Valuation is also dependent on the
effort required to process an item. For instance, wires and
X-ray films contain copper and silver, respectively, but are
not considered top-tier trade items because processing them
is labour-intensive.
Haji Salman Malik, who used to have a waste business and is
now a landlord and restaurant owner, has lived in Seelampur
for over 40 years. He remembers seeing a computer for the first
time in 1990. The e-waste business took off soon thereafter. By
the end of the decade, many Gujjar landowners, having sold
vacant plots in the area to the Maliks, moved into property
speculation or the land market business elsewhere in the NCR.6
One of the beneficiaries of the boom was Hameed Malik. We
animate the role of community capital in Seelampur’s rise with
the aid of his life story, while being mindful that his is but one
of many stories and trajectories.
Hameed is a 48-year-old trader from Khardoni village near
Meerut. He has been in the Seelampur market since 1998,
witnessing multiple ups and downs. “In 1982, my uncle moved
from the village to Meerut,” Hameed recalled.
He used to tell my father to move to Meerut too. Back then, my
father used to do pheri in Delhi [but would commute regularly to visit
his family in the village]. My father insisted that he liked living
in the village and that if he were to move, it would be to Delhi. It
did not make sense to move to Meerut and still go to Delhi to earn
his living.
In 1989, Hameed’s father bought a plot in the NCR by selling
off a small piece of agricultural land, which they were
allotted in the village during land reforms. The following
year, with savings from the scrap trade, he built a house
and moved his family from the village to (what were then)
Delhi’s outskirts.
Hameed used to visit Delhi often, either with his father
who worked in Shalimar Bagh or his uncle who worked in
Connaught Place. His entry into the waste business was not
immediate. He initially worked at a motor part repair shop in
Noida for three years. While some traders had entered the
waste business straightaway, aided by a family member or vil-
lage acquaintance, others like Hameed first tried their luck
elsewhere. When asked how he entered the waste business,
Hameed chuckled:
One day, I went to Connaught Place with my uncle. I saw boys my
age bringing the [waste] stock. I worked harder than they did, but
earned less money, and my clothes were always dirty with the grease
from the motor repair work. I told my uncle to buy me a cycle, that
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
I wanted to do pheri too. I got the cycle and ever since then I have
been a kabadiwala [scrap trader]. With my first income, I bought
branded shoes from Action, and a couple of pants and shirts from
Chandni Chowk … With just a few hours of work in the morning, I
could make `100– `200 in profit. We used to park our cycles outside
the LIC building and sit there to play cards with other pheriwalas. Of-
fice employees called us in to collect their waste, which we sold in A
block, Connaught Place. The security guards at the building would
not let others inside, but we had a good “setting” with them. They
used to play cards with us too.
By 1998, he had accumulated enough savings to start his
own copper scrap business. With part of his profits, he
purchased a plot in Seelampur in 2000 for `14 lakh, near the
sewage drain—the market’s commercial nerve centre. Profits
in subsequent years were robust. Hameed reinvested these
in the business and continued to prosper; until 2008, when
the global recession’s ripple effects reached all the way
to Seelampur.
And then out of the blue, copper prices crashed. I had no idea what
was happening. Tab itni knowledge nahi thi. I had a shop full of stock.
Creditors started asking for their money, but I couldn’t sell the stock.
Eventually, I sold off the stock at a loss and spent all my savings to pay
off the creditors. I was completely free.
It was not easy for Hameed to recover after the losses he
incurred, a fate shared by many other traders in the market.
Every day, I would come to the market and sit in front of my shop.
I let it out on rent and that sustained household expenses. Four
years ago, my brother-in-law came to me. He used to do some work
abroad. He had money but was always disgruntled. So, we started a
new business together to recycle “TV tower” scrap. The shop I own
is still rented out. We rented another plot on the market’s periphery
because it is cheaper.
Hameed was able to invest the difference from renting out
his lucrative, centrally situated plot in the market while leas-
ing cheaper space for his own new business on the market’s
edge. Many traders indulge in rental arbitrage and property
speculation to fund major lifecycle expenses like a daughter’s
wedding or for business expansion. Land markets can play an
important role in the evolution of a growing market like
Seelampur. Benjamin (1996), taking the example of the copper
wire market in nearby Vishwas Nagar, which has trading rela-
tionships with Seelampur, highlights how industrial activity
not only spurs growth in real estate prices, but also how real
estate surpluses can fund industrial expansion.
Social Composition and Spatial Dynamics of the Market
By becoming India’s largest e-waste recycling market, Seelampur’s
Maliks have become a presence in national and global recy-
cling networks (Ruthven 2008; Laha 2015; Corwin 2018).
However, due to anti-pollution regulations and market evolu-
tion, Seelampur is no longer a major site for e-waste recycling.
Seventy-four percent of traders in our survey said that they
only segregate their stock and sell without any disassembly
or processing. When we asked traders to identify the source
of their e-waste stock in at least one of four categories—
(i) intra-market trade, (ii) through pheriwalas, (iii) directly
through aggregators in other cities (outside Delhi), and
65
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
(iv) through MSTC auctions—69% reported conducting intra-
market trade, that is, aggregation based on product speciali-
sation; 38% employ pheriwalas; 20% directly purchase from
aggregators in other cities; and 17% purchase by bidding at
government or MSTC auctions.7
While Seelampur’s e-waste market is a stronghold of
Muslim traders, by no means does “community capital” imply
a homogeneous community. Our survey finds that 83.5%
of the market share is controlled by the Malik community,
3.5% each by the Qureshis and Chaudharys; and the rest
by the Mansuris, Pathans, Alvis, Rajputs, Idrisi, Sheikhs, and
Ansaris. These communities are further stratified by class,
sub-caste, area of rural origin, and religious sect. The seven
mosques near the market all practice Sunni Islam, but five of
those belong to the Deobandi sect, and one each to the Barelvi
and Ahle Hadees sects.8 In terms of rural provenance, around
53% of the Maliks belong to Meerut, 22% to Muzaffarnagar,
10% to Ghaziabad, and the remaining to Hapur, Hastinapur,
and Bulandshahr. Maliks are on the OBC list in Uttar Pradesh,
but in Delhi, they are in the general category.
Most of Seelampur’s traders, 62%, reported migrating to
Delhi without their families, who continue to reside in their
villages. They live in rented accommodation in or near the
market and travel back to their village on Thursday evening
to be with their families until Saturday morning. An addi-
tional 7% commute daily from villages in Meerut or Ghaziabad.
Several traders expressed resistance to the idea of moving to
Delhi, which they described as polluted, crowded, hostile,
and alienating. Many stated that it is too expensive to live
in the city with families. Of the 31% of traders who have
relocated with their families to Delhi, 28% own their accom-
modations: 16% in Seelampur and 12% in other neighbour-
hoods like Mustafabad and Ghaziabad; the remaining 3%
live in rental units.
The majority, 81%, of the traders in the market operates out
of rented shops, and rents in the market are as competitive as
any affluent neighbourhood on the other side of Yamuna. High
rents and proximity to home villages are two major reasons
why so many Maliks persist with a trans-local family system.
Even among commercial shop landlords, very few live with
their families. Due to the congested lanes in the market and
the bustle of commercial activity, it is considered unsuitable
for family life.
The market is male dominated at all levels of operation,
from traders to workers. The absence of female labourers is
attributed to the night-time working hours (when maal arrives),
as well as the physical strength required to load and unload
stock; although, clearly, patriarchal attitudes are also at play.
The few shops that employ female labourers do so for wire
stripping, a task with the lowest wage among all types of work.
Other e-waste markets in Delhi exhibit a similar pattern of
female exclusion from the workforce, except New Seelampur,
which exclusively specialises in wire stripping.
Women in the Malik community are expected to carry out
reproductive roles within the “hidden abode” of the extended
household, performing unremunerated care and reproductive
66
labour for the capital-managing male labour. Daughters are
strategically married off to trading families within the busi-
ness network to reinforce commercial ties.9 Since the Maliks
are endogamous, traders are enmeshed in dense webs of kin-
ship. In the marriage season, it is common for the market to be
completely shut or to find only a few traders around.
Apart from pheriwalas, there are karigars and palledars.
Karigars are workers with specialised knowledge, who segregate
and dismantle the waste into different types and subcomponents.
Most are seasonal migrants from Bihar and West Bengal. They
work on a daily wage basis, and sometimes do additional
contractual work after working hours. The more experienced
karigars, with intimate knowledge of electronic items and use
of mechanised tools, work on a monthly salary. Not all traders
employ karigars; many sort the waste themselves with the
help of one or more family members. Palledars help in loading
and unloading stock from trucks that arrives at night due to
citywide restrictions on the movement of commercial vehicles.
They are freelancers and not necessarily tied to one workshop.
Their wages fluctuate. Since fewer workers are available at
night, it is easier for them to negotiate higher wage rates for
nocturnal work.
The outflow of post-segregation waste from Seelampur is
patterned according to the base material: circuit boards to
Moradabad; plastic to Mundka and Narela; metal to Mandoli,
Shastri Park, Mayapuri and Jhilmil Industrial Area; CRT to
Burari and Lajpat Rai Market; and wires to New Seelampur
and Behta. While some of these clusters, like Moradabad and
New Seelampur, are Muslim-dominated neighbourhoods (by the
Qureshis and Ansaris, respectively), traders say that it is mostly
the Baniya or other Hindu communities who control the last
links in the e-waste value chain.
To move into a new line of recycling or up the value chain
(from pheri to shop to godown, like Hameed), or into recy-
cling circuits that are part of the formal economy, requires
large capital investment. In Meerut’s Partapur Industrial Area
and Alipur village, around five recycling companies owned
by the Maliks exist. These formally registered companies
often source their e-waste directly from corporates who must
comply with recycling mandates under the Extended Producer
Responsibility (EPR) rules.10 However, such involvement by
Maliks in the upper end of the value chain is uncommon.
available at
Skandaa Distributors
30-265/25/19, Flat No. S-1,
Sai Enclave, Geetha Nagar,
Near Sai Vidya Vihar,
RK Puram Post, Malkajgiri,
Hyderabad 500 056,
Telangana
9908074973
february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
 REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS

Furnaces for base metals, CRT recycling factories, and formal
e-waste recycling plants continue to be dominated by non-
Muslims, who employ their own forms of community capital to
safeguard durable processes of capital accumulation.
In Conclusion
We have sought to upend the conventional portrayal of
Seelampur as a “toxic sink” and present a different side: as a
place of business and belonging that has been painstakingly
developed into India’s largest informal e-waste market
through the toil and imagination of the OBC Malik commu-
nity, who were originally oil pressers in rural Meerut and
Muzaffarnagar districts.
While the market has grown organically and withstood
numerous economic and political jolts, bigger structural
challenges lie ahead. In the past few years, due to various
policies ranging from demonetisation and GST to COVID-19
lockdowns, interstate trade networks appear to be weaken-
ing. This poses a serious threat because trade in Seelampur
thrives on inflows of e-waste from other regions. Frequent
and severe external shocks have led entrepreneurs in other
states to build local recycling capabilities for some materials.
If a discarded cell phone ended up in its entirety in Seelampur
earlier, now only its circuit board might reach here, while
other components are sold off in the state of origin for further
recycling. Moreover, as electronics consumption continues to
grow, centres that were previously subsidiary can generate
enough waste to make local markets viable, allowing costs of
transportation to dominate gains from agglomeration and
thicker markets (higher prices, quicker transactions) in places
like Seelampur.
It is a moment of peril for Seelampur and its Malik traders.
Some like Hameed are well situated to diversify into new lines
of recycling. But many do not have that option.

Notes
1 MSTC India is a PSU under the Ministry of
Steel, and regularly holds auctions of metal
scrap from old vehicles and other discarded
metal products.
2 Seelampur is the central node of a larger e-waste
network with smaller regional nodes that dis-
play similarities with Seelampur, and yet have
taken different routes of emergence. New
Seelampur’s wire stripping market (2 kilome-
tres [km] away from Old Seelampur market),
for example, is dominated by Ansari Muslim
community from Aligarh and Bulandshahr in
Uttar Pradesh, who migrated to Delhi before
independence and were resettled in New
Seelampur colony. Shastri Park’s e-waste mar-
ket (4 km away from Seelampur) specialises in
hard disks and magnets and is a stronghold of
the Mansuri community from Bareilly; it has a
strong trade network with the Mayapuri met-
al scrap market. Other noteworthy nodes are
in Mustafabad, Mandoli, Loni, and more re-
cently Dasna Industrial Area and Partapur In-
dustrial Area. Ruthven (2008) explores the
metal market of Moradabad, where a majority
of Seelampur’s traders sell circuit board scrap.
By contrast, Corwin (2018) studied the refur-
bished electronics market in Nehru Place,
which is mostly Hindu dominated and has
weaker trade links with Seelampur.
3 Our survey adopted a spatial purposive sampling
method for the 350+ shops in Seelampur. We
sought to cover one-third of the traders in
each lane of the e-waste market. The rationale
was to capture different type of activities in
different parts of the market, as well as all
levels of traders. Smaller traders often operate
within side lanes with lower rents, while the
larger traders dominate the broader lanes
where transportation is easier and the busi-
ness more lucrative.
4 It is hard to accurately date the displacement of
Maliks from the oil pressing business given lack
of written records. However, our oldest inter-
locutors who were in their 70s noted that the
oil business had already begun to decline in
their childhood.
5 This also concords with Kaveri Gill’s (2009)
analysis of the Khatik community that domi-
nates the PVC plastic trade in the NCR.
6 We base this on anecdotal evidence gleaned
from key informant interviews. The fate and
fortunes of East Delhi’s erstwhile Gujjar land-
owners is ripe for future study.
7 Since these categories are overlapping, the pro-
portions do not add up to 100%.
8 These sub-sects are unique to South Asian
Muslims and have a history of contentious rela-
tions in some regions (Jackson 2013).
9 Traders in Seelampur would often remark that
Maliks are like Baniyas—in the sense that they
prefer starting their own business instead of
working for someone in a job; and their weddings,
which are ostentatious, are also a customary
way of cementing strategic business alliances.
10 As per the Government of India’s E-Waste
(Management) Rules, 2016, all producers of
electrical and electronic equipment (EEE) are
required to ensure that “end-of-life EEE (E-Waste)
generated from the products … are channelised
to authorised dismantlers/recyclers.” See, htt-
ps://cpcb.nic.in/uploads/Projects/E-Waste/
notice_for_producers_01-08-2017.pdf.
References
Basole, Amit (2015): “Informality and Flexible
Specialization: Apprenticeships and Knowl-
edge Spillovers in an Indian Silk Weaving
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Factory: The Influence of Land Development
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Delhi, India,” PhD thesis, Massachusetts: Massa-
chusetts Institute of Technology.
Birla, Ritu (2008): Stages of Capital: Law, Culture,
and Market Governance in Late Colonial India,
Durham: Duke University Press.
Chari, Sharad (2004): Fraternal Capital: Peasant
Workers, Self-Made Men, and Globalization in
Provincial India, California: Stanford University
Press.
Corwin, Julia (2018): “Circuits of Capital: India’s
Electronic Waste in the Informal Global
Economy,” PhD thesis, Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota.
De Neve, Geert (2008): “‘We Are All Sondurkarar
(Relatives)!’: Kinship and Its Morality in an
Urban Industry of Tamil Nadu, South India,”
Modern Asian Studies, Vol 42, No 1, pp 211–46.
Epstein, T Scarlett (1964): Economic Development
and Social Change in South India, Manchester:
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Gill, Kaveri (2009): Of Poverty and Plastic: Scaveng-
ing and Scrap Trading Entrepreneurs in India’s
Urban Informal Economy, Oxford University Press.
Harris-White, Barbara (2002): India Working: Essays
on Society and Economy, Cambridge: Cambridge
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Jackson, William Kesle (2013): “A Subcontinent’s
Sunni Schism: The Deobandi-Barelvi Rivalry
and the Creation of Modern South Asia,” PhD
thesis, New York: Syracuse University.
Khalidi, Omar (1995): Indian Muslims since Inde-
pendence, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House.
Laha, Somjit (2015): “(In)formality in E-waste
Movement and Management in the Global
Economy,” PhD thesis, Manchester: University
of Manchester.
Munshi, Kaivan (2014): “Community Networks and
the Process of Development,” Journal of Eco-
nomic Perspectives, Vol 28, No 4, pp 49–76.
— (2019): “Caste and the Indian Economy,” Journal
of Economic Literature, Vol 57, No 4, pp 781–34.
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cating Transnational Capitalism, Durham and
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Colonial India: The Nattukotai Chettiars,
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Ruthven, Orlanda (2008): “Metal and Morals in
Moradabad: Perspectives on Ethics in the
Workplace Across a Global Supply Chain,” PhD
thesis, Oxford: University of Oxford.
Saraf, Ishani (2020): “‘We Too Have Blackened Our
Hands’: Work, Harm, and Legitimacy in a Delhi
Scrap Market,” Anthropology of Work Review,
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Wadala East
Mumbai 400 037

Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8 67
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
Planning the Informal
Locating Street Vending in Master Plans Post 2014
Aravind Unni
The paper posits that the progressive policies of spatial
protection for the street vendors in the Street Vendors
(Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street
Vending) Act, 2014 directly contradict the state planning
practices of addressing informality that rests on
restrictive control of the informal and centralisation
of planning powers, thereby arguing for social
justice-centred reforms in urban planning acts and
policies. The paper will focus on the case of Delhi’s
master planning history and process, especially in the
lead-up to the draft master plan for Delhi 2041.
The author would like to thank Saktiman Ghosh and Mecanzy Dabre of
NHF for their valuable insights on the paper.
Aravind Unni (aravindunni85@gmail.com) is an urban activist and
researcher currently pursuing PhD in the School of Habitat Studies at
the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. He is associated with the
National Hawker Federation and the Main Bhi Dilli Campaign, Delhi.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8
U
rban planning in the form of master plans vis-à-vis
informalities remains exclusionary since modern plan-
ning in India. The state’s presence and control over the
planning process have loosened and liberalised planning
practices have brought in reforms allowing the accumulation
of capital and space, furthering informality in Indian cities.
Informality, though viewed as “obstacles” to world-class
“smart” cities in contemporary times, is forcing the normative
planning process to be inclusive and adaptive to the diverse
range of informalities. One such case is of the street vendors
and vending in Indian cities.
The paper builds on the existing body of work to interrogate the
intersection of urban planning, urbanisation, and informality—
focusing on street vending in Indian cities. Urban planning as
a practice and its origins in a colonial city is well-documented
(Das 1981; Gupta 2005). Urban planning post independence
was implemented in a “scientific,” “expert-driven” approach fit
for orderly development but resulted in creating large “Shadow
Cities” (Johnson-Roehr 2015; Shaw 1996). Master planning thus
remained technocratic and detached from complex realities
of a predominantly poor population for much of the decades
after the 1960s (Mahadevia et al 2009; Batra 2009).1 While
increasingly disgruntled by formal planning practices in the
1990s, there was a new discourse on how normative planning
can be an instrument for urban development (Ahluwalia 2015;
Pethe et al 2014). On the contrary, another body of work ques-
tions the very instrument of planning (Roy 2009; Bhan 2009).
In the millennial cities, courts employed the plans and laws
to reshape the imagination of cities. While in the 1970s–1980s,
courts advocated justice for the poor and marginalised in cities
(Chitalkar and Gauri 2019; Tellis 2015), urban centres experi-
enced an increased economic boom post liberalisation, with
the workforce increasingly becoming informal and worker
collectives marginalised (Bhattacharjee 1999; Monte 2002).
Informality and non-conformity with city imaginations started
to be removed through policies, incentives, or courts and reflected
the fragmented urbanisation patterns (Bhan 2009). The city of
the 2000s has been transformed into a deeply contested space
with numerous stakeholders, characterised by a polarisation
of urban discourse with the middle class having a veto on city
decisions (Bhide 2009). Though resisting this onslaught of
global capital, the urban poor were increasingly struggling
to employ the strategies of “vote bank politics” and tactics
of negotiation (Benjamin 2008). Presently, in its facilitative
“avatar,” the state is trying to create a policy environment for
45
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
enhancing private investments. The post-2014 “smart” city aims to
symbolise “efficiency, speed, and scale” (Datta 2015; Anand et al
2018; Unni 2019). Informality, synonymous with slums (informal
settlements), has been well studied, from policy regression where
slums were accommodated in cities of the 1970s, to the hostile
post liberalisation discourse on slum-free cities (Bhide 2009).
On street vendors, the dominant focus has been on understanding
them as workers and their vending practices (Bhowmik 2005),
the constituency, their needs (Saha 2011), their daily negotiations
(Anjaria 2006), as well as coordinated city-level responses and
exchanges with the state (Bandyopadhyay 2011). Informality,
specifically street vending, and its intersection with formal urban
planning practices have not been adequately explored. Con-
sidering that street vendors through the newly promulgated
Street Vendors Act account for a vast count of urban livelihoods,
it is a critical gap that this enquiry has tried to bridge.
This inquiry ascertains how the master plans accommodate
(or exclude) the spatial allocation and regulation provisions
delineated in the Street Vendors Act. The paper will focus
specifically on the case of the draft master plan for Delhi
(MPD) 2041. The primary document of the study will be the
MPD 2041, which has been compared with the preceding plans
and their provisions vis-à-vis street vending. The paper first
looks at the evolution of master planning, its basic architec-
ture, and its legislative framework. The paper then delves
into critically examining the Street Vendors Act, 2014, high-
lighting its key provisions and implementation. The following
section discusses the insights from the draft MPD 2041 and its
implications for street vending in the city. To conclude, the
paper dwells upon why and how urban planning in the
present form excludes street vending from the master plans
and the crevices within the formal planning process and legis-
lative protection results in further marginalisation of lives
and livelihoods in the city.2
Evolution of Master Planning in India
In the decades following independence, master plans emerged
as the formal tool for planning cities in India.3 In 1955, the
union government formed the town planning organisation
(TPO) to prepare the MPD, which transformed into the town
and country planning organisation (TCPO) in 1962 and repli-
cated across major cities.4 While master planning continued to
be the dominant form of the planning tool till the 1980s, it was
often undermined even in the 1970s through parastatals that
diluted the powers of “official” master planning (Idiculla 2017).
Starting with the 1990s, the master plans, representing the
conventional “land-use” centric planning, failed to “reform” the
rapidly changing scenario in Indian cities. Under pressure
from the post liberalisation discourse and criticised for their
unscientific, conservative approaches, overt state control and
the proliferation of informalities, the master plans as instru-
ments of city planning were cited as failures (D’Souza 1991).
Though there were attempts by the TCPO in the late 1990s to
reframe master planning for contemporary needs through the
Urban Development Plans Formulation and Implementation
(UDPFI) guidelines, it proved to be inadequate.5
46
More than the official plans themselves, it was the subversions
by people, both poor and the elite, and by the state, which pro-
duced the real arena of urban development (Mahadevia and
Joshi 2009). Increasingly into the new millennium, with
heightened contestations over space in cities, starting with the
metropolitan areas, master plans have been employed to vilify
the informal, specifically people-built shelters and livelihoods
of the urban poor under the garb of violations.6 An epochal
shift in city planning was led through the Jawaharlal Nehru
National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) and the Smart
City Missions that have further recentralised the city plans.7
Master plans are increasingly perceived as inadequate and ir-
relevant and remain overridden by numerous ad hoc planning
measures, powerful schemes and agencies. The latest report
by the NITI Aayog underscores the situation of city planning or
the lack thereof in Indian cities. The report cites that as many
as 65% of the 7,933 urban settlements do not have any master
plan (Niti Aayog 2021). Though the report further states that
the “business-as-usual” approach will not be sustainable and
needs to be addressed on multiple fronts—legislative, organi-
sational, procedural, and human resources, it conspicuously
leaves out the issue of informality and its absence in the plan-
ning paradigm itself (PIB 2021).
Street Vending in Indian Cities
Street vending is a defining characteristic of Indian cities, usually
associated with temporary and insecure occupancy of the street
but is acknowledged as providing cheap goods and services for
a large section of India’s city dwellers (Sengupta 2007). As the
colonial powers established control over the streets, hawking
was seen as an “obstruction,” a “problem,” and a “threat” to
public order leading to municipal laws being enacted that re-
stricted street vending (Kidambi 2007; Kidambi et al 2019). In
newly independent India, the state’s focus on street vendors
was limited, and the cities were mostly uncontested, with the
state allowing room for informality to be accommodated. Most
large Indian cities saw the licensing system for hawkers come
to a standstill in the late 1970s; following this, the increasing
contestations, judicial–government interventions for regulation
and eviction became a standard feature. Violent eviction drives
in the early 1980s led to a three-decade-long judicial tussle
that would culminate in the Street Vendors Act of 2014.8 By the
1990s, “negotiated” settlements led to numerous vendors stak-
ing claims in the city (Anjaria 2006). In contrast to individual
negotiations, the vendors also came together for “collective ac-
tion” for policy suggestions and self-regulation of street vending
(Bandyopadhyay 2011). The 2000s saw increasing academic
and civil society interest and counter-mobilisation by street
vendors, leading to the policies of 2004, 2009, and then the
Street Vendors Act in 2014 (Bhowmik 2005; Saha 2011).
The Promulgation of the Street Vending Act, 2014
In 2014, the union government enacted the Street Vendors
(Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending)
Act.9 Designed to “protect” and “regulate” street vending in
urban areas, until then, “regulation” was synonymous with
february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

“removal” (Chauhan and Unni 2022), and the Street Vendors Act
attempted to fundamentally alter that mindset through its key
principles and provisions. It ensured that until surveyed, they
could not be evicted and allowed for an independent framework
of governance that is representative, participatory and decen-
tralised, primarily led by the town vending committee (TVC)
located in urban local bodies (ULBs). The representative TVC
will have elected vendor representatives from different social
backgrounds. The law gave a population norm of 2.5% of the
city population as engaged in street vending and assured
“space” for vending. Lastly, various inclusionary measures for
the legal support and promotion of street vendors through
vendors’ welfare, training, and capacity building were laid out,
along with the crucial inclusion in master plans (Sherstra 2020).
Despite the many years since the Street Vendors Act, the law
lacks effective implementation, evictions and harassment
against vendors continue (Sales 2018; Narang and Bedi 2020).
With the peculiarity of Delhi’s governance and multipolar
political structure, street vendors are navigating a complicated
time-space. Though Delhi’s rules and schemes formed as per
the Street Vendors Act are better than other states, one of the
few states where elected TVCs exist with a more favourable
state government, it remains among the most underperform-
ing states. There are 28 TVCs in Delhi and yet most remain in-
active and unable to function to effectively implement the
Street Vendors Act. The survey for vendors is currently underway
and is in the concluding stages. Only around 77,000 vendors
have been surveyed out of the estimated 3 lakh vendors
(Chhabra 2022). Planning for vending zones will be a crucial
step to regularise vendors in the coming years.
The Delhi Master Plans: A Snapshot
In the last 60 years, Delhi has witnessed three master plans,10
that is, MPD 1962, 2001, and 2021. Currently, the Delhi Devel-
opment Authority (DDA) has drafted its fourth master plan for
2041. The first master plan was published in 1962 to address
the post-partition crisis for an organised urban development,
led by a vision of large-scale acquisition and development of land.
The DDA master plan was to be revised in 1982 to formulate the
MPD 2001 that was published almost a decade later in 1990,
and then re-revised in 2007 to form the MPD 2021 (DDA nd).
The MPD 2001, even though conceptualised at the cusp of the
liberalisation era, still envisaged the plan as a public sector-
led process with little private participation. This remained the
case till economic reforms were reflected in planning and were
evident in MPD 2021 (DDA nd). In the MPD 2021, the city plan was
already riding high on the imagination of being a world-class
city. The plan put forth many firsts, including recognising
the private sector as a major player and “reform-influenced”
participatory planning process at local levels.
The draft of the MPD 2041 came with a promise to “foster a
sustainable, liveable and vibrant Delhi by 2041” (Mishra 2021).
The draft was up for the mandatory suggestion–objection
in June–August 2021 and received a strong response of
over 33,000 inputs from the public (ET Online 2021). The
“public” consultations were held after that over a two-month
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
window—organised objectionably through videoconferencing,
till November 2021 and awaiting the central government’s
assent. The process “unofficially” was more participatory and
engaging, allowing room for sharing different sectoral demands,
especially for civil society organisations, but failed to deliver
concrete actionables (Idiculla 2022). The draft plan, though
seemingly progressive in “terminologies” employed, paves the
way to further private sector-led development without adequate
accountability on robust deliverables for the urban poor and
informal sector, with the state and the DDA donning the role
of “facilitator.”
The Case of ‘Missing’ Street Vendors
Informality has often been relegated to the margins in formal
planning practices. Unlike street vending, the informal settle-
ments called slums or bastis, the dominant form of housing for
the urban poor, find notable mention and policy allocation
starting from the first MPD 1962 onwards. Street vending was
first mentioned as an “informal sector” only in the second mas-
ter plan—MPD 2001—under the “Trade and Retail” section
(DDA 1962). The plan defined “informal unit” as a category and
positively acknowledged that large sections are engaged in
informal sector trade. The draft plan highlighted the number
of informal units as 1.39 lakh and documented 95 weekly
markets in Delhi. The MPD 2001 allocates a norm for informal
units/shops in formal shopping centres, suggesting that such
allocations will control the “unauthorized” development of in-
formal shops. The plan, under the section of “Informal Sector,”
also mentions that many informal units are outside the pur-
view of the licensing system of teh-bazari11 and suggested
norms for informal units vis-à-vis formal planning units like
retail trade, offices, hospitals, bus terminals, schools, and other
developments proposed in the MPD 2001 (DDA 1990).
The plan also proposed norms for temporary weekly markets
and recommended the utilisation of plots so that weekly markets
could be accommodated flexibly. The MPD 2021 enacts similar
provisions and norms as MPD 2001. It proposes spatial allocations
and introduces a category of norms as “service markets” and
“informal bazaars” as opposed to informal units within commer-
cial centres, thereby further upscaling the unit of planning for the
informal vending shops (DDA 2007). For the informal sector, it
refers to the principles laid down in the then relevant National
Policy for Street Vendors, 2004 and looks at hawking zones,
weekly markets through a lens of “law-and-order maintenance,”
wherein hawking zones could be “decided by local bodies with
RWAs in consultation.” While continuing the norms of MPD
2001 for the informal sector, the master plan purged referenc-
es and norms of weekly markets. There is also a perceptible
change in the articulation of street vending between the MPD
2001 vis-à-vis 2021 from being a critical part of city life to a
disorderly activity that needs to be formalised and controlled.
There was anticipation that since the draft MPD 2041 is the
first one after the Street Vendors Act’s enactment, street vend-
ing will be formalised in MPD. The draft MPD 2041 begins on a
positive note by placing upfront that “the informal sector is the
largest employer in the city engaging approximately 70% of
47
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
Delhi’s workforce” and “there is a need to improve the quality
of workspaces and opportunities for the sector” (DDA 2021).
The draft mentions the concerns of street vendors that emerge
in various parts of the master plan, thereby perfunctorily
mainstreaming and drawing interlinkages with many aspects
of the street vending, economy, streets, and public space. The
plan offers to provide “adequate space norms” with the aim of
“incremental absorption into emerging formal economies.” Yet
the draft plan disappointed the many street vendor collectives
and civil society organisations who were advocating for an un-
ambiguous and inclusive master plan. Aside from vague men-
tions about Delhi accommodating more street vendors in the
section on “Informal Economy,” there are no details on how
that accommodation will unfold and be enacted along with
implementing the Street Vendors Act, 2014.
The most striking example of the non-inclusions of street
vending in the draft MPD 2041 is the absence of any mention of
the Street Vendors Act and its principles related to planning
for street vendors. This is when popular schemes and policies
related to urban development, like the Pradhan Mantri Awas
Yojana-Urban, Smart Cities Mission (SCM), and Swachh Bharat
Mission (SBM), are repeatedly referred to and incorporated into
the master plan’s draft document (DDA 2021). Further, the draft
plan is supposed to predict the future needs of people based on
the projected growth rates. This is critical as in 2041, as per the
estimates suggested, 7.5 lakh street vendors will be operating in
Delhi as per the 2.5% norm in the Street Vendors Act. The draft
MPD 2041 also fails to mention the “number” of street ven-
dors engaged in street vending and does not calculate the esti-
mated number for 2041. The document also makes a very sur-
prising omission concerning the vendors, street vending and their
governance. The draft mentions that vending zones will be
decided in the “layout phase” of the plan, which is contradictory
to the process in the Street Vendors Act, 2014, wherein the
powers to plan and recommend vending zones are with the
TVC. Also, the draft MPD 2041 acknowledges the street vendors
and attempts to formulate standards for them in the develop-
ment control norms (DCNs) but confuses street vendors and
vending with “informal sector units”12 as in the last versions of
MPD 2001 and 2021 and provides prescriptive norms for “infor-
mal markets” and “informal sector units” in DCN. While reser-
vation and norms for “units” are a welcome step, the lack of
definitional clarity and the arbitrary norms of informal units
based on MPD 2001 from the 1980s calculations will only cause
confusion. Finally, the draft MPD 2041 fails to offer protection
or norms to the existing 2,500+ weekly markets and numerous
natural markets while proposing ambiguous points hinting
that local authorities may use multiple spaces with the flexibil-
ity of land use for temporary weekly markets (Dey 2021).
In August 2021, sensing the impending recognition of street
vendors through the survey and possible inclusion in the master
plan, a pre-emptive petition was filed by various associations
of traders and shopkeepers on the principal ground of viola-
tion of their constitutional rights as legitimate businesses.
Leading to a series of evictions of vendors vending in formal
markets of Delhi. Upon hearing petitions by market traders
48
associations, the Delhi High Court questioned the very basis of
the Street Vendors Act and stated that
The country will go to dogs if this act is implemented in its entirety.
What will happen if street vendors start sitting on your doorsteps?
— Thapliyal (2021)
The court noted that the Street Vendors Act is heavily “tilted”
towards street vendors, and the TVC lacks “experts.” One of the
key arguments presented in the case was how the Street Vendors
Act violated the MPD 2021 norms, thereby flipping the argu-
ment that MPD 2021 norms are being violated by present street
vending. The latest draft of MPD 2041 also carries forward the
same legacy by deliberately excluding any substantial mention
of street vendors. It is not coincidental that the New Delhi
Muncipal Committee (NDMC) “smart city” plans, like many
other smart city plans, have excluded street vending from the
plans and demarcated the famous inner circle of Connaught
Place as “pedestrianized,” “hawker-free” zones (NDMC 2015).
Exclusion of Street Vending from Master Planning
The case of street vendors in Delhi and their absence from the
draft master plan 2041 give a good antecedence to the impend-
ing challenges of implementing the Street Vendors Act in Indi-
an cities and how its implementation is resisted, diluted, and
excluded from formal planning practices led by the state.
The Street Vendors Act is an outlier and contradicts the
existing dominant neo-liberal urban logic that aims to digitise,
simplify, clean the land titles, and declutter the policy regime
for easier centralised planning. The state is used to purging or
restricting informality through evictions, removals, cut-off dates,
fines, and other forms of control; the Street Vendors Act that
“protects” the street vendors and assures “space” for street
vending negates this very arbitrary state control. It is here that
the Street Vendors Act becomes a contradiction that the state and
its bureaucratic machinery is unable to resolve. Also, the provi-
sion of a norm of 2.5% population that ensures de facto protection
for the vendors—existing and in the future—is the other con-
tentious clause that is unpalatable to the state. The 2.5% norm,
though seemingly inconsequential, is nothing but a reverse accu-
mulation of land and space as in the Street Vendors Act that forces
planning to be ever accommodative to formalise and recognise
user-livelihood rights of the street vendors, as opposed to the
land-property value optimisation argument of the state.
Modern planning and its aversion to informality are rooted in a
colonial fear of the unknown “native other;” in postcolonial
independent India, the fear of and the need to control urbanisa-
tion have indeed given way to more reformist neo-liberal flexible
practices that facilitate development and promote world-class
infrastructure. But for the informal, planning has remained
vexed in the past and continues to paint it negatively as “illegal
encroachments.” Thereby, the need for planning to regulate
and ascribe a location to vending conflates street vendors as
location-specific “units,” “shops,” and “markets,” is forcing the
imagination of informal street vendors into “formal” shops. It
forces a form of regularisation that disregards the fundamental
principles of street vending based on the vending enterprise’s
flexibility, scaling, and self-planning, a form of flexibility that
february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
 REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS

is non-existent in laws, practice, and pedagogy that surrounds
mainstream planning.
Decentralisation of powers has been a forever concern in urban
governance in India. Unlike the rural, attempts to decentralise
urban planning have not yielded benefits. Urban planning,
though part of mandatory functions under the ULBs, has remained
centralised since its inception, led by “experts” and then by the
bureaucracy at the state level. This has not changed even in
the post-Constitution (74th Amendment) Act, 1992 reforms,
which aimed to take governance closer to people. The planning
has been further recentralised, with an ever-increasing array
of agencies and bodies to mediate. The Street Vendors Act and its
provisions, especially that of the TVC, aim for a more participa-
tory democratic decision-making vis-à-vis street vendors. The
TVCs currently, under the leadership of the chairperson of ULB,
are usually rudderless without any spatial articulations of
vending needs. ULBs are not engaging with the plans process
usually managed by state-level parastatals and are ill-
equipped to deal with the implementation. It is this lack of de-
centralisation of powers of planning that effectively denies
any relevant agency to the TVCs to operate and function.
Urban planning practice and its legislations remain aloof
from the “social reforms” and “constitutional mandates” of
post-independent India; without any (continuous) reforms
concerning social justice in the political sphere, they have
mostly remained restrictive and non-inclusive in Indian cities,
while focusing primarily on the material development of infra-
structure in cities. The gradual marginalisation of convention-
al master planning itself in favour of episodic schemes and
projects has also meant that master plans and agencies like
TCPO that are meant to guide planning frameworks have lost
their importance. This lack of social justice and reformist ap-
proaches within the planning framework has meant that acts
like the Street Vendors Act and bodies like the TVC struggle to
find space in the same to manoeuvre and effectively act to im-
plement the legislation for the welfare of vendors.
Equality in law does not guarantee equality in social life.
Even though legalised and protected, the labels of street vendors
are still viewed as “illegal” and as “usurpers” of space in the cities.
The courts’ jurisprudence, egged by the wider social–political
discourse of world-class cities, discriminate against the vendors
and place their livelihood rights at a lesser value than that of
other urban rights of pedestrians, traffic, cars, parking, open
spaces, shops, and so on. This discourse is also shrouded within
the language of the middle-class taxpaying citizen whose rights
are more valued and protected vis-à-vis the street vendors.
Lastly, also with respect to the schemes in the urban, priorities,
and focus of the state agencies is usually on the ones that have
national rankings, resources, and impetus like SBM, SCM, and
so on, therefore leaving less lucrative master plans and non-
priority laws like the Street Vendors Act on the back burner. These
policies are then tough to implement, especially when the laws
do not overlap with the prominent missions and schemes. The
changed terrain of struggle for the street vendors is also evident.
The street vendor collectives that were adept at localised struggles
and negotiations found them out of place and ill-prepared in
the present context. The spatiality of the law and ensuing court
interventions caught the street vendors and their mobilisations
off-guard. The vendors’ collectives are struggling to deal with
courts that are unwilling to support the vendors and leave the
“discretion” to the TVC and the laws to take its “own course,”
especially on matters where conflict with formal plans arises.
Conclusions
The paper attempted to articulate and map the contradictions
between the Street Vendors Act and the formal state-led master
plans. A progressive policy that protects the street vendors is now
not reflected in master plans, thereby continuing the exclusion
of street vendors in the city’s spatiality, even though vending
as a practice is legal. The Street Vendors Act is fundamentally
against the principles of the neo-liberal urban framework and
vision and calls for a reverse accumulation of space for marginal
groups and continuous accommodation of user-livelihoods
rights over property-value rights. It also highlights that the
ambitious TVC function depends on the representative decen-
tralisation of powers of the Street Vendors Act and goes
against the trend of increased re-centralisation in the urban
polity. And finally, urban planning vis-à-vis master plans has
remained aloof from reforms that place social justice as its
principle instead of financial and market reforms for profita-
bility. To conclude, the urban schemes and policies at the na-
tional level that remain blind to the Street Vendors Act and
street vendors need a strong mainstreaming measure and
rights framework to be consciously brought into the urban
missions and projects that will aid in the better implementation
of the law. This approach will ensure to formalise, regulate,
and protect numerous livelihoods and have a long-standing
impact on the lives of street vendors across the country.

Notes more participatory have informed and strength- https://smartnet.niua.org/content/d19f4f87-

1 Master plan as a terminology is contrary to the
democratic principles of planning. “Master,” here,
connotes power and expert-driven planning.
2 The research is also informed by practice and
engagement with numerous stakeholders, includ-
ing the National Hawker Federation (NHF) with
whom I have learned and contributed as an activist
and urban practitioner–researcher to the street
vendors’ mobilisations. And from the urban
planning perspective, the experiences of being a
core group member of Main Bhi Dilli (2018–ongo-
ing) and Hamara Shehar Mumbai (2012–17)
campaign that aimed to make the master plan-
ning process for Delhi and Mumbai, respectively,
ened my analysis presented in this paper.
3 In India, town planning is a state function and
is not included in the concurrent list. For details
on the bifurcation of powers between the union
and ttate governments, see https://www.mea.
gov.in/Images/pdf1/S7.pdf.
4 In 1957, the Central Urban and Regional Plan-
ning Organization (CRUPO) was created. The
two organisations (TPO and CRUPO) were
later merged. For more details on TCPO, see
http://tcpo.gov.in/.
5 UDFPI guidelines were amended in 2014 and
they are now: Urban and Regional Develop-
ment Plans Formulation and Implementation
(URDPFI) Guidelines. For more details, see
aaa1-4e9a-9651-534cb28ddd3c.
6 Of late, especially post 2000s, there are various
hues of civil society collectives that are engag-
ing with formal master planning processes to
stake their claims in the city. The best examples
are from Delhi, Bengaluru, and Mumbai. Sajha
Manch in Delhi, Hamara Shehar Mumbai, Main
Bhi Dilli are some examples, where various civil
society organisations have engaged with urban
planning processes and are aiming to further
democratise spaces of participation and ad-
dress the needs of informal settlements and
increasingly informal livelihoods. Using rain-
bow coalitions of academics, activists, and
organisations, these collectives have made a

Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8 49
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
little wiggle room for negotiations with formal
planning mechanisms.
7 The JNNURM was a massive city modernisa-
tion scheme launched by the union government in
2005 under the Ministry of Urban Develop-
ment. National Smart Cities Mission is an ur-
ban renewal and retrofitting programme started
by the union government with the mission to
develop smart cities across the country. It was
launched in 2015 by the then Ministry of Urban
Development that is now the Ministry of Hous-
ing and Urban Affairs.
8 The litigation for informal livelihoods and hous-
ing rights started from the judgment in Olga
Tellis v Bombay Municipal Corporation in 1985,
to the landmark order of the Supreme Court in
Maharashtra Ekta Hawkers Union v Municipal
Corporation, Greater Mumbai in 2013. This or-
der paved way for the Street Vendors Act that
was promulgated in 2014.
9 Salient features of the act include the following:
The act begins with the important definitions. The
act also lays out the role of the TVC, its composi-
tion, powers, and functions. Thereafter, it defines
the regulations for street vendors; classification
of vendors and issuance of the vending certificate;
appeals; rights of street vendors in the act; pro-
visions of eviction and seizure; disputes redressal
mechanisms for the street vendors; provisions
of punishment; power and role of the government;
the rules and regulations of vending in vending
free zones or restricted and designated zones.
Under the provisions of rules and regulations,
the act gives provision of the amenities and the
maintenance charges to be given by the vendors;
penalties and the collection of taxes and fees in
the vending zones; regulation of the traffic in
the vending areas; regulation of the quality of
goods provided to the public and maintenance
of the hygiene and cleanliness in the vending
zones; regulations of the civic services and
other matters that seems suitable in the vend-
ing areas. For more details, see https://legisla-
tive.gov.in/sites/default/files/A2014-7.pdf.
10 A master plan includes analysis, recommendations,
and proposals for a city’s population, economy,
housing, transportation, community facilities, and
land use. They consists of future directions of
development, policy, and implementation of the
same. They can have a significant role in determin-
ing the shape of the urban environment and are
usually prepared for 20 years of the horizon
period. The Delhi master plan has been prepared
under the Delhi Development Authority Act 1957.
11 Teh-bazari literally translates into the selling of
goods on the ground. This was an older licencing
scheme launched to protect and formalise infor-
mal traders in the 1980s. For more details, see
https://mcdonline.nic.in/miscedmc/web/citi-
zen/info.
12 Draft MPD 2041 conflates and confuses the in-
formal unit with the street vendor. The defini-
tion ascribed in the DCN is: “Retail/service unit,
stationary or mobile, working without roof in-
cluding small khokhas on the roadside. Street
vendor—A person who offers goods or services
for sale to the public without having a perma-
nent built-up structure but with a temporary
static structure or mobile stall (or head load).”
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https://www.cenfa.org/infrastructure-finance/
the-curious-case-of-indian-smart-cities/.
vol lVIiI no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
Incomplete Visions and Riven Realities in
the Indian City
Ashima Sood
A
gglomeration is the engine that drives cities (Benjamin
1991). In the Indian city, however, it is a motor that
often seems in peril of collapse. The hard-wired differ-
ences of caste, class, language, community and gender push
apart what economic linkages might bring together. As and
perhaps more powerful than clustering, the centrifugal logics
of socio-spatial differentiation and separation appear to render
combustible the evident advantages of proximity. This may be
why Indian cities so often seem like unworkable machines,
held together only by the dubious patchwork of jugaad. “Get
along with thy neighbour” may be the first common-sensical
principle of human settlement, but as a wave of recent scholar-
ship in this issue and elsewhere shows (Jha et al 2021), it is a
precept honoured more often in the violation.
Twelve Years of a Review
More than a decade since the publication of the first Review of
Urban Affairs (RUA), this issue delivers an opportunity to both
look back and look forward to the future of the field of urban
studies as revealed in these pages. If the interplay of segrega-
tion and aggregation has been a perennial theme of urban
social science from its earliest days, the present collection opens a
characteristically Indian window on the tussle. Several of the
papers in this issue signal a welcome identarian, and some-
times intersectional, turn in urban scholarship. To the question
of what holds Indian cities together in the face of the forces
pulling them apart, these papers offer sometimes tentative
and often surprising answers.
The surest truism may be that the last decade or more
of urban growth has transformed Indian cities. The RUAs
also finds itself changed. Amita Baviskar and Vinay Gidwani,
two of the senior-most members of the RUA’s editorial advisory
group and lead editors of two influential issues on the
Urban Commons and Urban Waste have stepped down to
make way for two new members to be added. Our new col-
leagues in the RUA editorial advisory group are Gopa Samanta
of the University of Burdwan and Ratoola Kundu of the Tata
Institute of Social Sciences. Both prolific contributors to the
RUA, they bring rich scholarly expertise in themes as varied as
feminist geography, mobility, urban governance in small and
medium towns, place-making and gated communities, water
and more.
With a change in the frequency during the worst of the
COVID-19 crisis, the current issue is, by this author’s count, the
18th of the series. The RUA has included collections themed and
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8
unthemed, many that were edited by the collective and some
by invited guest editors.
Not formally united by a theme, the first issue of July 2011
still stands out for its disciplinary range and ambition. From a
working-class history of the 1920s’ and 1930s’ Mumbai by
Juned Shaikh to an incisive evaluation of the 74th Constitu-
tional Amendment Act by its architect, K C Sivaramakrishnan,
the collection covered historiographic, theoretical and policy
terrain. Darshini Mahadevia’s evaluation of the Jawaharlal
Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission and Kalyan Sanyal
and Rajesh Bhattacharya’s theorisation of the new town by-
pass logic have remained widely cited and relevant to this day.
An analysis of the slum policy in Chennai by Nithya Raman
and a ground-clearing essay by the then editorial collective of
Anant Maringanti, Amita Baviskar, Karen Coelho and Vinay
Gidwani still resonate a decade later. Edited by Amita
Baviskar and Vinay Gidwani, a themed issue later that same
year brought theoretical and empirical vigour to the still-fresh
urban lens on the idea of the commons (Coelho and Sood
2022; Sood 2021).
Making and Unmaking of Collective Identities
The papers in this issue, like the last one, were chosen by the
RUA’s editorial advisory group from a large pool of submissions
received in response to an open call for submissions in 2022.
The making and unmaking of collective identities—labouring,
entrepreneurial and regional—are the most important themes
that become visible across contributions from metropolitan
Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and the National Capital Region
of Delhi. The political economy of urban governance and public
services provision, it becomes clear, are not immune to these
fissiparous tendencies.
Lalitha Kamath and Kanak Rajadhyaksha’s (pp 31–37) study
of women corporators in Vasai–Virar, a fast-growing city in
the Mumbai Metropolitan Region, underlines the feminist
insight that gender identity serves a script. In this case, the
gender script assigns these female leaders a “social work”
focused political role. These “womanly” politics serves to
complement the aggressive land politics of male politicians in
We, at EPW, would like to thank the members of the external
editorial advisory group of the Review of Urban Affairs, Partha
Mukhopadhyay, Anant Maringanti, Karen Coelho, Ashima Sood,
Gopa Samanta and Ratoola Kundu for putting together this issue.
29
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS

the same party. Does the shared stigmatisation of reserved
constituencies encourage a sense of solidarity among these
women politicians as a group? Or does it implicitly encourage
the competitive mindset of electoral politics? Gender is criti-
cal to the construction of the public sphere in South Asia.
Kamath and Rajadhyaksha’s contribution adds to the growing
literature on women in urban politics (Ghosh and Lama-Rewal
2005; Banerjee and Samanta 2020).
Shreyasee Dasgupta’s (pp 51–56) paper instantiates a more
hopeful, if also more precarious, model of collective identity
among women waste workers in peri-urban Kolkata. Waste
work supplies its share of health and social hazards but also
allows the women a “‘desexualised’ liminal identity” as refuge
from otherwise inescapable gender roles. The intersectional
insight into caste and gender in the Dhapa case thus compli-
cates and enlivens the sometimes bleak outlook of scholarship
in this area (Harriss-White 2017; Gidwani and Reddy 2011; see
also Ramitha 2023 for a pandemic-era review).
Social networks lie at the heart of informal market exchange.
Aakansha Jain and Vinay Gidwani’s (pp 62–67) research on
e-waste traders in Delhi’s Seelampur area trains a theoretically
astute lens on the jamna-paar (trans-Yamuna) city examined
in depth in Benjamin (1991). They show that the e-waste value
chain remains fragmented along caste and communal lines
and caste identity determines whether traders can rise to its
uppermost echelons. Jain and Gidwani’s conceptualisation of
“community capital” thus most directly addresses the contra-
diction of identarian collectivity in the city.
In Hyderabad, the establishment of the Bathukamma festival
as a centrepiece of Telangana regional identity in 2014 provid-
ed Pullanna Vidyapogu and Indivar Jonnalagadda’s (pp 57–61)
investigation a sly entrée into understanding the evolution of
caste politics in the urban. As they show, the associational
impetus that shapes claim-making in the city often shows up in
oppositional forms. Sometimes, the association-opposition di-
chotomy even manages to yield halting progress as in the case
of Mission Kakatiya, which seeks to revitalise waterbodies but
may yet also unloose new waves of contestation.
In Jennifer Spencer’s (pp 38–44) Mumbai case, it is the state
that differentiates associational platforms. This separation in
turn serves to also effectively segment digital governance
initiatives in solid waste management. In this way, class iden-
tity contestations, as manifested in the segregated initiatives
for middle-class cooperative housing societies versus slums,
determine the future trajectory of services provision. Class
politics also rules the masterplanning exercise in Delhi, as
shown by Aravind Unni (pp 45–50).
The final paper in this collection is set to be published
in the subsequent issues of EPW. Wide-ranging in its analytical
scope, Parkar, Zerah and Mittal’s contribution surveys smart city
initiatives across cities in four states. The Smart Cities Mission
seems to have encouraged a trend towards “a unified model for
urban services delivery,” the authors find. Very different in its
preoccupations, Parkar et al’s analysis of policymaking none-
theless presents a piquant contrast to the questions of socio-
spatial differentiation that dominate the rest of the issue. The
reader cannot help wondering: When and how exactly will the
seamless—if incomplete—vision of the smart city be undone
by the fractured realities of urban India?
Reconciling Dichotomies
Dissonance may well be the defining feature of this urban
century across the global South (Simone and Pieterse 2017).
Binaries may only offer convenient heuristics but as the papers
in this issue hint, the fragments endure (McFarlane 2018).
The evidence in this collection would indicate that a diver-
sity of positionalities inform urban studies in India. To this
diversity remains to be added greater attention to the geo-
graphic span of India’s largest urban hubs. The 2011 Census
uncovered 53 million-plus cities, of which the largest eight
have received the most research attention (Sood 2022). While
some, such as Vasai–Virar in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region
or Ghaziabad in the National Capital Region, are part of larger
metropolitan conurbations, the Ludhianas, Bhopals and
Bhubaneswars of India may throw up newer prisms on the
interplay between the riven realities and incomplete visions of
the Indian city.
Ashima Sood (asjsood@gmail.com) teaches at the Centre for Urbanism
and Cultural Economics, Anant National University. Over Winter 2023,
she is also Visiting Professor at Carleton University Institute of
Political Economy.

References
Banerjee, Riya and Gopa Samanta (2020):
Negotiating Terrain in Local Governance: Free-
dom: Functioning and Barriers of Women
Councillors in India, Springer International
Publishing.
Benjamin, Solomon J (1991): “Jobs, Land, and
Urban Development: The Economic Success of
Small Manufacturers in East Delhi, India,”
Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Cambridge,
Massachusetts.
Coelho, Karen and Ashima Sood (2022): “Urban
Studies in India across the Millennial Turn:
Histories and Futures,” Urban Studies, Vol 59,
No 13, pp 2613–37.
Ghosh, Archana and Stéphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal
(2005): Democratization in Progress: Women
and Local Politics in Urban India, Tulika.
Gidwani, V and R N Reddy (2011): “The Afterlives of
‘Waste’: Notes from India for a Minor History
of Capitalist Surplus,” Antipode, Vol 43, No 5,
pp 1625–58.
Harriss-White, B (2017): “Matter in Motion: Work and
Livelihoods in India’s Economy of Waste,” Critical
Perspectives on Work and Employment in Glo-
balizing India, Singapore: Springer Singapore,
pp 95–111.
Jha, Sadan, Dev Nath Pathak and Amiya Kumar
Das (eds) (2021): Neighbourhoods in Urban India:
In Between Home and the City, Bloomsbury
Publishing.
Lama-Rewal, S T (2001): “Fluctuating, Ambivalent
Legitimacy of Gender as a Political Category,”
Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 36, No 17,
pp 1435–40.
McFarlane, Colin (2018): “Fragment Urbanism:
Politics at the Margins of the City,” Environment
and Planning D: Society and Space, Vol 36,
No 6, pp 1007–25.
Ramitha, K L (2023): “Solid Waste Workers in India
and the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Review of
Intersecting Challenges,” International Journal
of Occupational Safety and Health, Vol 13,
No 1, pp 126–39.
Simone, Abdoumaliq and Edgar Pieterse (2017):
“New Urban Worlds: Inhabiting Dissonant Times,”
Public Culture, London: John Wiley & Sons,
Vol 16, No 3, pp 407–29.
Sood, Ashima (2020): “Indian Urbanization,” Oxford
Bibliographies in Urban Studies, Richardson
Dilworth (ed), New York: Oxford University Press.
— (2022): “Fragments of a Region? Urban Futures
and Urban Studies in India,” Working Paper,
Resource Committee, Writing Urban India
Network.

30 february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
Participation through WhatsApp in
Urban Waste Management
Citizen–Government Relations and Outcomes in
Mumbai’s Participatory Waste Management Policies
Jennifer Spencer
Using the cases of two participatory policies for waste
management in Mumbai—Advanced Locality
Management and Swachh Mumbai Prabodhan
Abhiyan—this paper explores WhatsApp as a platform
for citizen–government interactions in urban policy
implementation and its impact on participation and
waste management outcomes.
Author is thankful to all the respondents of their primary research, who
took out their valuable time to share their thoughts and experiences.
They are sincerely grateful to their mentor, Lalitha Kamath for her
continuous support and guidance.
Jennifer Spencer (jenniferspencer6793@gmail.com) is a research scholar
at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.
38
T
he decentralisation of urban governance in the 1990s in
India promoted public participation. City governments
“invited” (Baud and Nainan 2008; Zerah 2009) public
participation for basic service provisions through limited
(Arnstein 1969) avenues like feedback, consultations, managing/
financing of policy implementation, etc. On the contrary, citizens
exercise agency to engage in governance through claims-making
and negotiation thereby “inventing” or “claiming” participatory
spaces (Baud and Nainan 2008; Bjorkman and Venkataramani
2017; Zerah 2009) beyond the limits of invited participation.
The role of technology for participation in urban governance
can be seen from this lens. Technology use in participation is
considered to democratise governance and increase the effi-
ciency of basic service delivery while making cities “smart”
(Datta 2015). With the proliferation of affordable smartphones
and an increase in internet use (Banaji and Bhat 2018), websites/
applications for interpersonal communication and sharing—
commonly known as social media—have tremendously incre-
ased. Of the popular social media platforms in India, WhatsApp
has the highest users—53 crore in 2021 (Chakravarti 2021).
Social media platforms like WhatsApp are increasingly being
used by governments to “invite” public participation, including
information sharing, awareness generation, grievance redres-
sal and feedback (Senit et al 2016; Srivastava 2013). On the
contrary, WhatsApp is also used as an “invented” participatory
space by citizens and organisations for activism (Pang and Woo
2020), elections (Mahapatra and Plagemann 2019), and political
propaganda (Banaji and Bhat 2018). The private nature of con-
versations and groups, both personal and non-intimate, distin-
guish WhatsApp from other social media platforms (Pang and
Woo 2020; Williams and Kamra 2022). Due to its end-to-end
encryption feature for privacy, the platform is trusted for
communication on political/governance issues. These aspects
are, however, also misused, for example, political groups
spreading misinformation leading to polarisation and violence
(Banaji and Bhat 2018).
Existing literature on WhatsApp in India has not focused on
the intersections of participation, government policy, and urban
basic service provision through the platform. Neither has the
growth of WhatsApp, as an invented participatory platform
arising out of invited participatory spaces, been studied. This
february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

paper explores the nature and extent of WhatsApp use in
participation for solid waste management (SWM) arising from
two participatory policies in Mumbai’s SWM sector—Advanced
Locality Management (ALM) and Swachh Mumbai Prabodhan
Abhiyan (SMPA).
This paper is derived from a wider research by the author on
the implementation of ALM and SMPA (Spencer 2022).1 During
the fieldwork, the author observed the use of WhatsApp for
citizen–government interactions in the schemes, which motiv-
ated a further exploration that forms part of this research
paper. The study was conducted using qualitative research
methods. Data collection was done from July to October 2021,
using snowball sampling covering 14 ALMs and 21 SMPA
community-based organisations (CBOs) across Mumbai. The
insights for the paper are derived from ALMs and CBOs among
these cases, which used the platform extensively and with
whom the author had access to or conducted discussions re-
garding WhatsApp. Semi-structured, in-depth interviews were
conducted with ALM/SMPA leaders, administrative officers and
councillors (local elected representatives) of the Municipal
Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM), and actors related to
the ALMs/CBOs2 such as residents, members, waste workers and
SWM companies. Records of text/media on WhatsApp groups of
select ALM/SMPA through direct observation and sharing by
participants were also analysed. Data analysis was done dur-
ing and after data collection, through which key insights and
themes were developed. Anonymity of respondents and loca-
tions has been maintained while reporting cases. The study
was solely for research purpose and no harm or risk is inten-
ded for the participants and organisations they represent.
We begin with how key features of the two policies and changes
in the SWM sector influence the origin and uses of WhatsApp for
participatory waste management. Further, the paper highlights
the operation of participation and nature of citizen–government
relations through WhatsApp in ALM and SMPA. At the end, the
paper focuses on whether WhatsApp use in these policies leads
to better SWM and improves participation in urban governance.
Factors Shaping WhatsApp Use
Origin of WhatsApp use in Mumbai’s participatory waste
management: While the use of communications technology in
politics and governance in India surged in the 2014–16 period for
several reasons like penetrative pricing in the telecom sector,
national elections, etc (Farooq 2018), its use in participatory
SWM policies in Mumbai started due to factors primarily asso-
ciated with changes in the waste sector.
SWM in Mumbai has historically been a centralised process—
waste collected through vehicles from across the city is trans-
ported to dumpsites in its peripheries. The attributes of waste
as “pollution,” “dirtiness,” and “exclusion” (EPW 2012) result-
ing in an “out of sight” attitude, support this centralised system
(Roy 2021). Further, there was no formal regulation of the
sector until the Municipal Solid Wastes (Management and
Handling) Rules, 2000 (MSW rules), which prescribed collection,
segregation, and scientific disposal of waste (MPCB 2000). During
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
this time, economic liberalisation necessitated the reduction of
MCGM expenditures on the one hand, while political decentrali-
sation promoted the need for public participation in financing and
implementing policies, especially in basic services like water,
sanitation, SWM, etc. Thus, when a group of residents proposed
a community-based waste collection and segregation model
(Basu and Punjabi 2020), this was accepted and formalised as
the ALM scheme in 1997. Under the scheme, resident groups
referred to as ALM are responsible for monitoring the collec-
tion and segregation of waste in a locality, and are encouraged
to compost biodegradable waste. ALMs can collect a financial
contribution from residents to carry out these functions.
The scheme provides for regular meetings of ALM members
with the MCGM ward administration to share their complaints
and issues (MCGM nd a). The MSW rules cemented the
scheme’s operation through its recommendation for commu-
nity participation in SWM.
Per se, the ALM scheme did not prescribe an area of operation;
however, mostly the residents from cooperative housing soci-
eties (CHS) formed ALMs, excluding slums. After the MSW
rules mandated the provision of waste collection in slums,
this exclusion was institutionalised by starting a separate
scheme for slums called the Dattak Vasti Yojana (DVY) in 2001.
Under this scheme, CBOs were invited for participating through
regular tenders. Each CBO would be allotted a specific area in
the slum, which was divided into “units” based on the popula-
tion. CBOs are responsible for awareness generation, door-to-
door collection and segregation of waste, cleaning small
gutters, and are encouraged to compost the biodegradable
waste. For this, the CBOs are required to engage workers,
referred to as “volunteers” for each unit. CBOs are partly paid
an honorarium by the MCGM while the rest is to be collected
from residents (MCGM nd b).
While both these schemes improved waste collection, not
much was achieved for decentralised SWM, like composting.
Citizen groups in both schemes complained of a lack of coop-
eration from the MCGM, uninterested residents, and poor
financing. The ALMs began to focus on complaint-making for
civic issues more than decentralised SWM, while the DVY got
increasingly embroiled in allegations of corruption by local
political leaders (De Wit 2010). Meanwhile, at the interna-
tional level, introduction of Sustainable Development Goals
led to a focus on target achievement. This was aligned with
the Swachh Bharat Mission, 2014 and a renewed set of SWM
Rules, 2016. The focus shifted to faster achievement of waste
recovery targets for which private companies were incenti-
vised to “participate,” side-lining community-based decent-
ralised participation (MoEFCC 2016; MoHUA 2014).
These national-level changes brought about city-level trans-
formations in the nature of participation in ALM and SMPA,
also ushering in the use of communications technology like
WhatsApp. The 2016 rules led to the transfer of SWM responsi-
bility from ALMs to every CHS, which in turn employed private
waste companies for the service, leading to the loss of ALM’s
influence in the sector. Participatory actors in the ALMs exercised
their agency to navigate the change in rules and stay relevant
39
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
by inventing newer avenues of participation. WhatsApp played
a pivotal role in enabling this change.
Our ALM was only one street, through WhatsApp we expanded to
include residents from surrounding areas and gradually increased our
reach. Now we are a Resident Welfare Association (RWA) for the entire
locality. We look into civic issues, health, planning, education and so on.
(ALM turned RWA leader)3
WhatsApp, thus, acted as a tool to expand the geographical
ambit of the ALM through virtual means gradually forming an
RWA/non-governmental organisation (NGO), and enabled ALM
leaders to act as mediators to solve personal, civic, and criminal
issues in their locality.
In 2013, the DVY was renamed and modified as the SMPA.
CBOs had to report their work daily to local officers who could
levy fines for poor performance/non-compliance. Done in the
name of preventing corruption, the modifications reflected
increased surveillance of participation in slums. The target-
based approach accentuated this by increasing contractualisa-
tion in the scheme, to get work done through cheap and
“voluntary” labour. The duration of each CBO in a locality was
reduced to six months from the initial one to three years. This
was aimed at making demands for waste workers’ permanent
posts and health benefits ineligible. These changes led to
greater micro-monitoring of CBOs by the MCGM while necessi-
tating a competitive approach among CBOs to show the fulfil-
ment of their duties. Both of these were made possible through
the introduction of WhatsApp as an invented participatory
space in the SMPA scheme.
Earlier in the scheme, we attached some printouts of photos showing
the area’s cleanliness in our monthly bills. Since the past few years,
WhatsApp groups were started where we daily share many photos and
videos of our cleaning work. (CBO leader, SMPA)4
Thus, changes in the waste sector at the national level led to
the consolidation of privatisation and contractualisation for
target achievement which, in turn, played a crucial role in
introduction of technology-mediated participation in policies
for SWM at the city level.
Complaint-making and monitoring—differentiated uses of
WhatsApp in ALM and SMPA: The nature of participatory re-
lations and WhatsApp use differed between the ALM and SMPA,
based on their policy guidelines and the population they served.
ALMs operated in CHS (formal housing) and SMPAs operated in
slums (informal housing); they are differentiated based on
legal recognition and provision of basic services. ALMs had a
participatory platform to voice their concerns, while SMPA CBOs
did not. Brief guidelines and minimal monitoring in ALM offered
autonomy and discretion, whereas detailed guidelines and strict
monitoring in SMPA offered no such participatory autonomy.
ALMs with largely middle-class building residents are to only
oversee SWM work, whereas, in SMPA, slum residents largely
from lower socio-economic strata are expected to volunteer in
collecting garbage and cleaning sewerage. The differentiation
in ALM and SMPA, thus, highlights the varied nature of citizen–
government relations in the city, based on the socio-economic
background of its “citizens.”
40
This context and differentiation has shaped WhatsApp group
formations and uses in both the schemes. The relative autonomy
provided to ALM leaders offered them the opportunity to use a
virtual platform for communication with MCGM administrative
officers. In the ALMs studied, WhatsApp groups were “founded”
by an ALM leader, who added other ALM members, administrative
officers and residents to the group. These WhatsApp groups,
used mainly for complaint-making, are a means by which the
higher socio-economic status of ALM leaders/members is taken
advantage of, to claim a legitimate citizenship with the “right to
get things done from the government.”
In SMPA, the policy focus on the collection of waste from the
slums by the CBO and its daily reporting led the administrative
officers to invent mechanisms for convenience of monitoring
through the creation of WhatsApp groups. Of the CBOs studied,
WhatsApp groups were formed by the administrative officers
of the SWM department to which CBO leaders were added. The
aspect of monitoring or “controlling” slum representatives to
ensure that they kept the area clean, arose from perceived
“illegality” of their residence and claims to the city, that
shaped WhatsApp usage in SMPA.
Thus, while the origin of invented spaces of WhatsApp
groups has been influenced by a change in SWM policies, the
nature of participation in ALM and SMPA maintain a differenti-
ation based on who started the group and its core purpose.
These differences highlight how invented participation includes
spaces carved not only by the public vis-à-vis government like
in ALM, but also by government representatives, like in the
case of SMPA. In the next section, we explore the operation of
ALM and SMPA through these invented spaces to understand
whether and how they alter the nature of participation.
Participation through WhatsApp
In ALM and SMPA schemes, various actors had differing level of
participatory powers accorded to them. While ALM/CBO leaders
and higher-level administrative officers (with lower-level officers
under them) were considered primary participatory actors, resi-
dents and waste workers were mentioned in the schemes but not
accorded participatory status, while councillors were not even
mentioned. The implementation of ALM and SMPA was based on
networks of relations between these actors. These relations in turn
were based on the commonality of socio-economic, political, and
cultural backgrounds of actors, which we refer to as habitus
(Huang 2019). “Respect” between actors was considered crucial
to maintaining relations in the network. Thus, where citizen–
government relations were good, proposals were easily passed,
complaints were solved in a timely manner, minimal fines were
levied, reporting lapses were ignored, and vice versa.
Based on this, the paper explores the composition and oper-
ation of WhatsApp groups under the ALM and SMPA schemes to
understand whether and how they reiterated or changed the
power dynamics in the implementation of these schemes.
Who ‘participates’ through WhatsApp? The composition of
WhatsApp groups was influenced by the nature of interpersonal
relations in the implementation networks of ALM and SMPA.
february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

For instance, in the implementation of ALM scheme, middle-
class ALM members preferred to directly approach higher-level
administrative officers, with shared habitus, as compared to
lower-level officers. This translated into the absence of lower-level
officers from ALM WhatsApp groups. In one case of exception
where “clean-up marshals” (responsible for fining citizens for
littering) were included in the ALM WhatsApp group, this was
to keep a check on their performance, reflecting their subordi-
nate position to the ALM. Similarly, in SMPA, CBO leaders oper-
ating in slums were considered subordinate to the administra-
tive officers. Their membership to the WhatsApp group was
temporary, based on their contract duration. Political affilia-
tion, however, enabled a CBO leader to ensure their membership
even after the expiry of their tenure in the scheme.
Further, ALMs were not representative in terms of class, caste,
gender, and religion of the residents in their area of operation.
This reflects in ALM WhatsApp groups, where inclusion of resi-
dents was based on personal relations, and similar socio-economic
status, and political ideology. In SMPA, a provision existed for
the resident groups called “Shezaar Samiti” to oversee the
work of the CBO, however, this was not functional, mainly due to
the lack of substantive powers. Instead, residents who took ini-
tiatives for local issues had political affiliation and/or became CBO
leaders, acted as representatives of slum residents in their area
of operation. This reflected in SMPA WhatsApp groups where the
local political leaders were included, while residents at large
were not. Residents, not included in WhatsApp groups, usually
approached either local associations, leaders, elected represen-
tatives, or administrative officers for grievances and services.
Waste workers were not given participatory powers in ALM
and SMPA. No representation of waste worker interests was
done by the ALMs and in the case of CBOs such representation
was mainly for furthering the CBO’s interests in the scheme.5
Their organisation for better working conditions, remuneration,
etc, was mostly done by separate waste worker collectives.
This is reflected in their exclusion from participation on What-
sApp, highlighting a multilayered marginality—excluded sta-
tus in society due to their waste-handling occupation—and
social location—caste, gender, class; legal exclusion in the
policies—and exclusion from virtual participatory platforms
due to the prior two factors in addition to low access to smart-
phones/internet (Thakur 2020; Udupa et al 2020).
Conversely, the inclusion or exclusion of the local MCGM
councillor in the WhatsApp groups highlighted how their com-
position deviates from the policy and on-ground operation of
these schemes. In both the schemes, the councillors were not
mentioned but they were crucial for the implementation. For
example, ALM and SMPA leaders approached the councillors to get
their work done with the administration to garner the support of
residents, to fund events, etc. However, the ALM leader’s need to
appear apolitical in WhatsApp groups consisting of administra-
tive officers and middle-class residents, used for direct complaint-
making to the administration, led to councillors’ exclusion from it.
Conversely, the implementation of SMPA was based on councillor
constituencies with one WhatsApp group for each constituency.
In spite of strained officer–councillor relations, the councillors
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
were considered important for the implementation of basic
service provision in slums and included in the WhatsApp group.
In this sense, WhatsApp-use sharpened the otherwise blurred
distinctions of “civil” versus “political” (Chatterjee 2004) between
the ALM and SMPA—limiting the councillors’ position to a rep-
resentative of the poor “vote bank,” while propertied “citizens”
accessed services directly from the administration.
Operationalising participation through WhatsApp: The ALM
WhatsApp groups were primarily used for complaint-making
by residents, who shared photos/videos, locations, and nature
of the complaint, for example, a clogged drain, a pothole, and
un-lifted garbage. While administrative officers used the group
for awareness messaging, feedback for new initiatives and
responding to complaints. The relations on ALM WhatsApp group
were largely based on prior personal relations between the ALM
leaders and administrative officers. Further, in spite of direct
contact through WhatsApp, the resident’s complaints to the
administration were mediated by ALM leaders/members. For
instance,6 complaints on WhatsApp made by an ALM leader/
member who had prior good personal relations with the adminis-
trative officers, were solved mostly within a day. Whereas com-
plaints of those who had no direct relations, or prior interaction
were either not solved or solved after several days, and that too
mostly after they were validated by the ALM leader/member.
SMPA WhatsApp groups were primarily used for monitoring
the scheme by administrative officials. This included CBO leaders’
daily messages with photos/videos, locations, time of work
done, for example, worker cleaning a drain, collecting garbage,
and a segregation awareness drive. The responses by adminis-
tration included appreciation/reprimand of work well done/
not done, and reminders/directives regarding the scheme. The
groups were also used for awareness messaging and feedback re-
garding new SWM-related initiatives/policies. Here too, per-
sonal relations more than the efficacy of work done determined
the extent of monitoring and chances of continuation/removal
of CBOs in the scheme. In one case,7 a CBO leader was appreci-
ated several times for doing good work by a higher official on
the WhatsApp group. However, strained relations with the
councillor led to his removal from the scheme alleging non-
performance of duties. Proofs of WhatsApp messages/images
regarding cleanliness and appreciation from the administ-
ration did not count in his appeal against the decision of removal.
Thus, in both ALM and SMPA, the role of personal relations
developed in the implementation of the schemes prior to or
apart from virtual relations, held primacy in shaping the inter-
actions on WhatsApp groups and in ensuring participation.
Communication in these groups did not replace but only sup-
plemented in-person relations.
The nature of interactions, based on WhatsApp’s functiona-
lity, differed from in-person relations. For instance, WhatsApp
groups in ALM and SMPA commonly had a set of rules that were
written clearly and enforced accordingly. These included not
having personal conversations on the group, no exchange of
pleasantries like “good morning” messages and no sharing of
posts, forwards, media considered “controversial,” political
41
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
propaganda. The experience of interaction on these WhatsApp
groups was hence controlled, regulated, and limited. It sought
to alter the nature of conversations that otherwise took place
between administrative officers, councillors, and citizen rep-
resentatives in the ward office or field. The initiation of any such
conversations in person would be exchange of pleasantries,
offering tea, a general conversation about the goings-on in the
ward office, MCGM and locality, sharing of opinions on some
current issue in the news before coming to the agenda of the
meeting (complaint, proposal, and feedback).8 This helped
build relations between individuals among the government
and citizenry, which enabled the implementation of schemes
like the ALM and SMPA. A restriction of such conversations on
WhatsApp groups, and also inconvenience and inability of
such conversations virtually, was one reason why interactions
on WhatsApp were mediated by in-person relations; and only
supplemented but never replaced them.
However, the functionality of WhatsApp groups has also
been instrumental in sharpening power differentials among
the actors. A user who creates a WhatsApp group, is referred to
as “group admin,” and holds considerable powers of control
and regulation in the group. These include—to add and remove
members at will, restrict members (other than admins) to send
messages, enable all messages to disappear with time, delete
messages sent by other members, restrict the ability of mem-
bers to change the group icon or title, and to dissolve
the group. The founder group admin could also share these
powers by making other members group admins.
Who created the WhatsApp group and was made group ad-
min was based on power relations in the schemes. ALM groups
typically created by ALM leaders as group admins had the highest
administrative official on the group as the co-admin. In SMPA, the
groups created by MCGM officials had some higher- and locality-
level officers as group admins. In some exceptional cases, an
SMPA group had a local political leader and an ALM group had
multiple ALM leaders, as co-admins. Due to WhatsApp’s func-
tionality of control attributed to the group admin, these set of
actors held extensive powers to control and determine the na-
ture and extent of participation among members. In one case,9
a member of an ALM WhatsApp group posted images of an
event hosted by a political party. The ALM leader (the group
admin) dissolved the group and made another group without
that individual and some other members who posted on contro-
versial topics. In SMPA WhatsApp groups, most CBO leaders
were removed after the completion of their contract duration.
Although not always used, the powers held by the group
admins gave them a position of control over other participa-
tory actors, often reiterating existing power differentials in the
scheme. Moreover, the virtual platform provided group admins
with much more powers than in “real life,” that of actively
limiting and excluding individuals at discretion—denying
them the right to participate in governance.
WhatsApp groups in ALM and SMPA also specifically sharpened
the distinctions with reference to waste and its management.
Waste management through WhatsApp alienated users from
the experience of waste, by offering a “sanitised” visual to the
42
user in an environment devoid of the sensory experiences of being
in proximity to waste. Technology, thus, alters the perception
of objects based on the environment in which it is experienced
(Liberati 2016). This dissociation reiterates the aspects of pollu-
tion and exclusion attached to waste, where WhatsApp acts as a
platform to manage waste, without actually being in its presence
or experiencing its adverse effects. Through this, WhatsApp
also accentuates exclusions in participation—its users “manage”
waste “remotely” through technology-mediated participation,
while those who actually handle and experience waste, touch,
smell, see and clean, in close proximity to it, are excluded from
such “platforms for participatory waste management.”
WhatsApp, thus, sharpened certain power differentials
in the schemes, while acting mainly as a supplement to
in-person relations.
Outcomes of WhatsApp-led Participation
Involving citizens in governance is considered to make it more
accountable and transparent, improve representativeness and
inclusivity, thereby, promoting democracy. The use of technology
in governance, similarly, claims to improve accountability and
offer a space where everyone can, freely and equally, participate to
promote more democratic governance systems (Krotz 2017).
Our cases of WhatsApp use appear to increase accountability
and efficiency. For example, through WhatsApp group mem-
bers, the administration is informed of the problems across their
jurisdiction, in a continuous and regular manner, which is
otherwise not possible through field inspections. Complaint-
making through ALM WhatsApp groups acted as a pressurising
mechanism on the administration to solve problems, since
everyone on the group is informed of a complaint, its redressal,
time taken, etc. In SMPA, WhatsApp acted as an easy mecha-
nism for the administration to demand accountability from CBOs
in ensuring the performance of SWM responsibilities in slums.
However, from a wider perspective, WhatsApp use in ALM
and SMPA increases precarity and arbitrariness, reducing the
overall transparency and accountability in governance. The
arbitrary removal of members, limited nature of interaction,
and interaction based on prior relations reveal WhatsApp
groups to be non-institutionalised and non-legally recognised
platforms for citizen–government interaction. Further, groups
on WhatsApp are considered to be private, their membership
is exclusive, and interactions through it are closed—limiting
transparency in its operation. For example, complaints through
WhatsApp are not officially registered in MCGM’s complaint
management system (CMS) and, therefore, do not contribute to
measuring the overall accountability of the local government.
Similarly, SMPA WhatsApp groups did not formally record the
performance of the CBOs and were not used as a criterion for
their continuation/removal from the scheme. As explored in
the previous section of the paper, WhatsApp groups also did
not fare well in improving the inclusivity and representative-
ness of participation. These factors make the operation of
participation—through WhatsApp—increasingly arbitrary and
controlling, pointing towards more undemocratic tendencies
in its functioning.
february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

This also reflects on the distinction between formal and
informal settlements in the city maintained through WhatsApp.
In spite of operating in the same locality, with commonality of
ward officers and councillors, separate WhatsApp groups
existed for CHS and slums. The use of technology was unable
to bridge the divide between ALMs and CBOs to collaborate for
better SWM and civic issues in their locality. Even within the ALM
and SMPA, restrictions and exclusions limited the extent to
which WhatsApp could act as a useful platform. Perspectives
of waste workers or lower-level administrative officers were
not accounted, while inter-resident and inter-CBO interactions
on WhatsApp were negligible. This prevented WhatsApp
groups from acting as platforms for participative policymak-
ing through discussing pertinent governance issues or sharing
perspectives and solutions.
Technology is considered to enable efficiency and effective-
ness for which it is used (Latour 1990). In our case, such
outcomes can be measured through improvement in SWM or
otherwise. The primary aim of both policies was ensuring
localised waste management—collection, segregation, and
composting. The ALM WhatsApp groups were mainly used for
complaint-making, like “garbage not lifted” or “drain clogged
with waste.” This increased the probability of an issue getting
resolved especially for those having prior relations with the
administration. However, important issues related to SWM
such as proposal for a common compost pit or suggestions for
area development were done through personal meetings and
follow-ups, and not discussed on WhatsApp. For SMPA, the pri-
mary aim of monitoring collection, segregation, and cleaning
done by CBOs, was operated through WhatsApp. Here too, per-
sonal rounds and visits by the administration, at least once a
week, for inspection and fining were continued. Proposals for
setting up compost pits or demand-making for changes in
SMPA policy rules were done through personal interactions
and meetings. Substantial demand-making for improvements
in locality waste management, therefore, continued through
in-person citizen–government interactions.
WhatsApp was only one form of a claimed participatory
space used for a limited purpose. Most of the claims-making
by actors in ALM and SMPA, including residents, waste work-
ers and ALM/CBO leaders, was done through in-person means
such as collective mobilisation, awareness events, proposals,
court cases, consultations, etc. While some formed NGOs
engaging directly in community development works, some
others joined political parties, moving much beyond the par-
ticipatory limits of ALM and SMPA.
The specific use of WhatsApp in these policies can be linked
to the changes in the functioning of urban governance and
governmentality, with an “increased focus on showcasing
achievements” in a bid to gain better recognition, funds, and in-
vestment in competing with other city governments. This is
enabled through the participation of citizens and private
groups in the management of basic services in the city through
technology-use, to build “smarter” investment-friendly cities.
WhatsApp groups in ALM and SMPA fulfil this objective of
showcasing waste management-related target achievements.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
In doing so, these groups largely operate within the centralised
target-oriented waste management system. ALM groups, through
sharing of photos related to unlifted garbage, clogged drains and
the subsequent solving of such complaints are used to showcase
how the MCGM is committed to achieving the goals of a “garbage-
free city” (MoHUA 2014). The procedural and substantive causes of
why garbage in a particular area remains unlifted or why a drain is
getting clogged, and taking measures for prevention of such is-
sues, are not discussed or addressed through these groups.
SMPA groups are used for showcasing target achievements
such as 100% collection and segregation and composting in
slums, through photos and videos shared in the group. How-
ever, these do not always reflect actual on-ground improve-
ment in SWM. In one case,10 during a segregation drive by a
CBO in the presence of administrative officials, the focus was
on getting good pictures/videos to show target achievement.
Waste workers, who otherwise had no protective equipment,
were given gloves and coats while posing for photos, and one
compost pit was clicked from several angles using different
banners to report as multiple pits.
This techno-social (Escobar 1994) construction of reality
through WhatsApp—of adherence to rules, achievement of
targets, improved SWM—is beneficial to both the administra-
tive officers as their achievements and to citizen groups/lead-
ers for increasing their influence in the locality through better
relations with the government.
ALM WhatsApp groups were a means for administrative offic-
ers to showcase their reach with “citizens” through which they
could claim consensus on policy and implementation decisions
and fulfil directions from their superiors. In one case, a higher-
level administrative officer used ALM groups to garner num-
bers for filling up an online form regarding SWM suggestions:
Pl[ea]s[e] share with maximum citizens, NGOs, public representa-
tives[,] and other active public … Need at [ ]least 5,000 responses
per ward. Kindly mobilise and activate [yo]ur resources. Not only
forward give [yo]ur suggestions. (sic)11
By fulfilling such tasks and increasing their resident base
through virtual expansion, ALMs gained greater influence with
the MCGM in getting their work done.
In the case of SMPA, where scheme monitoring is primary,
WhatsApp groups acted as a means to provide proof of moni-
toring done by MCGM officials through pictures and videos shared
with their superiors to report the achievement of targets.
We conduct segregation drives in different areas of the slum every
weekend. We send the photos and videos to the SWM officers which
they forward to their seniors. (CBO leader, SMPA)12
These groups are also used to garner numbers for feedback
exercises from citizens. The CBOs aim to benefit from regular
reporting in WhatsApp groups to showcase the good work
done by them in their locality and maintain goodwill with the
administration, which could possibly increase their chances of
continuing in the scheme.
Thus, WhatsApp use in participatory waste management
was primarily aimed at showcasing of target achievement and
shows how technology forms an indispensable tool for neo-
liberal governmentality. It was, therefore, unable to act as a
43
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS

useful participatory platform to deliberate and collaborate for
improving SWM or for enabling better urban governance.
Conclusions
The study of WhatsApp use in ALM and SMPA explores distinc-
tive cases of invented virtual participatory spaces arising from
invited participatory policies. In these cases, in-person rela-
tions between policy actors influenced the participation in the
virtual space. Further, specific use of WhatsApp, an already
in-use application, acted as a reliable, personal, and private
means for citizen–government interaction. This differed from
other virtual platforms, both invited, such as union government’s
Swachhata app or Mumbai’s CMS for reporting complaints, and
invented means such as citizens’ complaint-making through
Twitter, which are impersonal and mechanical.
Moreover, WhatsApp in ALM and SMPA only acted as a supple-
ment to in-person participation and policy implementation. Most
of the claims-making for waste management and participation
in urban governance took place in “real life” and not through
virtual platforms. This highlights the need for technology in-
terventions to not completely exclude the humane aspect of
participation (Wilson and Tewdwr-Jones 2020).
These cases also caution against assuming technological
interventions for citizen participation as a panacea that tran-
scends socio-economic barriers and leads to inclusive govern-
ance. This is evident from the distinction between ALM and
SMPA policies, continued in WhatsApp through, enforced by
excluding some people, reiterating power hierarchies.
Further, these cases highlight how technology-based partici-
patory platforms served the purpose of garnering and show-
casing “formal” government target achievements that do not
necessarily reflect the on-ground reality.
In conclusion, while technology is socio-politically embedded
in the context in which it operates, WhatsApp use in ALM and
SMPA offers insights for future policymaking and research on
technology-use in participatory policies for urban basic services.

Notes
1 Findings related to implementation of the
scheme and claims-making, apart from those
specific to WhatsApp, are based on the author’s
MPhil dissertation.
2 Since the focus of the research was on studying
ALMs and CBOs, the residents, waste workers,
etc, related to the former have been included.
One limitation, therefore, arises from not stud-
ying residents and waste workers’ perspectives
to participation.
3 Interview, Mumbai: City, 1 September 2021.
4 Interview, Mumbai: Western Suburbs, 22 Sep-
tember 2021.
5 CBO’s remuneration from MCGM was linked to
the waste worker “volunteer.” CBOs directly
benefited if remuneration for waste workers
was increased.
6 Observation, ALM WhatsApp group, Mumbai-
Eastern Suburbs, August–October 2021.
7 Interview, Mumbai: Western Suburbs, 7 August
2021.
8 Field observation, Mumbai: Eastern Suburbs,
5 August 2021.
9 Observation, ALM WhatsApp group, Mumbai:
Eastern Suburbs, 13 August 2021.
10 Field observation, segregation drive by an SMPA
CBO, Mumbai: Eastern Suburbs, 25–27 Sep-
tember 2021.
11 Message from a high-level official in an ALM
WhatsApp group, Mumbai: Eastern Suburbs,
17 September 2021.
12 Interview, Mumbai: City, 2 September 2021.
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44 february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
‘We Must Persevere and Persuade, Not Lose Our
Tempers and Shout’
How Women Corporators Experience and Shape the
Gendered State under Conditions of Urban Transformation
Lalitha Kamath, Kanak Rajadhyaksha
Little is known regarding how women politicians at the
local level experience and influence everyday political
work. This paper remedies this gap by focusing on
narratives from 14 women corporators in the newly
formed Vasai–Virar City Municipal Corporation in the
context of expanded electoral representation for
women in cities. The conceptualisation of women
corporators’ agency as enabled by nested structures of
subordination, situated at the intersection of gender and
agency, helps understand the discursive and practical
conditions within which women corporators in a
non-metro Indian city arrive at varied forms of
aspiration and capacities for action.
Lalitha Kamath (lalitha.kamath@tiss.edu) teaches at the Centre
for Urban Policy and Governance, School of Habitat Studies.
Kanak Rajadhyaksha (kanak.rajadhyaksha@gmail.com) is a PhD
candidate at the University of Edinburgh.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8
T
he building of the new city of Vasai–Virar, located about 50
miles north of Mumbai and connected to it by the suburban
railway, is popularly associated with the patronage politics
of one man—Hitendra Thakur. In South Asia, patronage politics
foregrounding “hero” or “strongman” politics with male protag-
onists has a long history. In these stories of city making, women
are typically absent. In this paper, we depart from such accounts in
two important ways. First, we focus on women corporators about
whom little is known or written, despite the fact that they are
now equal in number to men in the context of expanded gender
quotas. Second, we shift the focus of our enquiry to the sphere
of the incremental, everyday and relational—an approach to
politics that women corporators often employ since theirs is a
politics that is shaped by gendered expectations at multiple
scales—the family, the party/government and society at large.
This paper seeks to understand how women corporators in
the recent Vasai–Virar City Municipal Corporation (VVCMC) both
experience and shape the state. In developing our focus on women
corporators and their everyday practices of corporator-ing, we
draw from Sharma and Gupta (1991) who argue that the state
comes to a position of power through the everyday practices
and processes of individuals and institutions that constitute the
state, and through which people make meaning of the state.
We find that in the VVCMC, women corporators are shaped
as politicians in an environment where they are expected to be
women first and then politicians. Women corporators, we argue,
build their capacity for action while negotiating personal am-
bition but also peace in the household, complying with but also
stretching societal, bureaucratic, and party expectations of
what they should do and how they should do it. We argue,
therefore, for locating the agency of women corporators as em-
bedded in and enabled by nested structures of subordination
(Mahmood 2005).
These findings contribute to an understanding of how women
corporators shape the state through their agency. It also con-
tributes to feminist scholarship that challenges the artificial
distinction between the personal and the political.
Vasai–Virar: Expanded Opportunities for Women in Politics
Vasai–Virar’s journey from largely agrarian to urban has been
principally enabled by the entwining of real estate development
31
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
and electoral politics. Being exempt from the restrictions of the
Urban Land (Ceiling and Regulation) Act (Sharma 1991) ex-
panded the potential for urban development in the 1970s. This
was actively promoted by an alliance between senior ministers
of the state government, Thakur, then an upcoming politician
and president of the Vasai Taluka Developers Association, and
other, mostly small-scale local builders. Massive and mostly
unregulated urbanisation ensued. This was opposed by land-
owning Sthaniks (locals) who saw this as threatening the local
horticultural economy and gram panchayats they controlled
(Kamath and Raj 2016). By the 1990s, the city was engulfed in
protests between Sthaniks who were against urbanisation,1
and migrant settlers in Vasai–Virar backed by the Bahujan
Vikas Aaghadi (BVA) who endorsed it (Jose 2022).
Despite this contestation, Thakur’s BVA party has ruled
Vasai–Virar by consolidating power over land and water
resources through a builder–politician nexus (Jose 2022). During
ethnographic fieldwork, we heard rumours of how builders
benefited from constructing (informal) housing and providing
services to migrant residents; builders relied on politicians to
support these endeavours in return for off-the-books cam-
paign funds or donations paid to the Young Star Trust (YST),
which is a charitable organisation founded by the BVA (Kamath
and Raj 2019). The establishment of the VVCMC in 2009 played
a crucial role in solidifying this nexus as the VVCMC now had
control of the land use planning function and corporators
could exercise regulatory discretion to benefit builders (Kapur
and Vaishnav 2013). In the first city elections in 2010, the BVA
won 55 out of 89 seats. Unsurprisingly, most male corporators
were themselves builders and women corporators often had a
family member in the construction business (Kamath and Raj
2016) who could exploit their privileged access to knowledge
and regulatory discretion.
By the second civic elections in 2015, which is when we
begin our story, the BVA’s electoral prospects had strengthened.
Sthaniks started seeing the real estate opportunities connect-
ed to urbanisation and this blunted resistance to the VVCMC
although tensions with “migrants” persist. By this time,
Thakur had transformed his image from being known as a
gangster to being called Appa (father), the man who keeps
“his people safe” and “gets work done” (Kamath and Raj
2017). However, expanded reservation quotas for women in
the 2015 elections re-engineered party strategy and estab-
lished power dynamics.
Enhanced reservation quotas, from 33% to 50%, created a
moment of opportunity for women (Hindu 2011) to expand
political possibilities and careers in municipal politics. It has
led the BVA to recruit women as electoral candidates, seeing
them as new nodes in the political network potentially con-
necting new constituents in the context of city elections which
are won on slender margins. It is also an opportunity for the
BVA to promote its image as an inclusive, woman-friendly
party while continuing to maintain its real estate business
interests. The success of this strategy is revealed by the BVA
sweeping the second VVCMC elections in 2015 with 106 out of
115 seats (Nair 2015).
32
Contemporary Vasai–Virar is fragmented socially and spatially
and this shapes municipal corporators’ experiences of every-
day corporator-ing. City centres have built-up areas; but further
from the railway stations, bungalows sprawl in village-like
areas, while chawls have been developed informally on farmland
in the interior. There are stark contrasts in access to basic
services between better-off Sthanik areas and those that
low-income migrants live in, although both exhibit aspirations
to engage in land speculations. These differences shape the
BVA’s choices of candidates selected to contest municipal
elections as well as influence public expectations of service
delivery and corporator roles.
Both expanded reservations for women in municipal elec-
tions and the city’s transforming urbanisms have substan-
tially shaped women corporator’s experience of and agency
in politics.
Methodology
Ongoing research in the region since 2013 by the first author
has provided an understanding of the socio-spatial variation
across the city and the differential presence of the VVCMC and
ruling party within each. This informed the approach for this
paper. Research for this paper specifically was conducted over
10 months (July 2019–April 2020).
While selecting corporators to interview, we focused on
temporal trajectories and spatial distribution. The focus on
women’s agency made their trajectories as political leaders of
particular importance. Of the 14 corporators interviewed,
12 were first term corporators, one had been a corporator for
six terms and another for two terms. Seven of the 14 were from
political families (those we term inheritors) and seven were
those who had no kin in politics but earned their way (those
we term pioneers). All belonged to the ruling BVA party. Along
with temporal trajectories, we also interviewed corporators of
erstwhile villages as well as those whose wards were built-up,
located in the centre of the city. This spatial and temporal
range soon revealed the differences in class positions.
Class differences among women corporators led us to study
different entries into politics but also convergence in doing
“social work.” Interviews with personal assistants, self-help
group (SHG) leaders, corporator husbands and aspirants hope-
ful for the corporator’s office helped us understand the ecosys-
tems of women corporators that shaped their agency in a space
that is itself undergoing transformation.
A Complicated Story of Agency
There is a dearth of studies on municipal politics and women
as political actors in (smaller) cities and this paper seeks to fill
this gap. The extensive debates on women’s reservation in local
bodies are dominated by the rural experience and suggest that
women serve mostly as proxies with their husbands making
most of the decisions (Buch 2009; Rai and Sharma 2000).
The few studies that focus on women’s political participa-
tion, leadership and authority in the urban context broadly
concur with the argument that women have little agency in
political work. Surie and Zérah (2017) found that in small
february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

towns in North India, women corporators are restricted by
prevailing gender norms that constrain their ability to learn
everyday work of politics, or to serve as proxy corporators,
despite interest and political ambition. In established munici-
pal corporations, such as in Bengaluru and Delhi, John (2007)
found that women corporators faced constraints in the work-
place and discrimination, although they were able to navigate
these better if they won a second term. Thus, even where there
are studies of women as political actors in municipalities, most
see little agency for these women.
This paper distinguishes itself by telling a complicated story
of the agency of women political actors in an urban setting. In
drawing the contours of this agency, it studies Kalaramadam’s
(2018) notion of “relative agency”—women corporator’s ability
to make political space for themselves and construct their
political subjectivities conditioned by everyday life contexts of
family, workplace, and the gender-based quota policy. By con-
trast, Bedi (2016) draws on the notion of “political matronage”
those networks of authority, influence and resources where
women act as the locus of support to (fe)male constituents and
which enable them to become forces to contend with in
municipal politics. These studies hold tremendous insights for
women corporator’s agency that is conditioned by nested
structures of subordination. However, these focus on cities
largely as the backdrop to events that are playing out. In this
paper, we seek to focus on women’s agency in municipal
politics that is conditioned by the urban transformations the
city is undergoing. We therefore argue for the importance of
studying transforming cities and the subjectivity of women
political actors together.
Inheritors and Pioneers
We build on Tawa-Lama Rewal’s (2001) work to classify women
corporators in Vasai–Virar into two broad categories based on
their mode of entry: inheritors and pioneers. This reveals how
knowledge is learned, networks built, and agency constructed
across different classes of women.
Inheritors largely capitalise on kin relationships to enter
and do politics. Priya Lobo’s case is typical. Lobo’s husband is
active in politics and two of her husband’s uncles were
sarpanches in the village. Thakur is a close associate of her
husband’s family. When her ward was reserved for a woman
from the general category, the previous corporator suggested
to her husband that she was a suitable candidate. Inheritors
largely rely on kinship relations for learning how to “do”
politics. Like Lobo, Nafisa Khan had watched her father-in-law,
an ex-BVA corporator, interact with party and ward members.
Additionally, inheritors can rely on family wealth and prop-
erty, often accumulated from the family’s involvement in
politics, to run their electoral campaigns or supply them with
an office space. Agency in such cases seems to derive from the
family rather than be the characteristic of the individual
woman corporator.
When the woman corporator’s husband was a former corpo-
rator, we sometimes found the practice of corporatoring
extending across the family unit. For instance, Ulka Ghure and
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REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
her husband, an ex-corporator, split the work between them.
She says,
I handle the paperwork at home. My husband handles work that in-
volves the MSEB and the police. He sorts out fights, I don’t do that
work. I take care of the roads and gutters and documentation that
people need.2
As Bhumi Deshpande explains, “Power must stay within the
house, either the husband or the wife. If it’s a ladies ward, then
me. If not, my husband.” This suggests the importance of
the family as an analytical category in politics, a political
phenomenon found across urban India. This is, arguably, a
more productive category to think through questions of agen-
cy than dynasty politics.
Unlike inheritors, pioneers do not have the benefit of family
political networks or wealth and have to find ways to shine and
be noticed by the party. Representation from different castes/
communities is important for the party and this can give first-
time women members from minority or migrant communities
the chance of a ticket. Meera Chitre, for instance, was a teacher
with no political background. Since her husband ran a sports
club and it organised all the sports competitions for the Kala Kri-
da Mahotsav,3 an annual arts and sports event organised by
the YST, she too got involved with Kala Krida and then the YST
as well. She started volunteering to organise activities that the
YST conducted, calling herself a Young Star karyakarta (party
worker). She says it was probably because Appa saw that she
worked selflessly that he told her to contest in 2015.
Pioneers typically rely heavily on developing party networks
with senior functionaries and, in Vasai–Virar’s case, with its
all-powerful leader, Appa. In this sense they are similar to what
Spary (2007) has termed “insiders,” the category of people who
have risen by associating with a political party and have learnt
along the way. In contrast to the family capital that inheritors
possess, women like Chitre possess the symbolic capital de-
rived from earning their way, building their networks through
everyday involvement in people’s lives (Bedi 2016). The party
leverages this symbolic capital, in turn supporting them with
advice, access to the state, office space, and campaign funds.
It is important to recognise that while these categories rep-
resent different modes of entry into politics, all women corpo-
rators in Vasai–Virar converge in performing politics through
a feminised repertoire. Calling what they do “social work” and
treating the ward as an extension of the family is typical of this,
as the next sections elaborate. Understanding how women ac-
quire authority in these ways helps reorient our dominant
male understandings of political authority. It also helps orient
us toward a new way of thinking about women’s agency—one
that is both embedded in and enabled by nested structures of
subordination (Mahmood 2005).
Gendering Everyday Corporator-ing
Women build a broad remit of their everyday work from seem-
ingly limitless public expectations. All corporators interviewed
saw their work stretching to installing electricity transformers
in their wards, assisting people with obtaining documents at
the revenue office, making scholarships available to students
33
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
in need, resolving property disputes and household fights.
Women corporators clearly felt the pressure to be and do what
is expected of them by their ward members. “Being a corpora-
tor means having a leash around your neck. Once it’s there,
you have to do all the work,” said Bhumi Deshpande.4
For women, performing becomes especially important given
that their worth as politicians is compromised by the fact that
they entered politics through reservations.5 Lobo explains,
“No matter how educated people are, they believe this. Even
the (Corporation) officials don’t take women seriously.” This
echoes scholarship that highlights the importance of reserva-
tions in enhancing diversity and widening the political space,
although this creates its own stigma that inhibits women’s poten-
tial (Shoukla 2019; Kalaramadam 2018).
First-timers particularly feel the urgency to prove themselves
to their public by assisting beyond providing access to basic
services. “I have nothing to do with the revenue system but
when people come to me for such work, I tell them to go there
(to the office) and give me a call.”6 Lobo adds that in the process
of calling people for recommendations (for schools, jobs, etc),
corporators are able to build networks with officials in such
institutions. Building one’s networks and connecting these to
one’s constituents as needed, is a key strategy for women cor-
porators to build their public image and political careers. Most
of the first-time corporators interviewed had to build networks
from scratch. Creating avenues for establishing relevance like
providing letters of attestation to aspirants of government
schemes for senior citizens to avail free bus travel become im-
portant in this context.
Women’s understanding of what a corporator’s work involves
and their efficacy is strongly shaped by not only social but also
spatial dynamics that have been established over time. Corpo-
rators typically differentiated between a “building” ward and
a “village” or “farmer’s” ward dominated by bungalows. While
the former was populated largely by “migrants,” the latter was
seen as being the preserve of Sthaniks.
Village wards or those in which less development is per-
mitted in the development plan were those that had been
newly incorporated into the city, with many of them having
deeply resisted urbanisation that led to the formation of the
VVCMC. Lobo recalled how when she got elected, there was
still resistance towards the corporation and its policies.7 She
says it took a lot of work to convince people that their cattle
would not be taxed. People have now gotten used to the
corporation’s systems, she says, but their “village mentality”
is hard to deal with. Jagruti Gavaskar’s ward, like Lobo’s,
was governed by a gram panchayat before the VVCMC was
established. She says, “People have huge cars but don’t want
to give an inch of their property for roads, how will a car pass?”8
Apart from the rural–urban shift the corporator is called to
bridge in these wards, Deshpande also says that the villages
did not have a lot of network infrastructure in place unlike
the areas falling within the former nagar parishads.9 Those
corporators who are in charge of the erstwhile panchayat
areas therefore have to do complicated coordination work
across public agencies.
34
In a building ward, women corporators faced issues con-
cerning informal settlements inhabited by poorer migrants.
Seema Chaubey discusses the difficulties she faces,10 “Vasai and
Virar have good people. The people here (Nalasopara) are not so
good. They do not keep their surroundings clean and there are
a lot of fights over garbage and waste disposal.” Chaubey seems
to conflate migrants having a slum-like mentality with poor basic
services. Until nine years ago, there were no roads, street lights,
gutters or regular water supply, she says. Additionally, corporators
have to address the thorny issue of illegal construction. Anuja
Patil shared that she has focused on demolishing illegal con-
struction,11 especially in the forest area of her ward. This is an
issue she has to navigate carefully within her family and the
party, as both might have enabled and benefited from illegal
construction. As a women corporator who is not directly seen to
be involved in land-related activities, Patil targets illegal con-
struction but is careful to ensure that demolitions of illegal set-
tlements occur on forestland, where only the most vulnerable
groups choose to settle due to its multiple regulatory layers.
It seems clear that as a newly formed city, the process of
“becoming urban” crucially shapes the experience of women
corporators with their publics. Doing political work is spatially
embedded and having villages or chawls/buildings within the
ward matters hugely for everyday corporator-ing.
While all corporators confront unevenness in development
and seemingly inexhaustible demands from their publics,
women corporators, arguably, are more burdened. This is
because they often have to represent wards that have recently
become mahila (woman) seats where new connections with
voters have to be quickly built. Additionally, many are first-
timers, and have to contend with corporation, societal and
party systems that do not respect or heed them. How women
corporators respond to them seems to conform to a more in-
cremental approach and “feminised” repertoire.
Constrained Agency?
Women corporators are embedded in a social milieu that is
structured by conventionally patriarchal structures like the
family and the party. This pushes them to use feminised strat-
egies of care, social work, and close involvement in people’s lives.
But we find that women corporators also bend and stretch
these relations through small, incremental, more genteel
means. These provide an interesting contrast to the seasoned
aggression and violence shown by the figure of the “malkin” in
Bedi’s (2016) analysis of Shiv Sena women political leaders
and indeed to some of the city’s own strongmen politicians.12
Vasai–Virar women corporators who were interviewed denied
there denied that there was any conflict within the party.
When describing potential conflicts, which they carefully re-
ferred to as challenges, a common tactic women showed was of
avoiding the “difficult” work of confrontation but instead esca-
lating matters to senior political members for assistance thus
maintaining her relations as an unbiased leader. This often hap-
pened when land matters were concerned, the corporator per-
sonally knew the landowners involved and did not want to spoil
relations with either party.
february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

Women corporators also sought to leverage “professional”
knowledge of how systems in the VVCMC functioned to get
work done by corporation engineers who did not respect their
authority. They pored over budgets, followed files from desk to
desk, and used the power of their education and politically
connected families, where they had such capital. Lobo said,
They know it is Bhumi Deshpande or Priya Lobo. Engineers know who
they are talking to. Education matters a lot. They can’t tell us they are
simply doing things, they know the next question will be, what are
they doing? They know I will call every person to get the job done.13
Unlike inheritors, Anita More, who studied up to Class 10
and worked as a domestic worker before she was elected cor-
porator, did not possess the advantages of education and fam-
ily political capital. She recalls how when she did not know
what particular English words meant, she asked other corpo-
rators to help or insisted that engineers type or translate in
Marathi otherwise she would not sign.14
Women corporators were careful to undertake work in
spaces where they would be seen working and would also be
considered respectable. “A man can stand at the naka (street
corner) with his arm around another man and his public
contact is done. A woman cannot be seen doing that,” said
Deshpande.15 Apart from maintaining offices or meeting ward
members in their homes, women corporators attended society
events, festivals and funerals, to create opportunities for inter-
action with ward members. They were vigilant about being
seen in their wards so that ward members became aware of
their work. They repudiated any involvement or knowledge
of land dealings, seen as illicit and conducted late evening.
Responding to calls from petitioners late at night was also
hard for women corporators. Lobo said,
Being a woman corporator you can’t move around without a man
at night. You can’t take any man with you or there will be character
assassination. It must be your husband, brother or father.16
By contrast, corporators such as Ranjita Mulekar and More
who belong to low-income households said that they faced less
issues in stepping out at night for work.17 Middle-class women
corporators clearly faced more stringent social sanctions as
“respectable women” (Tawa-Lama Rewal 2001) than those
from lower classes.
Women corporators were prudent not only in choosing spaces
of interaction with male ward and party members but also in
how they interacted within them. Gavaskar says,
There’s the male ego (to deal with). Some feel, what will she be able to
do, we should go somewhere else. But they travel the circle and then
realise there’s no option (but to come back to us) … If women raise
their voice, they are tagged as the ones being agau (overly smart). We
don’t scold or get into fights, we try to make them understand.18
Persuasion and patience were tactics women corporators used,
instead of yelling and fighting, especially when the male egos
concerned were within their own family/kin.
Collective decision-making is also a tactic that all women
corporators actively employed to reduce conflict within the
family, party and ward members. For all corporators, support
from family members was vital to sustain their political career
and hence women took account of the family in decision-making.
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REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
In the ward, they discussed applications for development
works with party workers. Subsequently, they formulated
proposals and ran them by the sabhapati.19 This minimised the
chances of proposals being struck down and ward and party
members being unhappy with work (not) being done. This pro-
cess for undertaking work in the ward helped establish them as
leaders who were inclusive and efficient. Lobo goes further in
saying that such collaborative systems help women corpora-
tors take decisions without signalling that women leaders are
dominant or aggressive, going against prevailing ways of do-
ing things. More and Lobo also shared how women corpora-
tors in an area sometimes supported each other on issues as
this strengthened their political clout, making it easier for the
group to be heard and to have action taken.
Women corporators spoke repeatedly of the virtues of
patience, follow-up, and collective decision-making in situa-
tions when male members (of the family, party and VVCMC)
constrained their functioning. While we analyse these as more
incremental approaches that privilege feminised repertoires
and minimise confrontation, we also argue that this has the
potential to change the way politics is done. This is a politics
that emphasises “the importance of the small, the relational,
the everyday, challenging the artificial division between the
personal and the political” (Roth and Baird 2017). It calls for
shifting the focus of attention from the individual corporator
alone to considering the importance of the networks and
ecosystem within which corporators are embedded that both
enable and constrain action. It also highlights the possibility
for women to create different circuits connecting to new con-
stituents of great importance in city elections where electoral
margins are slender. We discuss two of the most important.
The Young Star Trust and the SHG
Two principal channels by which women corporators in
Vasai–Virar have produced agency and developed their political
careers are through cultural activities organised by the BVA-
sponsored YST and collective saving practices undertaken by
women’s SHGs. Both act as effective vehicles to nurture women’s
political careers but also mould them in particular feminine
ways. Our paper shifts the attention from conventionally
male-gendered approaches to focus on the networks/domains
where women act as the bedrock of support for the public.
SHGs represent a legitimate pathway for building a female
constituency and expanding networks for women corporators.
Corporators told SHG members about work contracts available
in the VVCMC for maintaining public parks in their wards, pro-
vided canteens/stall space during YST events like the Kala Krida
Mahotsav, or assisted with setting up small enterprises. Corpo-
rators also enlisted SHG members in party activities when
needed during the Kala Krida Mahotsav and the VVCMC City
Marathon, as well as for voter registration and campaigning.20
They also organised social gatherings and other festivals in
which women from SHGs participated. SHGs thus enabled a
means to gain access to people’s lives and problems which
could then be converted into opportunities for caregiving,
public recognition and political leveraging for the party. SHG
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REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
members, in turn, ask corporators for help when needed. SHGs
contribute to livelihood opportunities for members as well as
vehicles to make claims to space and resources in the city.
Similarly, the YST with its broad swathe of (party sponsored)
cultural activities provided an umbrella space for budding corpo-
rators to conduct varied social activities for women and build a
following in their ward and party. For instance, when Mulekar
was passed over for a ticket in 2010, she joined the YST and
took a course in bag making. She then taught other women as well
and they started taking orders for bags. The YST supported her
in forming 40 SHGs. In 2015, when the ward was reserved for
women, Appa gave her a ticket on the strength of her work.
After she won the seat, she was given office space at the YST.21
Actively engaging with women ward members through
these strategies that women typically refer to as “social work”
builds a large number of female supporters who readily attend
political functions and rallies, strengthening the image of the
corporator. In the long run, support from women ward mem-
bers could result in increased political support for the women
(or their kin) if they choose to contest elections.
Examining women’s practices of everyday corporator-ing
affords a crucial view into their experience of a gendered
state and how their practices reinforce and stretch urban
local governance. But to understand how the contours of
women corporators’ agency in Vasai–Virar have been forged
requires considering a longer historical timeline of the emer-
gence of its political leaders, notably Appa, and processes of
city building that are integrally connected to land politics.
Subordinated Agency and Land Politics
For most women corporators, Appa stood in for the party and
the local state. This is largely due to the history of Vasai–Virar’s
emergence as a city with Appa as its strongman and incubator.
Chitre, who was heading the Mahila Bal Kalyan Samiti (com-
mittee for the development of women and children) at the
VVCMC at the time of the interview, said, “He’s an Aamdar
(member of legislative assembly) but because he’s the head of
the party, his opinion is always sought when deciding any
policy.”22 For More, Appa was there not only to appeal to but
also to negotiate with as with a senior member of the family.
More, who contested because Thakur, had recruited her fol-
lowing her fiery demand to have a road constructed near her
village, said that her first task after being elected was to get
this road constructed. She shared how she faithfully followed
VVCMC procedures but eventually approached Appa when she
was unsuccessful. She negotiated with him to construct the
road else she would find it difficult to undertake any further
duties as corporator. Thakur then intervened and got the road
constructed. This reveals not only a personalised understand-
ing of the local state but one built on the foundational struc-
ture of the (Indian) family where Appa is the patriarch of the
party and city, a father figure who supports but also needs to
be obeyed (Kamath and Raj 2019). The party consistently uses
the language of patronage and kinship to express the idea that
the patron would behave with the protective instinct, love and
forethought characteristic of this relation (Piliavsky 2014).
36
Women corporators perhaps understand better than anyone
the symbolic power of this familial construction; after all,
their public life is only possible if they have the support of their
family. But while women corporators bought into this gen-
dered construction, they sought to stretch it to make their role
in politics more legible and legitimate to themselves, the party
and the public. They repeatedly invoked the language of fami-
ly to talk about their corporator-ing. “I look at my corporator’s
role as a household responsibility on a larger scale,” Chaubey
said.23 Gavaskar compares women’s experiences in politics to
experiments in cooking. Khan refers to how if something is
broken, a road or gutter, then of course it must be repaired.
“[Just like] We sew and repair things at home.”24 These meta-
phors connecting domestic happenings in the intimate, private
realm to those of public service and politics helped reinforce
ideas of a new kind of corporator politics women were en-
gaged in that claimed to be efficient and inclusive.
Analysing the contours of women’s subordinated agency in
Vasai–Virar, it seems important to assess women’s agency both as
individual leaders and as leaders located within families.
When judged as individuals, women largely remain second-
class political leaders despite the incremental gains made
through their agency. “Women are only given positions that
they need to be given,” says six-time corporator Deshpande.25
Most corporators interviewed had been on the Mahila Bal
Vikas Kalyan Samiti that always has a woman chairperson.
Two women corporators had been on the Arogya Samiti and
the Van (forest) Samiti, respectively. None of the corporators
interviewed had been on other VVCMC committees. Appa and
the party clearly promoted some gender roles as more suita-
ble for women to adopt.
The ability of women to be equal political players to men is
highly questionable in a city built on murky land deals, where
most male corporators are also developers/builders and where
such rents grease the wheels of the party system (Kamath and
Raj 2016). It will require women to inhabit the domain of land
and real estate, hitherto seen as a male preserve. Notably,
none of the women corporators mentioned real estate dealings,
in contrast to male corporators. To produce authority here,
women will need to forsake their feminised repertoire and enact
a different kind of performance: one based on acquiring new
knowledge, aggression, and political presence in spaces where
such deals are often struck in bars or in the late evening hours.
Maintaining a family life and complying with gendered expec-
tations under such circumstances seems difficult.
When considered as part of a familial unit, however, a dif-
ferent view of women’s agency comes to light. There seem to
be distinct advantages for Appa, the party and male politicians
in maintaining a clear separation between the respectable,
feminised face of women corporators and that of the male
corporator enmeshed in land deals. It could allow women cor-
porators’ “social work” to present a foil for what may be called
“land work,” which is foundational to the political work of male
corporators in Vasai–Virar (Kamath and Raj 2019). Through
this process, the city’s violent beginnings can be erased in the
march toward Vasai–Virar as a valued real estate destination.
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 REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS

But how do we read women’s agency in the family context?
Although women are not speculating on property themselves,
they come from families that do or aspire to. Their political
connections and knowledge can prove invaluable in further-
ing family fortunes predicated on real estate accumulation.
This uniquely places the women in a position of simultaneous
power and powerlessness within the family structure. While
they typically cannot take decisions outside of the family, of-
ten deferring to male egos within the family, it also remains
true that, as women corporators, they become important play-
ers in family-level decisions and futures.
Conclusions
This paper explores everyday practices that women corporators
use to negotiate with the local state. It is set at a moment of op-
portunity for women in politics where expanded reservations
have led to political parties wooing women candidates even
while they maintain women’s structural subordination within
the party. In this context, women corporators are keenly aware
of the pressure to perform because while their entry into poli-
tics largely depends on reservation, their worth as politicians
is tarnished by its association. They seek to prove their efficacy
while carefully negotiating the boundaries they are expected
to follow as women—boundaries that have been forged through
longer historical processes encompassing the city’s formation
and its political culture. Women corporators’ notions of agency
then are shaped simultaneously by structural opportunity and
subordination—an agency that is embedded in and enabled by
nested structures of subordination within the family, the party
and the public in the context of a city that is transforming itself
into a profitable site for real estate accumulation.
Differences in caste–class capital shape entry into politics as
revealed by the two categories the paper highlights—inheritors
and pioneers. Spatial locations and compositions of wards also
shape the corporator’s relations with her publics. However,
what binds women corporators together is the employing of
gendered strategies in manoeuvring a state, party and society
that they experience as highly gendered.
Narratives of everyday corporator-ing reveal that women
are creative in deploying “womanly” leadership styles, embod-
ied in work termed “social work.” This is a more incremental,
everyday and relational approach to doing politics. Through
these, we see women stretching the gendered expectations
within which they do political work. We conclude that women
corporators’ agency at both individual and family levels seems
to be characterised by subordination.

Notes
1 Sthaniks opposing urbanisation most strongly
largely belonged to the locally dominant castes—
agriculturist Agris but also Vasai Catholics
found in the coastal belt.
2 Interviewed on 29 January 2020.
3 The Kala Krida Mahotsav is an art and sport
festival organised by the Young Star Trust, a
charitable organisation that is funded by the
Bahujan Vikas Aghadi.
4 Interviewed on 6 December 2019.
5 Hansen (2004) has argued that women corpora-
tors are trapped in situations of “permanent per-
formance” due to rotating systems of reservations.
6 Interviewed on 12 December 2019.
7 Interviewed on 13 December 2019.
8 Interviewed on 9 January 2019.
9 Interviewed on 6 December 2019.
10 Interviewed on 14 November 2019.
11 Interviewed on 21 January 2020.
12 For character sketches of strongman figures in
Vasai–Virar see Bunty Singh (Kamath 2021) and
Ramprasad Gupta and Kshitij Thakur (Kamath
and Raj 2019).
13 Interviewed on 12 December 2019.
14 Interviewed on 1 February 2020.
15 Interviewed on 6 December 2019.
16 Interviewed on 12 December 2019.
17 Interviewed on 16 January 2020.
18 Interviewed on 9 January 2019.
19 A sabhapati is a corporator who is given the
charge of heading a cluster of wards.
20 Interview with Kala Patel, 11 December 2019.
21 Interviewed on 16 January 2020.
22 Interviewed on 7 February 2020.
23 Interviewed on 14 November 2019.
24 Interviewed on 6 February 2020.
25 Interviewed on 6 December 2019.
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Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8 37
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
Cultural Ecologies of Urban Lakes
The Bathukamma Festival, Caste Associations and
Resource Claims in Hyderabad
Pullanna Vidyapogu, Indivar Jonnalagadda
The Bathukamma festival, historically observed by
Telangana-based Other Backward Classes and Dalit
communities with traditional connections to
waterbodies, has since 2014 become a state festival and
a platform for political claim-making. This state-making
project has had ripple effects revealing the everyday
entanglements of caste associations, urban state–citizen
relations, and the political ecology of urban waterbodies,
in the capital city of Hyderabad. The paper sheds light
on how competition between different caste groups,
with distinct cultural ecological claims, shapes urban
political ecologies. Urban communities mobilise
narrowly defined caste associations to strategically make
claims to place, and lobby for resources and recognition.
Such claim-making exists even in slum settlements
consisting of new migrant communities. We argue that
attempts to gain recognition of caste-based claims for
water-linked resources are an indirect articulation of
belonging and connection to the state and the city.
The authors thank Anant Maringanti, Priti Ramamurthy, Bhashwati
Sengupta, and Arvind S Susarla for encouraging and supporting
this research. The suggestions from the RUA editors and anonymous
reviewers helped the paper greatly. Karan Misquitta, Gaurav Mittal, and
Vanshika Singh gave insightful comments that have shaped the paper.
Pullanna Vidyapogu (pullannacsd@gmail.com) is a project fellow at
the Council for Social Development, Hyderabad. Indivar Jonnalagadda
(indivarj@gmail.com) is a doctoral candidate in anthropology and South
Asia studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8
O
n 16 July 2014, the Telangana state government declared
Bonalu and Bathukamma as state festivals, as they
represent the unique culture of the region (Times of
India 2014), and extended financial and logistical support to
all such celebrations (New Indian Express 2014a). The govern-
ment, led by the Telangana Rashtra Samithi party, appealed
to all its citizens to celebrate the new state festivals. The
Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation (GHMC) was made
responsible for providing resources for the festival celebrations
(New Indian Express 2014b). The government’s call was taken up
fervently in the various neighbourhoods of the city. Bathukamma,
in particular, emerged as a platform to articulate belonging in
the new state of Telangana, wherein the local caste associa-
tions and resident welfare associations lobbied for organising
the festivities, thereby making them the conduits for resources
from the state and the political parties.
This democratisation of the Bathukamma festival had many
subtle and significant effects on the everyday social relations
in the urban localities, even beyond the project of state-
making. In this paper, we track these transformations by focu-
sing on local networks of actors who have been coordinating
and organising the annual fesitivities since 2014. The paper
draws from extensive fieldwork conducted in Hyderabad 2013
(Vidyapogu 2017, 2018) and 2014 (Jonnalagadda 2018, 2022)
onwards. Based on observations collected over time, we show
that caste-based identities have been specifically mobilised by
communities in making claims over local resources and in
lobbying for state resources and recognition.
The Background
Bathukamma is celebrated in September– October during the
auspicious nine days leading up to the Dussehra festival. The
rituals involve creating elaborate bonams (floral bouquets) as
symbols of Bathukamma, which is the centre of a folk dance
performed by women. The bonam is finally immersed in the
nearest tank or lake. In the rural celebrations before 2014,
Bathukamma had a particular caste dynamic as reported in
the field study. For example, Lakshmamma, a resident of one
of the bastis (slum settlements), said that ritual precedence
was given to specific lower-caste communities. These groups
are today classified by the Indian government as Other Back-
ward Classes (OBC) but are higher in status than Dalit commu-
nities who traditionally have a lower ritual priority and status.
57
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
Not only was there precedence in terms of order of celebrating,
but there were also separate access points to the waterbody.
Thus, there was a social and spatial hierarchy of organisation
between caste groups who are all relatively marginalised as
compared to upper-caste groups.
In the wake of Bathukamma being made the state festival
and being introduced into the urban spaces of Hyderabad,
however, this caste dynamic has been transformed by collaps-
ing the orders of precedence, by democratising access points,
as a result of inviting all castes, including Dalits and upper
castes alike into the fold. Speaking about the recent Bathu-
kamma celebrations, Pandu (Pullanna field notes, November
2016), a resident of Vattinagulapalli village in Hyderabad said,
“Now there are new communities which have become involved
in the festival, such as political party groups and upper castes.
Of course, they are the ones now leading the festival; espe-
cially due to their connection to the local political class.” The
transformation of the festival occurred spectacularly in 2014,
when Bathukamma celebrations were kicked off in the heart
of Hyderabad by K Kavitha, an upper-caste member of Parlia-
ment, and daughter of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao
(KCR). Kavitha was invited by women of all castes to partici-
pate and celebrate the state festival. In urban areas, this blur-
ring of caste-based ordering resulted in a competition for prec-
edence and special access. The result was that new caste divi-
sions and exclusions emerged in different localities, as various
local associations vied to concentrate the symbolic capital as
resources were now being made available. This paper engages
with the emerging and complex associational life between
various caste groups and their cultural–ecological claims and
roles in the context of a community-specific festival that was
now celebrated as a state-backed public festival.
In all the social flux engendered by the advent of Bathukamma
as a state festival, the tanks/lakes in the region are of crucial
significance. Bathukamma as a ritual has everything to do
with these waterbodies, as it celebrates the life-giving and
livelihood-giving properties of water. This paper examines
the constitutive role of caste relations as determinants of not
only spatial but also environmental differentiation (Coelho
2022; Ranganathan 2022a). We examine what Amita Baviskar
(2003) and David Mosse (2008) call the cultural politics or
ecologies of water, where “identities, interests, and resources
… are emergent products of cultural production” rather than
pre-given structures (Baviskar 2003: 5052). In the field study,
the cultural politics of Bathukamma surfaced as competition
between caste associations (Rudolph and Rudolph 2012).
Suryakant Waghmore (2019), in his study on caste associations
in Mumbai, has compellingly shown that the particularistic
communitarian agendas of caste associations shape modern
urbanism in India’s cities. Combining an attention to caste
associations and cultural practices, we show the influence of
caste geographies on the sociopolitical configurations of
urban environments.
The research sites in this paper are two distinct geographies
which we will label “site A” and “site B.” site A is the long-
enduring Shaikpet village straddling the tank called Yerrakunta,
58
that has existed for a long time and has gradually been assimi-
lated into the city, though residents still call it their “village.”
Site B is the cluster of slum settlements or bastis, alongside
another tank called the Shaikpet Kotha Cheruvu. These bastis
have emerged over the last 30 years. Although the waterbodies
are technically “tanks” built for irrigation in the past, to the
modern gaze of the state government, middle-class environ-
mentalists, and other powerful stakeholders, they are “lakes”
(Coelho 2020). Going forward we call them lakes, because this
designation animates the contemporary politics around these
waterbodies. Today, they are not the anchors of livelihoods
for people living nearby. Nonetheless, site A is populated by
various caste groups organised into caste associations, who
claim specific relationships to the lake, the fauna it supports,
and its surrounding resources like soil and vegetation. The
bastis in site B are populated by groups who do not have
historical links to the lake, but who nonetheless use their
organisation as slum resident welfare associations (SRWAs) to
strategically engage in practices that link them to the lake
and geo/biological environment they live in, and we show that
caste relations influence SRWAs as well.
Caste in urban spaces of South Asia operates in two related
ways—as an identity category to shore up social capital
(Rao 2009; Waghmore 2019) and as an axis of discrimination
in resource distribution or struggle for distributive justice
(Ranganathan 2022b; Upadhya and Rathod 2021; Waghmore
2019). In terms of political ecology, the naturalisation and
essentialisation of socio-ecological hierarchy and domination,
through the idiom of caste, shape macro urban environment
(Ranganathan 2022b). Through our examples from Shaikpet,
we draw attention to the micro- and meso-scale environ-
ments where the caste dynamics are murkier, and where even
the different marginalised groups use caste-informed institu-
tions and idioms to make competing assertions over urban
environments (Nair 2021).
Enduring Customary Claims around Site A’s ‘Dying’ Lake
In late September 2015, Shaikpet village was gearing up to
celebrate Bathukamma at Yerrakunta, which by most criteria
was no longer a lake. Not only did it lack ample water, it was
also highly contaminated as a result of sewage and garbage
disposal. People therefore saw it as practically and morally unfit
for immersing a goddess. Thus, special ponds were constructed
with concrete within the lakes in the run-up to the festival.
Nonetheless, on the eve of the celebrations, there was no water
in the ponds and it had to be sourced from other locations by
tankers. During the festivities, it was only one caste group, the
Gangaputras (the fisherfolk), who dominated the proceedings,
not because of traditional claims but rather upon emerging as
the politically dominant group. This was despite the call by the
state for all communities to participate. How this dominance
was achieved is explained further.
Shaikpet village, situated on the shore of Yerrakunta, has a
symbolic role in the cultural landscape of the locality as
reported by residents of different castes. These roles imply specific
relations to the waterbody and its ecosystem: Gangaputras
february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

claim and exercise rights over fauna; Munnurukapus (the
farmers) over arable land; Mudirajus (hunters/food-gatherers)
over terrestrial flora and fauna; Rajakas (washermen) over
water; Dalits worked as agricultural labourers; and other
service communities such as Kummaris (pot-makers), Kammaris
(blacksmiths), and Vadrangis (carpenters) also make claims to
soil, water, wood, and land in the lake ecology. The above roles
attributed to caste communities have resulted in long-enduring
customary practices relating to the lake and its water.
They endure even though many of these occupations are no
longer practised. The fish in the lake have been wiped out due
to pollution from industrial and commercial establishments
upstream from the lakes. Dalit communities lost their agricul-
tural jobs due to the transformation of land from agricultural
to residential and commercial use. Pot-makers changed their
practice of getting soil from around the lake to getting soil
from other places to make pots. Other service communities
have also shifted to livelihood options like petty businesses,
government job opportunities, software training, and so on.
Most caste communities have turned to urban occupations
in response to drastic changes in urban land use patterns
(Maringanti 2011) and by the seemingly inexorable conquest
of urban real estate development as the hegemonic land-use
ideology in the city (Coelho 2020; Maringanti 2011). Yet, the
entire political ecology and erstwhile cultural geography has
not been erased. Despite all the transformations and even
despite a lake that many might pronounce dead, a lively
network of sociocultural relations and customary claims animate
the ecology of the lake, although in a submerged register
(Maringanti 2011). These claims are sustained through careful
organisations of caste associations.
To return to Bathukamma: state support for celebrations
meant that money was channelled to local associations to
facilitate arrangements of decoration and other infrastructure
for the festivities. In site A, it was the existing caste associations1
that emerged as the local nodes for this resource transfer from
the state. Each of the caste groups mentioned above have a
presence in the urban village, with their own caste associations.
But not all the associations were equally influential, either
locally, or with the state, owing to differences in numbers and
histories. This brings us back to the aforementioned domi-
nance of Gangaputras.
The reason for the dominance of Gangaputras, an OBC group
themself, is not a simple matter of hierarchical precedence or
special allegiance with the ruling party, but rather is histori-
cally and politically contingent. First, the caste associations
have engaged in translocal organising across the state over
the past few decades to ensure that they continue to establish
their formal rights over lake’s fish. They do so by carefully
organising to monopolise the fishing rights auctioned by the
state; they also pressurise the state to auction fishing rights in
all lakes irrespective of their current ecological health. Thus,
even though the lakes do not actually yield fish, they make
formal claims to fish in order to lay claims on the lakes as a
resource, thereby giving them a state-recognised role as envi-
ronmental custodians. The Gangaputras are traditionally in
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
charge of goddess Katta Mysamma whose temples can be
found alongside all the lakes and reservoirs in the region.
The goddess has become important in the cultural lives of
other caste communities. The Gangaputras were therefore well-
organised to lobby for resources and to culturally appropriate
Bathukamma as part of their cultural and political identity-
making in the city. A process which might keep at bay what the
president of the Gangaputra association himself called, “the
threat of disappearing from the cultural landscape of the city”
(Vidyagopu Field Interview 2015).
This political manoeuvrings of Gangaputras in celebrating
Bathukkamma were critiqued by others in Shaikpet in telling
ways. Many noted that this group had never worshipped Bat-
hukamma prior to 2014, but they mobilised to capture the
available resources when the new state of Telangana emerged.
K Raju, vice president of Rajaka Sangham, said that the Ganga-
putra community is able to organise Bathukamma festival at
Yerra Kunta because of the money provided by the local ruling
party leaders, and the other communities have been relatively
marginalised. Raju added that “The leaders of Ganagaputra are
using it as a political party activity rather as a cultural activity”
(Vidyagopu Field Interview 2017). This is not because of a
special relation between the caste group and the political
party, but due to emerging on top in a political competition
that all communities were involved in.
The associational power of Gangaputras demonstrates how
caste associations are crucial intermediaries between the state
and communities. Further, it shows that caste identity is not a
textual or traditional given, but rather it is a dynamic and ongoing
social stratification. It has real impact on the present life of the
city. So their work cannot be limited to intra-caste welfare,
rather must be understood in terms of its impact on intercaste
relations and its influence on political processes, at both local
and translocal scales. Caste groups such as Gangaputras
organising as associations are strategically oriented towards
the state in a bid for recognition as custodians of environmen-
tal resources, thus raising questions about the role that caste
plays in everyday environmental governance.
Constructing New Claims in the Lake Ecology
In September 2016, the communities living in bastis around
Shaikpet Kotha Cheruvu were preparing for their first
Bathukamma celebrations. In contrast to Shaikpet village
where caste associations have existed for many decades, the
bastis are much newer and have seen constant and diversifying
population growth. Although caste associations do exist in
these bastis, the main form of associations operating are the
SRWA s. Seeing the 2015 celebrations in Yerrakunta (site A),
communities in site B sought to tap into the state resources
as well. Also, the larger Kotha Cheruvu had enough water
that it did not require the construction of a special pond. It
was the SRWA of Babu Jagjeevan Ram Nagar that had organised
the celebrations. Most of the association members belonged
to OBC communities (including Rajakas, Gangaputras, and
others) who were migrants to Hyderabad and had memories
of celebrating Bathukamma in their rural homes. Flyers were
59
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
distributed to all to join the celebration and the invitation was
extended to the member of legislative assembly (MLA)
of the area, who belonged to an opposition party. On the
evening of the celebrations, festivities spilled out of the bastis
which did not have adequate space and took place on the
road at the lake embankment. The access point to the lake
was occupied by two men who were helping the women to
immerse the bonams.
Although Shaikpet bastis are demographically mixed, it
was mostly the OBC women who came forward to celebrate.
Many of them were kin of the SRWA members who were
putting on the political show. While the male members got
access to material resources and political networks as a result
of organising the festivities, the women also gained cultural
capital from bearing the burden of tradition, some of them
creating political networks of their own. Ultimately, the MLA
did not show up on this day, but local leaders made speeches
about how Bathukamma should be celebrated by all—a plea
cheered by a homogeneous crowd of OBC groups. In Shaikpet
bastis, it is not just one caste community that dominates the
proceedings. Instead, it is a range of similar OBC groups
participating in the festival and invoking their traditional per-
formance of the festival coming from their rural homelands;
Dalit residents were marginalised in the process.
SRWAs in Shaikpet bastis had various functions: primarily
they pursued welfare for diverse neighbourhood communities,
made claims on the development apparatuses of the state, and
sometimes are organised to consolidate caste alliances. With
these practices, welfare associations become power brokers
for and within communities, and they have become stringent
pressure groups to make demands from the government. Over
time, they have developed intimate links with the local political
party cadres and with government officials (Auerbach 2017;
Jonnalagadda 2018, 2022). Thus, when funds and resources
became available for celebrating Bathukamma, SRWAs became
key nodes for the distribution of these resources.
Most SRWAs in the bastis are entangled with caste associations,
either by sharing members, or by mimicking the caste associa-
tion form as an effective strategy for local organisation.2 The
members sometimes belong to the same caste, or in many cases,
higher positions are occupied by men of only one caste group.
For example, in one of the bastis called Vivekananda colony,
the SRWA was created by one man, who made himself president,
and enrolled others from his caste. Overall, people in the bastis
(site B) are also starting to use caste identity to assert a similar
kind of power to what has been exhibited by the caste associa-
tions in Shaikpet village (site A). Since the legitimacy and
efficacy of an SRWA is itself tenuous, caste solidarity is a power-
ful resource to shore up influence. And in some cases, caste
solidarity entails marginalisation of some other caste group. For
example, the marginalisation of Dalits in the Bathukamma
celebrations of Babu Jagjeevan Ram Nagar, in favour of con-
solidating OBC groups’ access to resources from the state.
Thus, in vying for these positions of political influence, a
whole range of new people around the lakes have started
claiming the festival as their own, irrespective of their prior
60
association with the lake and festival. It is in the language of
caste and through the medium of associations that these
claims are articulated. Thus, the politically mediated associa-
tional life in Shaikpet has transformed the festival processes
and at the same time reworked relations among the lower stra-
ta of the localities. Celebrating the festival together has allo-
wed basti residents to assert their cultural identity in the city,
and facilitated claims to the lake, even though their rights to
this lake are not hereditary. These ritual performances are
part of a wider process of political claim-making in the city for
these groups. For residents in site B, claiming rights in and to the
city is necessitated by their marginal social and geographical
locations. Bathukamma is yet another site to profess belonging,
to claim links with environmental resources, and to gain
recognition and support from the state.
Remarks on Caste and Urban Political Ecology
Observing a cultural practice like Bathukamma in Shaikpet
reveals that residents leverage associations with the lakes.
This is done through repeated activities, patronage, construc-
tion, regular ritual practices at shrines, livelihood sources, and
a host of state-mediated processes such as auctions and festi-
vals. By focusing on caste associations, we observe two ten-
dencies of the social structure in urban spaces. On the one
hand, caste associations are the institutional bulwark for
preserving caste identity (Rao 2009; Waghmore 2019) and,
hence, differentiation in Shaikpet. On the other, they are
institutional pathways to politically contest the existing
socio-economic matrix and to remake cultural practices and
relations. Thus, our cases compel a consideration of urban
“cultural ecologies,” which David Mosse (2008: 940) describes
as “the need to look at water, water harvesting, water distri-
bution, and water use as an ecological-institutional whole,
overcoming the separation of the technical/economic, the
political and the cultural spheres.” Amita Baviskar (2003: 5052)
advocated the importance of understanding the role of
cultural politics in embedding “resource struggles within a
larger symbolic economy where the ‘roles’ that resources per-
form are several.” In our field sites, focusing on associational
life reveals an ongoing reworking of relations between
the castes and also between the communities and the larger
political formations.
Nikhil Anand (2017: 7) argues, “the historic, political, and
material relations” that urban communities make with water
infrastructures are constitutive of a “hydraulic citizenship,”
which contrasts the ideologies of liberal urban citizenship. A
crucial aspect of this citizenship for marginal urban popula-
tions is the mobilisation of specific caste identities and histo-
ries to enhance the benefits they can gain from the materiality
of urban ecology, a practice necessitated by their exclusion
from abstract civic rights and clear private property. In our field
sites, there is a strong moral and customary idiom of claiming
resources such as lake water, fauna, soil, and vegetation.
Although the idiom of property is dominant and hegemonic,
and claims to land are tenuous, this language of customary
claims to co-occurring resources is a living idiom for claiming
february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
 REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS

rights to the city, and rights to resources in the city. While
these idioms are submerged under the hegemonic language
of property that Coelho (2020, 2022) and Maringanti (2011)
highlight, yet they offer limited space to negotiate the terms
of hydraulic citizenship. Albeit, at the cost of creating new
divisions and competing dispossessions (Nair 2021) among
those who are already marginalised.
Epilogue: Mission Kakatiya for Lake Revitalisation
Bathukamma did not emerge as the state festival with an
already formed mission of revitalising the region’s lakes, but
by the nature of the festival itself, the waterbodies were always
implicitly valorised. As celebrations were carried out in places
where the dead lakes and lack of water marred the proceed-
ings, Bathukamma materially, politically, and affectively influ-
enced the emergence of an ecological project for lake restora-
tion and beautification known as Mission Kakatiya. It aimed to
revive the prosperity of the pre-modern Kakatiyas bringing
even greater resources and opportunities for political influ-
ence through ecological relations.
In Shaikpet village, the Gangaputra association was utterly
confident that they can negotiate with the state. The president
said unflinchingly, “We will safeguard our interests. We know
how to get our share.” This clearly shows the political will of
Gangaputras to continue extending their local and translocal
organisation in getting recognised by the state as custodians
of lakes. In contrast, the Rajakas have a weaker organisation,
and they are wary of the mission as a threat to their livelihood.
Given the political outcomes of Bathukamma, they are not
sure that they have the strength in numbers to negotiate with
the state to compensate for the possible livelihood losses, and
the indirect forms of dispossession they might endure. Thus,
they are recruiting migrant Rajakas in the bastis of site B to
strengthen their local clout, thus, providing a new and emerg-
ing political ecological connection between the two sites in
our story of Shaikpet.
Most recently, in Shaikpet Kotha Cheruvu at site B, the lake
was selected for beautification under the state-level Mission
Kakatiya programme (Hans India 2020). Thus, for new popu-
lations such as those in the bastis, the Mission Kakatiya
scheme is an opportunity to stake claims on natural resources,
to bolster belonging through environmental custodianship,
and generally work through state patronage. The lakes are no
longer a productive common-pool resource supporting lives
and livelihoods, but they are nonetheless a part of the politi-
cal ecology of the region and a symbolic connection to the
heritage of Telangana, which present opportunities to forge
relations to the city and state. Caste associations or resident
associations strategically predispose groups to become involved
in these negotiations. Thus, migrant Rajakas in site B are in
fact interested in forging solidarities with long-time resident
Rajakas in site A. By concentrating opportunities for cultural
and political identity-making, caste and welfare associations
make communities strategically nimble in relation to the state,
and they keep alive the idioms of caste and customary claims.
These ongoing dynamics entail new configurations for inter-
caste relations, for cultural ecologies, and finally, for how
governments manage these relations.

Notes
1 The local importance of caste associations
has to do with their usual functions, namely
organising rotating credit associations, main-
taining funds and facilities for community
festivals and weddings, and most crucially
facilitating political parties’ access to local
vote banks.
2 It is useful for communities in the bastis to
have both caste associations and broader civic
associations like SRWAs, as it helps them widen
their strategic repertoire (Jonnalagadda 2022).
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Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023 vol lVIiI no 8 61
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
Invisible Custodians
A Critical Inquiry into the Continuing Obscurity of Women
Waste Pickers at Dhapa Landfill of Kolkata
Shreyasee Dasgupta
A deficient official documentation, undercounting the
number of active waste pickers at Dhapa, and the
obliviousness regarding the hazardous working
conditions render the pickers “invisible.” The women
waste pickers of Dhapa seem to withstand the
dehumanising disposition of their work by embodying a
liminal “hybrid” identity to dissociate from their
corporeal and sensorial selves. This finding aims to
explore how women waste pickers exercise conditional
agency to circumvent oppressive conditions by creating
an insulated universe, a “third space” amid the
overwhelming filth where they treat the “waste” solely
as a means of subsistence.
Shreyasee Dasgupta (shreyase.dg@gmail.com) is a PhD fellow at the
Centre for Regional Studies, University of Hyderabad.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023 vol lViii no 8
I
n Indian cities, municipal sanitation workforce, supervised
by urban municipal bodies, are comprised of scavengers
and sweepers (Chaplin 2011). Despite the ubiquity of
waste, the social relations surrounding it are dependent on its
managing since it is essentially a dyadic set-up where one
generates waste and the other “manages” waste (Gidwani and
Chaturvedi 2011; Chaplin 2011; Harriss-White 2016). Urban
local bodies (ULBs) delegate waste work to informal waste
pickers/ragpickers, thus substituting for the infrastructural
deficiency in formal urban solid waste management (SWM)
(Harriss-White 2016; Dias 2016; Shankar and Sahni 2018).
Waste pickers, exposing themselves to toxic contaminants
(Wittmer 2020), develop an informal circuit of transactions
or “infra-economy” (Gidwani and Maringanti 2016: 112)
where the continuous flow of garbage is repurposed with
negligible expense by the state (Wittmer 2020). Despite ex-
tracting value from waste (Shankar and Sahni 2018), waste
pickers are marginalised within urban informal sector, as
well as remain outside the imagination of mainstream society
(Hayami et al 2006; Bagchi 2016; Gidwani and Maringanti
2016; Wittmer 2020).
Informal waste workers in urban municipal solid waste
management (MSWM) stand at a confluence of multiple mar-
ginalities. In India, waste work is socio-religiously stigma-
tised for intrinsically attached notions of symbolic purity and
pollution (Chaplin 2011; Dias 2016; Harriss-White 2017; Doron
and Jeffrey 2018; Wittmer 2020). Most informal undocu-
mented waste pickers are migrants belonging to either reli-
gious minorities or Dalit communities, stigmatised, earning
meagrely, but continue in the occupation because of their lim-
ited skillset, and illiteracy (Doron and Jeffrey 2018). Waste
workers belonging to upper castes are also deemed “polluted”
due to their close association with “garbage” (Doron and Jeffrey
2018: 189). Although hygiene and sanitation are held in high
priority, waste management is universally viewed as an un-
pleasant undertaking (Jaffe and Durr 2010). Repugnance
evoked on beholding garbage, that “we conspire not to see”
(Thompson 2017: 98), is projected to the figure of a waste picker
(Largey and Watson 1972; Calafate-Faria 2013). “Waste,” in its
materiality is projected with a culturally constructed olfactory
imagery entrenched in moral symbolism. The picker’s social iden-
tity is associated with this olfactory imagery (Largey and Watson
1972), constructing polarities of “good” and “bad” (Largey and
51
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
Watson 1972: 1024; Synnott 1991: 437; Low 2005). The sensorial
image of “bad” or a “skunky group” associated with pickers
stigmatises them as “dirty people” lacking basic hygiene
(Doron and Jeffrey 2018).
Constituting the lowest ranks of urban SWM, waste pickers
are rarely viewed as political subjects or economic service pro-
viders having rightful claims over the civic amenities and com-
mons (Hayami et al 2006; Gidwani and Chaturvedi 2011;
Shankar and Sahni 2018). Subjected to “marginalised–humanity,”
pickers live ‘‘socially excluded” (Harriss-White 2017), ignored
by the other participants of waste economy and management.
Typically for informal sectors in urban areas, the household
becomes a centre of economic relations and activities (Sassen
2002). But for undocumented waste pickers, regular interac-
tions with city residents are improbable (Calafate-Faria 2013;
Ghosh 2017). The ‘‘self-employed” (Harriss-White 2017) waste
pickers are free to adjust their working hours depending on
feasibility, health, weather, etc, while earning a livelihood by
selling to “higher level traders” or collectors (Hayami et al
2006: 42). Unlike the registered MSW workers drawing salaries
and compensations (Harriss-White 2016), informal waste work,
dominated by women, lacks standardised system of wages. In
contrary to other parts of the world where waste management
is understood as a male-dominated workforce (Jaffe and Durr
2010), the task of waste segregation is carried out by female
waste pickers in India (Huysman 1994; Bagchi 2016; Hayami
et al 2006; Ghosh 2017; Sen 2018; Shankar and Sahni 2018;
Wittmer 2020). A sample survey conducted in 2012–13 revealed
that in Kolkata, the majority of waste pickers are either women
or children (Bagchi 2016: 64). Among street-bound waste pick-
ers of Kolkata, majority are women who are in charge of run-
ning the household (Sen 2018). The same applies for the self-
employed waste pickers of Dhapa landfill in Kolkata.
Changes in administration and concurrent planning strate-
gies have occurred over the years; however, Kolkata remains
dependent primarily on Dhapa (Dhapar maath) and its infor-
mal waste pickers for SWM (Sarkar 1990; Ghosh 2017). A survey
carried out in 2017 by DISHA, a non-governmental organisation
(NGO) in Kolkata working for the rights of informal waste pick-
ers, revealed approximately 3,000 pickers were actively
working at Dhapa landfill site, who recovered an estimated
50% of the recyclable waste (DISHA 2017).
Objectives and Methodology
This paper aims to illustrate informal undocumented waste
pickers’ negotiation with their “invisible” existence. Regard-
less of the manifold risks and marginalities, the waste pickers,
motivated by “incentives” like occupational freedom, choose
to continue by finding ways to navigate their “invisibility.” It is ar-
gued in the paper that waste pickers survive perpetual threat
by assuming a “liminal” identity as a way to manoeuvre obscu-
rity, social stigma, and finally to “circumvent” bourgeois capi-
talist economy by existing in a third space (Bhabha 1994) of
their own creation.
To substantiate the argument proposed in this paper, evidence
is drawn from narratives of women waste pickers associated
52
with Dhapa waste recycling region, the primary and largest
site for dumping municipal solid waste (MSW) in Kolkata.
Dhapa, located in the East Kolkata Wetlands (EKW), lying in
the eastern periphery of Kolkata, has fulfilled salient aspects
of Kolkata’s sanitary reforms since colonial era. A square mile
of its area acquired in 1865 by the municipal authorities,
named Dhapa square mile, situated far from the city’s erst-
while perimeter, was to serve as the dumping site for the
entire city’s refuse or “garbage” (Sarkar 1990; Datta 2012;
Mukherjee 2020). Rag-picking or “garbage scavenging” that
originated in Kolkata around papermaking prevalent in the
mid-19th century was later applied in Dhapa landfill to exe-
cute larger operations of garbage farming and waste segregation
(Furedy and Ghosh 1984: 161).
An ethnographic study was conducted by the author among
women waste pickers of Dhapa with the assistance of a key
informant, an outreach worker associated with a NGO working
for the welfare of the waste pickers of Dhapa. Narratives of the
women waste pickers were recorded via semi-structured inter-
views conducted by the author at their homes in Mathpukur
slum situated close to Dhapa. Having settled around Dhapa af-
ter migrating from various districts of West Bengal, the pickers
of Mathpukur have worked as waste pickers for generations.
The pedestrian alley leading inside Mathpukur slum is a
narrow strip flanked by the pickers’ homes. Given the proxi-
mate spaces between respondents’ houses, the idea of personal
one-on-one interviews was abandoned. The conversations in
the informal settings became an important source of data as
the familiarity of settings assured the respondents to speak
freely. Further, it helped the author to observe the respond-
ents’ personality, behaviour and interactions among each other.
‘Invisibilising’ Waste and Waste Workers
The tenable task of extracting value from waste through re-
cycling and repurposing is particularly enabled by the ‘‘spatial
concentration of waste” (Shankar and Sahni 2018; Gidwani
and Maringanti 2016). Across India, waste pickers work in
large urban landfills like Deonar in Mumbai, Okhla in Delhi,
Kodungayur in Chennai, and Dhapa in Kolkata under haz-
ardous conditions (Doron and Jeffrey 2018). These “toxic
sinks” (Gidwani and Maringanti 2016) are disconnected from
the main cityscape, marginalised by a “territorial stigma” lead-
ing to “the incremental exclusion of these spaces” (Baumann
and Massalha 2022) and the people who work inside these
insulated receptacles.
“Urban improvement,” ascertained by aesthetic govern-
mentality, involves remedying or “invisibilising” aesthetic
and civic improprieties (Ghertner 2015: 79) that materialise as
“concealment.” For example, Mathpukur slum remains hidden
behind the upscale neighbourhoods of Eastern Metropolitan
(EM) Bypass that stretches along the eastern periphery of
Kolkata, connecting its north-east quarter with south-east
(Sawyer et al 2021: 680). The area around EM Bypass contin-
ue to be developed as a cleaner alternative to the chaotic ur-
ban spaces of Kolkata, by reinforcing “uneven urban devel-
opment, socioeconomic segregation and peripheralization”
february 25, 2023 vol lViii no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

(Sawyer et al 2021). To achieve a desirable space, “the people
and processes that are indispensable for affluent consump-
tion” are made “invisible” (Baviskar 2002). Planners and ad-
ministrators exhibit ambivalence towards informal waste
pickers (Gidwani and Chaturvedi 2011; Doron and Jeffrey
2018) that manifests in a systemic omission of informal waste
pickers from official planning.
Dhapa, the repository of refuse, stands disparate from the
sanitary landscape of the “main city” as a “marginal place”
(Shields 1991). As waste in its totality is sought to be expelled
from a ‘‘sanitary landscape,” the waste pickers who depend on
it for their sustenance suffer the same fate working in obscurity
inside the disconnected, insulated receptacles. Waste pickers
are made invisible structurally and socially as they occupy a
peripheral social space (Bourdieu 1989) culturally and geo-
graphically distant from the mainstream imagination. Informal
waste work in Kolkata is dominated by women. Although
women’s work is invisibilised, in the case of waste picking
the occupation itself is stigmatised and eclipsed leading to
the overarching obscured status of informal waste workers.
For instance, when the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC)
introduced Modern Scientific Waste Compacting Stations
(MSWCS) under the Clean City Campaign of 2014 (Baidya et al
2016), the intention behind this venture was to convert Kolkata
into a “garbage vat free” city (DISHA 2017) which could poten-
tially unemploy approximately 15 pickers at every the KMC
ward. Interviews conducted for the present paper by the
author among KMC officials indicate an apathetic attitude
towards waste pickers, as an engineer (not named on request)
at the Department of Solid Waste Management (KMC), revealed
that waste compactors are being procured primarily, among
other things for their aesthetic value. Compactors caused “less
spillage and very little smell.” A KMC ward councillor was
equally jubilant about the possibility of “less stink (durgondho)
causing” and “visually pleasing” (drishyo-dushon o hobe na)
ways of transporting garbage.
There is a relative apathy displayed towards the hazardous
nature of the pickers’ working conditions (Gidwani and
Maringanti 2016; Ghosh 2017; Wittmer 2020). In fact, in Kolkata,
there is no active political support or collective representation
to change the informal nature of waste pickers’ labour (Ghosh
2017). Deficient official documentation, undercounting the
actual number of active waste pickers at the site, inadequate
allocation of resources, and an obliviousness to the hazardous
nature of their work are few ways that make pickers invisible
(Ghosh 2017). Invisibility thrust upon the waste pickers ban-
ishes them to interstitial spaces rife with inequity and depriva-
tion (Thompson 2017). In the KMC’s District Environment Plan
2021, there is absolutely no mention about the informal waste
pickers/ragpicker’s role in Kolkata’s SWM, regardless of being
dubbed as “climate volunteers” by the Solid Waste Manage-
ment Rules of 2016. Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, when waste
pickers have become extremely vulnerable and likelier to get
infected as they handle contaminated discards, there is but little
initiative for responsible disposal of contaminated discards or in
providing protective gear to the pickers. The key informant,
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023 vol lViii no 8
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
doubting the effectiveness of state-led initiatives regarding the
pickers’ situation, simultaneously emphasised on the passivity
of the waste pickers as they were unwilling to mobilise.
Owning Invisibility through Liminality
Conversations with the respondents indicated that it was not
only the mere acceptance of fate, but somewhere the pickers
have devised ways to cope with the given circumstances. The
waste pickers of Dhapa seem to enter a liminal (Turner 1961)
identity and incrementally dissociate from their sensory as well
as corporeal selves that are entrenched in and assign to the
hegemonic moral standards. The waste pickers strip off their
previous selves on entering the landfill, instead donning an
exoskeleton of a faceless, anonymous “trash digger” (Ghosh
2017). Thereby, resorting to a kind of transitory hybrid identity
to escape the overpowering dehumanising disposition of their
work and their impulsive bodily revulsion induced by han-
dling waste, treating it solely as a means of sustenance devoid
of its “impure” attribute. Carrying out their work of sifting gar-
bage in a systematic fashion, the pickers forego sensory abjec-
tions. The respondents tend to use the Bengali word moyla
that loosely translates to dirt/grime instead of nongra (fi lth)
to describe the garbage that they handle. Instead of express-
ing disgust, the respondents burst into laughter recounting
how the viscous filth that splatters over their bodies during
rainy season makes them look like bhoot (ghost).
Waste pickers confront their invisible status by creating
a liminal niche that prevails for a finite period, where
the “adherents can slip between their alternative selves”
(Jaimangal-Jones et al 2010: 257). For the respondents, the
Dhapa waste site becomes an alternate universe where they
‘‘shed their inhibitions” (Jaimangal-Jones et al 2010). A third
space (Bhabha 1994) or an ambivalent space is produced by
the interactions of various aspects of the respondents’ lives, as
they simultaneously tackle their job and the domestic roles. It
is an interstice removed from hegemonic regulations, where
the otherwise unseen waste worker assumes an indispensable
role of extracting value from all that is rendered useless.
Women take their children along, inside Dhapa as, often,
the entire family is involved in waste picking. According to
the respondents, the dump site is considered a safer space for
the child where they can be looked after since no one stays at
home (barite keu thake na). The women create a world of their
own within the toxic sink where they work, eat, dote on their
children, and find support in each other. A certain level of
hierarchy does exist within Dhapa as the KMC officials present
at the site are usually referred to as sir; however, the extent of
authority wielded is limited. The officials, too, move around
without any safety gear, checking outsiders entering the land-
fill, and rarely interfering in the pickers’ routine.
Ubiquitous invisibility societally imposed on the pickers that
seeps inside the insulated space of Dhapa plays somewhat to
the women’s advantage in coalescing them into a homogene-
ous “genderless” mass temporarily. As revealed through the
interview sessions, the only constant threat the women faced
was of succumbing to injuries sustained while working inside
53
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS

Dhapa. Keu kichu korte ashuk, o shob meyechhelera mile merei
felbe (let someone try to do anything, the women will band
together and kill him), the women had exclaimed unanimously
when asked about the possibility of sexual violence at work.
“Desexualisation” helps female pickers to escape sexual har-
assment inside Dhapa. The women joke that they are likelier to
die in accidents at the dump site than get molested there be-
cause ‘‘safety” is never an issue at their workplace, though the
same is not assured once they leave the Dhapa premises.
Their homes do not offer the same ‘‘security” as their work-
place, as the respondents agree, saying that “We do not know
what might happen to us once we leave.”
Understanding the liminal niche created by the waste pick-
ers as a “third space” shows the fluidity in their social space,
thus negating a contrived habitus societally bestowed on the
pickers. The hybrid identity developed within the third space
can be interpreted as a means of resistance devised by the
waste pickers to turn a vulnerability on its head, and maneu-
vering it tactically for survival as well as sustenance. As Sen
(2018) in her work on street-bound waste pickers of Kolkata
asserts that pickers choose this way of livelihood to deliber-
ately stay beyond the reach of the state. Bagchi’s (2016) work
on women waste pickers also highlights the conscious choice
of waste picking for its “incentives.” Other works on waste
pickers across the country emphasise on the agency of a picker
despite the manifold risks and oppressive conditions they are
faced with. Especially in the case of women waste pickers, the
hybridity comes to play a crucial role since the embodiment of
the hybrid identity disrupts the power dynamic of patriarchy.
A desexualised liminal identity enables the female waste pickers
to subvert the patriarchal gaze by disavowing any stringency
for modest attire. At the dump site, the women either choose
loose maxis (nightgowns) hitched up and tightened around
their waistline as a work outfit, or wear their sarees high
enough to expose their calves. Women dress comfortably
for uninterrupted work. Quite inversely, it was found during
interview session, when at home the women drape their saris
more modestly with care, as there they fulfil the role of a
wife, parent, matriarch, someone bound by role expectations
and gender norms.
Continuing Invisibility of the Custodians
Dhapa becomes an unlikely space of unparalleled mobility,
“freedom,” or as a respondent surmised, nijer ichhe moton
(as per their own wish). A representational or lived space is
created by the pickers that is farther from mainstream imagi-
nation. Without any regulated working hours, the pickers
themselves decide the duration for their work factoring in
certain unavoidable components, such as health or weather.
For example, in summer, the pickers work till four in the

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54 february 25, 2023 vol lViii no 8 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

afternoon, but during winters they go on till seven in the
evening. Health issues affecting their labouring capacity
often force them to call off their day earlier than stipulated.
One of the respondents disapproved of waste-picking women
who have changed jobs to work as domestic help in nearby resi-
dential complexes, saying, Chhuti daye na, taka niye jhamela kore
(cannot take days off, there are issues regarding salaries).
Unsurprisingly, women waste pickers valorise “freedom”
from societal controls that their work affords as it is the only
incentive that they “enjoy.”
A combination of oppressive circumstances like hazardous
disposition of work, poverty and sociocultural discrimination
throws the pickers into a sea of uncertainty. The extremely
dangerous working conditions looming as a perpetual threat
to the lives of the pickers rarely garner any attention from the
state or civil society. For example, during rainy season, the
waste picking becomes even more arduous as the slurry not
only impedes the pickers’ work but increases the possibilities
of accidents. The women said that Mukh-chokh obdi moyla
chole ashe, pa peechle jaye (muck splashing on their face, slip-
ping, and falling are common incidents during monsoon). The
respondents opt for rudimentary protective gear like cloths
tied around nose and mouth, but generally walk barefoot
among the sharp-edged debris. Frequent injuries and casual-
ties inside landfill caused by reckless driving of garbage trucks
in the absence of any motorable road amid overflowing mounds
of waste remain unreported in mainstream media. An elderly
respondent had habitually lifted her sari to reveal an old scar
on her knee from falling on glass shards at the dump site. She
was shifted to a government hospital more than 5 kilometres
away as there were no provisions for first aid at the site. “People
have been crushed by the garbage carrying trucks, or died un-
derneath the pile of waste,” exclaimed the respondents when
asked about what kinds of accidents occurred.
The indifference of the state and mainstream society deprives
the pickers of their basic rights and amenities. There is neither
any form of insurance nor compensatory provision for losses
borne by the pickers. Furthermore, prolonged exposure to toxic
contaminants leads to recurring and long-term ailments among
the waste pickers. The respondents complained of gaaye chulkani
(rashes, skin allergies), shash koshto (difficulty in breathing),
haate-paaye byatha (body/joint aches). The key informant
complained of inconsistency in the execution of state-led wel-
fare programmes, suggesting the siphoning of funds and to-
ken gestures, “Few items (protective gear) were bought and
distributed to a portion of the population but these individu-
als in particular never received anything.” None of the re-
spondents exhibited any familiarity with the provision for
safety gear, reaffirming that the state efforts involved in im-
proving their living conditions are not felt inside Mathpukur.
A typical day for the waste-picking women of Mathpukur
begins with waking up before dawn, then rushing to stand in
queue for water. After finishing compulsory chores, they try to
reach the dumping site latest by seven in the morning to begin
the day’s work. Sifting through the moylar dhipi or mounds of
garbage, the waste pickers identify items made up of leather,
Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 25, 2023 vol lViii no 8
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
rubber, plastic, glass, and metal in order to sell to collectors/
recyclers/scrap dealers. The price at which the exchange will
take place between the picker and collector is decided by the
latter. On an average day, a waste picker earns between `150
and `300. Occasionally, jewellery discovered amid the garbage
mounds is considered “lucky” as it fetches higher rates than
the ordinary recyclables. In general, exchanges take place
between illiterate female waste pickers and male collectors or
scrap dealers. There is no bargaining, and the price is decided
arbitrarily by the collectors, which suggests that the transac-
tion is not profitable for the respondents. The collector pays
the pickers an aggregate amount of `100 to `200 based on
the types of goods (shob ekshathe dhore ekta taka diye daye).
Absence of any bargaining thwarts the pickers from incur-
ring extra profits.
The absence of political representation and mobilisation
leaves the pickers bereft of a formal platform to voice their
demands, leaving them to their devices to figure out some
form of respite even if temporary. The NGOs, voluntary or-
ganisations, and collectives advocate for the basic rights of
recognition, education, and healthcare for the informal
waste pickers, but neither the state nor the pickers them-
selves at times supplement their efforts with adequate sup-
port. Far from being unbothered about their circumstances,
the pickers are pessimistic when they talk about their future.
The respondents worry constantly about their dwindling
economic situation, “the kind of money that we bring in is
not enough, 100 rupees, 200 rupees, do you (to the author)
think it is enough for a family to survive? Chikitsha korate
hole taka dhaar korte hoye (we need to borrow money for any
sort of medical treatment).” While some of them struggle to
meet the daily needs, others express fear about their
uncertain future, “How much can we earn? Maximum `3,000,
we cannot survive in this money … my family needs a bigger
place to stay, four of us stay in this house. Isn’t there any
chance we can get more money? How long can we go on like
this? If Dhapa is shut down then how will we eat?” In spite of
grappling with a series of challenges, informal waste pickers
of Mathpukur choose to continue.
In Conclusion
The waste pickers construct their own social spaces trans-
gressing the boundaries of capitalist relations of production
based on the informal understanding and extracting value
from discards. Peripheral urbanisation poses the threat of live-
lihood loss for the waste pickers and other dependents if more
land under the EKW are reclaimed for remedying. As more
land under the wetlands and the landfi ll are redeveloped,
peripheries are redrawn (Banerjee 2012). The state sides with
the capitalist intentions of obtaining land for the market at
the cost of livelihoods and well-being of the people. In the
context of Dhapa, a number of aspects converge making
reclamation an easy choice for the planners, especially being
a part of the EM Bypass, thus becoming an asset to the city in
helping it to break away from its mould and compete with
other Indian metropolises in the race. The Dhapa landfill has
55
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
been a constant source of earning for these women waste
pickers, around which they have created what can be termed
as “auto-constructed” (Caldeira 2017) spaces, circumventing
the mainstream imagination of the city. If the peri-urban is
completely urbanised these spaces face the probability of
displacement too.
Uncertainty and intrinsic precariousness of informal waste
picking have led the members of younger generations of
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