21. The Medium is the Community:
An Investigation of how Form Affects Discussion and Community in Online Discussion Spaces
Kiran Jonnalagadda, Bangalore

With the advent of social software for the Web (prominently in the form of weblogs and social networking services), we see the Web change from from an information publication space to an interactive communication space. This results in the overlap of what were previously distinct research areas: how the medium affects the message, and how user interface affects usability in computer software. Previous studies by experts have covered online media, online communities and user interfaces, but the new overlap of all three is relatively unexplored. This project intends to study this overlap, of how user interface shapes the communities that form in online communication spaces.

22. History and Storytelling about Kolkata and Howrah: Integrating Narratives and Database
Vasudha Joshi, Kolkata

According to V. Ramaswamy, a corporate executive and a voluntary activist who has been working in Howrah for several years now:

"For long decades, Howrah has been neglected. During the colonial period, there was a tendency to view Howrah as a coolie town, in comparison to Calcutta, and thus justify institutional neglect in such terms. The sheer backlog of infrastructure and services as the population and especially the slum-dwelling population grew, in turn becoming the pretext for further neglect. Thus, the official view today is that Howrah is a doomed city and nothing whatsoever can be done. Officials responsible for taking action put forward the view that 'decent people do not go to Howrah."

This project will straddle history and storytelling about Kolkata and Howrah and will also include a number of other histories of Kolkata through personal narratives. In the course of working on this project I am interested in working on forms that strive to integrate narrative and database, and experiment with how interactivity might work in new ways. The project will integrate video and stills, archive material and maps along with histories and stories.

23. Messing with the Bhadraloks :
Towards a Social History of the Mess Houses in Calcutta, 1890s-1990s
Boddhisattva Kar and Subhalakshmi Roy, Delhi

In spite of multiple references in a variety of cultural productions and historical accounts of 20th-century Bengal, the mess-houses of Calcutta continue to escape full-length studies and remain a largely undocumented career of (post)colonial urbanity. Though almost a thing of the past today, the institution and practices of mess-houses need critical attention to appreciate a widespread practice of forging a community in an urban space throughout the 20th century. Being shot into the status of a colonial epicentre, the city of Calcutta meant education and jobs for many in its neighboring districts and provinces. From the 1890s, the institution of mess-houses surfaced in the city primarily as a residential establishment of the male middle-class migrants who could not afford to hire a whole house and bring their families along. As our preliminary findings indicate, caught between the compulsions of harboring district identities and acquiring urban respectability, the little Sylhets and the little Burdwans in early- and mid- 20th open anonymous public spaces completely submerged in the mainstream urban culture.

In the first place, the project wishes to appreciate the role of the mess-houses as lived sites of the constitution, exercise and contestation of the distance between the metropolis and the mofussil. From extensive interviews and dispersed written accounts, the research would try to recover the fast vanishing histories of the everyday negotiations of identity. Examining and analysing these representational strategies and the exclusionary rules of the mess-house communities, the study would try to map the changing homosocial boundaries of the urban space and record the details of the gradual and checkered emergence of the working girls' hostels, commonly known as 'women's mess-houses'. Finally, we would like to pursue the final days of the mess-houses in and through the various contexts of political situations, flux in the real estate market, growth of the hotel industry, changing job patterns, consumerist tropes and redistribution of social bonds.

24. The Hospital Labour Room as a Space for Unheard Voices
Kuldeep Kaur, Chandigarh

The labour room is a space that women from every section of society visit; it deals with the most vulnerable group of patients (mother and child); it plays a crucial role in deciding the overall health standards of any society. It manifests the social attitude towards women and children.

Due to a shortage of time and magnitude of importance, the words uttered in and around labour room go beyond the usual cosmetic expressions of society. The expressions captured in the labour room are the real micro-picture of society's overall attitude towards and children. This study, conducted by a practicing nurse and freelance journalist, will attempt to collect narratives from this space.

25. Spoke/d Vision: Cyclists in Delhi
Maninder Jit Kaur, Delhi

Like slums, cyclists are seen as impediments and ugly sores on Delhi roads. Though cyclists are officially and existentially lumped together with motor vehicles, forced to drive amidst them, in many ways they more closely resemble pedestrians: they are small, maneuverable, human-powered and exposed to the elements. If speed is power they are literally the most powerless amongst moving-wheel objects. This study would attempt to ethnographically map the life of cyclists through fieldwork and conversational engagements with cyclists about their needs, household incomes, health conditions, employment, etc. More specifically, the study will focus on the survival strategies, competition and collaboration, on the roads of Delhi.

26. Aa Mata Tujhe Dil ne Pukara: Khani Dilli ki Jagaran Partiyon kee
(Jagaran Tales in Delhi)
Sunil Kumar, Delhi

This work will look at the Jagaran phenomenon in Delhi, especially the Jagaran parties, singers, writers and musicians, big and small. A Jagaran can be looked at as a huge employment avenue, so the financial arrangements are crucial. The other strand in the proposal will see how people gather as publics. How do they use public resources on such occasions? What is the social and administrative sanction for Jagarans? The project will generate an archive of Jagaran material: stories, song books, photos and audio.

27. Ponytails-Rings-Punches: Female Boxers in India
Pankaj Rishi Kumar, Mumbai

Boxing has traditionally been associated as a masculine activity, identified with the male physique and psychology. Blood, bruises, cuts and concussion, are considered to be "natural" for men, but absolutely at odds with the essence of femininity. Boxing is deeply gendered, embodying and exemplifying "a definite form of masculinity: plebeian, heterosexual and heroic". Thus, when female boxers display unconventional signifiers like aggression, power and hyper-performity, there arises a confusion and a complete lack of grammar to understand to which category they belong. The feminine signifiers (like make-up, bindis, manicured nails, and hairstyle) are culturally set "natural" signifiers, whether they are carried by a markedly feminine woman in a traditional sense or by a markedly masculine woman. In the context of female boxing, the confusion arises because they combine culturally masculine aggression and traditional feminine signifiers. Thus, in the premise of the ring, they feminise masculinity and masculinise femininity.

28. High Rise Hygiene: Narrativising Mumbai's New Urban Culture
Lakshmi Kutty, Mumbai

I want to explore the different narratives of hygiene and sanitation that inhabit Mumbai city spaces today, that emphasise the need for uncluttered, unperilous modes of communication and interaction, entertainment and leisure, finance and vocation, to name a few. The city space, presently and in its vision for the future,- is being plotted in terms of eliminating its polluting excesses. Public attitudes about changing lifestyles in the city, government plans for redevelopment/beautification, increasing market choices and mobility opportunities, concerned citizens groups' ideas, protests against increasing disparity in living standards -- all these narratives are assigning new meanings to familiar symbols, thus creating fully new ways of seeing. What are these new models that are making earlier patterns and ways of inhabiting and consuming the city seem awkward and passé? The project will investigate the exclusionary mechanisms of scrutiny that animate the dominant discourse on hygiene, and will look at how these nuanced tools of power and control are getting articulated in certain print and visual media of the city.

29. A Study of Changing Banking Practices in Udaipur
Faraaz Mahmood, Udaipur

Eight months ago, when the researcher joined a prestigious private sector bank in Udaipur, he did so with the notion of ensconcing myself in a comfortable and cushioned position in the otherwise volatile world of finance. This was not to be so. He was taken in as an officer trainee but was made to garner hands-on experience right from day one. Within days he was allotted a Financial ID that made him answerable to the corporate office in Mumbai for every wad of notes he handled. Seemingly, the banking procedures have been far more spruced up logically in comparison to those practiced a decade before in the small town in which he lives. Reality, though, is in stark contrast to the virtual appearances. The name of the game is sales and marketing. Banks are no longer the safe havens to park one's hard-earned deposits and earn regular profits over a period of time. The project intends to make a compartmentalised study of six papers dealing with the profit making practices of the bank as a sales machine, and also will maintain a regular blog of events.

30. The Viewership of Non Commercial and Independent Film in Delhi
Anannya Mehta, Delhi

This study hopes to understand film viewing as a site of meaning, fun and sharing in Delhi. By meaning, the study hopes to convey the now virtual truism that film viewership has come to mean more than just the act of viewing. The cinematic pervades every sphere of our lives the social, the political, the emotional and certainly the economic. What is the motivation behind the mechanics of viewing, behind the habit of regular visits to Sarai, the India Habitat Centre, the Max Mueller Bhavan, the French Cultural Centre, etc? How do audiences understand, interpret and experience films?How do we unravel the ubiquitous presence of the filmic in our lives? In what way does cinema enter the everyday? What form of group congregation does it result in? If independent cinema (non commercial cinema spaces) acts as a new, still emerging public sphere where different narratives of politics, culture, debate, desire and entertainment intersect, then who are these regular film watchers? What is it that people take back with them?