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11. Peerzada Arshad Hamid: Lone Psychiatric Hospital Battles with Chaos in Srinagar City
This project will study the functioning of lone psychiatric hospital of Srinagar in the strife-torn Valley of Kashmir where thousands of people are suffering from post traumatic stress disorders (PSTD). The 16 years of turmoil in the state has resulted in a sharp increase in stress related disorders especially the PSTD. The armed conflict in the state has affected the society at large. The continued violence has made vast population psychiatric patients. The research will seek to detail the strains and pressures in the conflict ridden society leading to the psychiatric problems among the population. It will also look into the needs and remedies required to provide solace to the battered population.
Peerzada Arshad Hamid, is a Srinagar based freelance journalist. He has written for the Tehelka, Midday, and other papers. In depth research based human interest stories are a priority for Peerzada. He holds an M. A. in Mass communication and Journalism.
12. Rakshat Hooja: Urban Stakeholder Activism and the Role of Resident Welfare Associations: A Case study of how the problems of water supply have led to the creation/ strengthening of Stake Holder Platforms/Institutions in select Colonies of New Delhi and Jaipur.
In many of the metropolitan cities of India, Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) have become important social institutions that play an increasingly significant role in the lives of the residents of these areas. In New Delhi the RWAs have become very active and over time most of the RWAs have been registered under the Societies Act. The Government of Delhi has also launched a “Bhagadari” scheme where the authorities form partnerships with the local RWAs for carrying out many activities. The purpose of my planed study is try and understand, or figure out, what makes the RWAs tick. The plan is to document the activities and functioning of a few select (selected not randomly but deliberately) RWAs in order to understand why they are successful/not successful.
The key questions examined will be those of the reasons for participation by the residents and possibility of the RWA being a viable platform for stakeholder activism in the existing urban political set-up.
I hold a Masters degree in Sociology form Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi and a M.Phil in Social Science (Science Policy) from, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. At present I am working towards my PhD on “commodification” and de-facto privatization of water in urban areas. I have done research and published on a number of topics including history of video games, watershed development and management, livestock management, open source/FLOSS software, urban water supply etc.
13. Farhana Ibrahim: Maritime Histories, Merchant Networks and the Production of Locality in Western India
Based on fieldwork in old port towns in Kachchh and some research at the Maharashtra state archives, this paper proposes to think about the idea of the ‘cosmopolitan’ as we know it today, and to think through late modernity’s idioms of rootless-ness, movement, and flexible citizenship from the point of what we know about similar sorts of movement in the past, to locate the ‘global citizen’ across space and time. Second, the paper asks whether the fact of mobility or travel always implies an inclusive consciousness; whether in fact mobility does not sometimes more effectively and decisively seal the boundaries between us and them, self and other?
Farhana Ibrahim has a PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology from Cornell University. Her dissertation research, conducted in Gujarat state’s Kachchh district, examines the production of national political cultures through the conceptual prisms of religion, state-formation and settlement along the borders of modern nation-states. In future, she hopes to study madrassas (Islamic schools) located along the India-Pakistan border to explore the implications of Islamic education for the construction of transnational Islamic subjectivities within the context of the liberalization and privatization of education more broadly. She is currently Assistant Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Bombay.
14. Lakshmi Indrasimhan and Jacob Weinstein: Vending as Vernacular: Depicting Street Sales and Services through Sequential Art
In our project we conducted interviews with various streetside vendors and craftsmen in New Delhi. Due to language and other difficulties we were unable to achieve the level of detail we had originally envisioned as the basis of our work. We spoke to a wide range of vendors, aiming to document their skill sets, the tools and rules of their trade, methodology, income, personal history, etc. The results of our research are still in the process of being turned into a comic, but one that has become increasingly fictionalized, though they still use the conversations as basis for a series of visual narratives.
Lakshmi IndraSimhan grew up in Kuwait, India, the Philippines, the US and Japan. She graduated with degrees in Political Philosophy and Fine Arts from Bryn Mawr College in 2002. Now she writes, draws and spends much time in her flat. She collects textiles. This summer she will have a short artist’s residency at Point Ephemere in Paris. She lives in Delhi. lindrasi @ yahoo.com
Jacob Weinstein was the art director of The Philadelphia Independent. He is currently the designer of The Common Review. He was recently awarded an artist’s residency at the Cite Internationales des Artes in Paris. He lives in Delhi.
15. Girindranath Nath Jha: A comparative study of telephone booths in a migrant city and the village.
Delhi ke prawsi bhaul illakon mandawali aur wazirpur aur bihar ke ek gaun shreenagar(purnea zila) ke telephone boothon ke adhayan ke dauran kai booth mere samane aaey.delhi me telephone booth ne prawasion ke bhasa ko badla hin sath me booth se zore log-bag bhi badle.delhi sahar me telephone booth ke roop aur kriakalap saaf badal chuka hai. lekin gaun ke boothon me koi khas badlaw nahi ayaa hai.wahan aaj bhi booth office ki tarah kam kar raha hai.sabse alag baat gaun me yeh dekhne ko mili ki wahan booth ke madhyam se aarthik soshan ho raha ha.lekin itna to sach hai ki es sanchar kranti ke yug me booth ne prawasion ko gaun se zora hai
Delhi vishwavidhalay se snatak hun aur vartaman me dainik akhbar VIRAT VAIBHAW, delhi, me reporter ke roop me kaam kar rahey hain.
16. Anjali Jyoti: Home Street Home: A Street Child Survival Guide for Delhi
Delhi is considered to have a fairly high population of street children and there exists an extensive formal support network for them. However lots of localized informal arrangements and systems have also evolved over time to facilitate survival on the streets. The aim is to cross communicate, that is to prepare a guide which makes a street child more aware of all the formal facilities available for him in terms of work options, health, education, shelter etc and compile a reverse guide for the likes of us, to make us more aware of the undercurrents of life on the streets so that the systems developed to facilitate the children of the street can be more effective.
A booklet containing maps and pictorial information about NGOs, what they provide for, government hospitals, educational facilities, bus routes, rights etc. A take on street life as I have gathered over the past 11 months, to get an idea of how wide a gap exists between what is required and what is being provided for. Archival material to be submitted (apart from guide): Photographs, maps/sketches made by children, film footage on the process of map making, feedback on the guide, etc.
An architect, working in Delhi for the past four years. Presently, site architect and part of the project management and LEED certification team for Development Alternatives Headquarters building (under construction). Dabbled in photography and film making, having recently taken pictures for a DUAC exhibition on Delhi. Currently working on a film on street children and their relationship with the city, based on my research for Sarai.
17. Akshay Khanna: Apni Jagah, Zarah Hut Ke: A “Staged Ethnography” of Space and Sexuality
The project explores the relationships between space and sexuality from ‘Queer perspective’. The tentative suggestion is that all space can be considered to be sexualised in one way or another; that the ’sexualness’ of a space is something that we can, and considered from a Queer activist position, should, study in explorations of the politics
of space. Using the examples of trains, public parks and courts, it argues that these ‘everyday’ spaces are organised in terms of heteronormativity. The paper also examines the relevance of abstractions of space – such as ‘national’, ‘global’ and ‘local’, that are regularly brought into play in the negotiation of imaginaries of the sexual self.
Akshay spends time finding ways to transgress norms of gender and sexuality. (S)He is a founder member of Prism, a queer activist group based in Delhi. eariler a lawyer, akshay is now pursuing a PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, exploring Queer movements in India, and the emergence of sexuality as a political object in people’s movements and civil society formations.
18. KN Sunandan: Workshop Boys of Coimbatore: A Study of City and Tacit Knowledge
This paper is an attempt to understand the notion of technical knowledge, technical training and technology management in relation to small scale industrial production at Coimbatore, Tamilnadu. I am trying to analyze the factors which are considered to be important in deciding the quality of worker and product and also other sociological factors involved in this production process. As far as the workers concerned I am trying to analyze the notion of experience, and their actual experience in these workshops. I am also trying to compare the workers in mechanical engineering workshops and automobile workshops. The paper also attempts to bring the theoretical discussion on social constructivist argument on technology and to arrive at a frame work for analyzing technological process in a post colonial region. Through-out this paper I am trying to question the concept of technology as an objective and universal knowledge system.
After completing B-Tech in Production engineering and MA in Sociology from Keralam, I joined Centre for Studies in Science Policy at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi where I submitted my MPhil. My dissertation was on narratives of material production in Thiruvithamkoor 1850-1920, where I tried to analyze the relation between caste and technology and the governmentalization process during this period. Now I am leaving for Emory University, Atlanta, USA, for my PhD. I will be working with Dr. Gyanendra Pandey in the History department. I am planning to work on artisan caste of Malabar from 1900 to current period.
19. Rajesh Komath: Ethnography of Teyyam Performance - as practitioner - case study
This study attempts to analyse how long-term social transformation reflects on the life of a community in terms of their adherence to the Teyyam performance and their traditional social position as legitimate artists/workers of the Teyyam. The purpose of the study is to understand the predicament of marginal communities in the larger stratified society. Historically, marginalized/indigenous communities have been relegated to the conditions of existence of the most backward communities in the hierarchical social structure of India. This study intends to investigate social meanings, and aesthetic practices of cultural production in the contexts of Teyyam; a spirit medium ceremony performed by lower castes and Adivasi communities which can be say as a revenge against oppression by the dominant groups in the northern districts of Kerala State, India. The analysis will be an ethnographic and folkloristic discourse on behalf of the communities. This study will have an advantage of an “insider perspective”, as researchers himself is an active performer of the Teyyam and will be able to combine individual experiences with the social, cultural and economic aspects of the community.
Rajesh Komath is an artist and researcher. Rajesh did his Bachelor Degree in economics, Nirmalagiri College, Kuthuparambu, Kannur; completed his Post Graduation in Development Economics, Dr.John Matthai Centre, University of Calicut and travelled a long way to capital of Kerala—Trivandrum to do his MPhil and PhD at Centre for Development Studies, affiliated to Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His research is on Social Development of Teyyam Performing Community and change.”As I have been born into a community of Teyyam performers, traditionally belonging to North Malabar, this form has become, since childhood onwards, my life itself.”
20. Naresh Kumar: Festival of Music in the City of Sports: Harballab Sangeet Mela of Jalandhar
As Sarai fellow I have been working on Harballabh Sangeet Mela of Jalandhar, a 130 years old festival of national character that concentrates on Hindustani classical music only and doesn’t allow any light music to be performed on its stage. Its evolution, different phases, organizational aspects patronage networks, local audience etc will come in this study. In addition to this my focus would be on how the festival is taken in memories and what factors make this sammelan so unique that for organizers, performers and for the common people it is thought as something ‘divine.
To earn my bread and butter I teach social science in a government school at Delhi. Listening to Hindustani classical music is one of my weaknesses and I also possess some theoretical understanding of it. I am a student of history and presently working on the early phase of gramophone industry with special reference to classical music. The history of listening in twentieth century north India is going to be the topic of my future research. History of domesticity, gender studies, disability studies etc are my other areas of interest.
This project will study the functioning of lone psychiatric hospital of Srinagar in the strife-torn Valley of Kashmir where thousands of people are suffering from post traumatic stress disorders (PSTD). The 16 years of turmoil in the state has resulted in a sharp increase in stress related disorders especially the PSTD. The armed conflict in the state has affected the society at large. The continued violence has made vast population psychiatric patients. The research will seek to detail the strains and pressures in the conflict ridden society leading to the psychiatric problems among the population. It will also look into the needs and remedies required to provide solace to the battered population.
Peerzada Arshad Hamid, is a Srinagar based freelance journalist. He has written for the Tehelka, Midday, and other papers. In depth research based human interest stories are a priority for Peerzada. He holds an M. A. in Mass communication and Journalism.
12. Rakshat Hooja: Urban Stakeholder Activism and the Role of Resident Welfare Associations: A Case study of how the problems of water supply have led to the creation/ strengthening of Stake Holder Platforms/Institutions in select Colonies of New Delhi and Jaipur.
In many of the metropolitan cities of India, Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) have become important social institutions that play an increasingly significant role in the lives of the residents of these areas. In New Delhi the RWAs have become very active and over time most of the RWAs have been registered under the Societies Act. The Government of Delhi has also launched a “Bhagadari” scheme where the authorities form partnerships with the local RWAs for carrying out many activities. The purpose of my planed study is try and understand, or figure out, what makes the RWAs tick. The plan is to document the activities and functioning of a few select (selected not randomly but deliberately) RWAs in order to understand why they are successful/not successful.
The key questions examined will be those of the reasons for participation by the residents and possibility of the RWA being a viable platform for stakeholder activism in the existing urban political set-up.
I hold a Masters degree in Sociology form Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi and a M.Phil in Social Science (Science Policy) from, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. At present I am working towards my PhD on “commodification” and de-facto privatization of water in urban areas. I have done research and published on a number of topics including history of video games, watershed development and management, livestock management, open source/FLOSS software, urban water supply etc.
13. Farhana Ibrahim: Maritime Histories, Merchant Networks and the Production of Locality in Western India
Based on fieldwork in old port towns in Kachchh and some research at the Maharashtra state archives, this paper proposes to think about the idea of the ‘cosmopolitan’ as we know it today, and to think through late modernity’s idioms of rootless-ness, movement, and flexible citizenship from the point of what we know about similar sorts of movement in the past, to locate the ‘global citizen’ across space and time. Second, the paper asks whether the fact of mobility or travel always implies an inclusive consciousness; whether in fact mobility does not sometimes more effectively and decisively seal the boundaries between us and them, self and other?
Farhana Ibrahim has a PhD in Sociocultural Anthropology from Cornell University. Her dissertation research, conducted in Gujarat state’s Kachchh district, examines the production of national political cultures through the conceptual prisms of religion, state-formation and settlement along the borders of modern nation-states. In future, she hopes to study madrassas (Islamic schools) located along the India-Pakistan border to explore the implications of Islamic education for the construction of transnational Islamic subjectivities within the context of the liberalization and privatization of education more broadly. She is currently Assistant Professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Bombay.
14. Lakshmi Indrasimhan and Jacob Weinstein: Vending as Vernacular: Depicting Street Sales and Services through Sequential Art
In our project we conducted interviews with various streetside vendors and craftsmen in New Delhi. Due to language and other difficulties we were unable to achieve the level of detail we had originally envisioned as the basis of our work. We spoke to a wide range of vendors, aiming to document their skill sets, the tools and rules of their trade, methodology, income, personal history, etc. The results of our research are still in the process of being turned into a comic, but one that has become increasingly fictionalized, though they still use the conversations as basis for a series of visual narratives.
Lakshmi IndraSimhan grew up in Kuwait, India, the Philippines, the US and Japan. She graduated with degrees in Political Philosophy and Fine Arts from Bryn Mawr College in 2002. Now she writes, draws and spends much time in her flat. She collects textiles. This summer she will have a short artist’s residency at Point Ephemere in Paris. She lives in Delhi. lindrasi @ yahoo.com
Jacob Weinstein was the art director of The Philadelphia Independent. He is currently the designer of The Common Review. He was recently awarded an artist’s residency at the Cite Internationales des Artes in Paris. He lives in Delhi.
15. Girindranath Nath Jha: A comparative study of telephone booths in a migrant city and the village.
Delhi ke prawsi bhaul illakon mandawali aur wazirpur aur bihar ke ek gaun shreenagar(purnea zila) ke telephone boothon ke adhayan ke dauran kai booth mere samane aaey.delhi me telephone booth ne prawasion ke bhasa ko badla hin sath me booth se zore log-bag bhi badle.delhi sahar me telephone booth ke roop aur kriakalap saaf badal chuka hai. lekin gaun ke boothon me koi khas badlaw nahi ayaa hai.wahan aaj bhi booth office ki tarah kam kar raha hai.sabse alag baat gaun me yeh dekhne ko mili ki wahan booth ke madhyam se aarthik soshan ho raha ha.lekin itna to sach hai ki es sanchar kranti ke yug me booth ne prawasion ko gaun se zora hai
Delhi vishwavidhalay se snatak hun aur vartaman me dainik akhbar VIRAT VAIBHAW, delhi, me reporter ke roop me kaam kar rahey hain.
16. Anjali Jyoti: Home Street Home: A Street Child Survival Guide for Delhi
Delhi is considered to have a fairly high population of street children and there exists an extensive formal support network for them. However lots of localized informal arrangements and systems have also evolved over time to facilitate survival on the streets. The aim is to cross communicate, that is to prepare a guide which makes a street child more aware of all the formal facilities available for him in terms of work options, health, education, shelter etc and compile a reverse guide for the likes of us, to make us more aware of the undercurrents of life on the streets so that the systems developed to facilitate the children of the street can be more effective.
A booklet containing maps and pictorial information about NGOs, what they provide for, government hospitals, educational facilities, bus routes, rights etc. A take on street life as I have gathered over the past 11 months, to get an idea of how wide a gap exists between what is required and what is being provided for. Archival material to be submitted (apart from guide): Photographs, maps/sketches made by children, film footage on the process of map making, feedback on the guide, etc.
An architect, working in Delhi for the past four years. Presently, site architect and part of the project management and LEED certification team for Development Alternatives Headquarters building (under construction). Dabbled in photography and film making, having recently taken pictures for a DUAC exhibition on Delhi. Currently working on a film on street children and their relationship with the city, based on my research for Sarai.
17. Akshay Khanna: Apni Jagah, Zarah Hut Ke: A “Staged Ethnography” of Space and Sexuality
The project explores the relationships between space and sexuality from ‘Queer perspective’. The tentative suggestion is that all space can be considered to be sexualised in one way or another; that the ’sexualness’ of a space is something that we can, and considered from a Queer activist position, should, study in explorations of the politics
of space. Using the examples of trains, public parks and courts, it argues that these ‘everyday’ spaces are organised in terms of heteronormativity. The paper also examines the relevance of abstractions of space – such as ‘national’, ‘global’ and ‘local’, that are regularly brought into play in the negotiation of imaginaries of the sexual self.
Akshay spends time finding ways to transgress norms of gender and sexuality. (S)He is a founder member of Prism, a queer activist group based in Delhi. eariler a lawyer, akshay is now pursuing a PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, exploring Queer movements in India, and the emergence of sexuality as a political object in people’s movements and civil society formations.
18. KN Sunandan: Workshop Boys of Coimbatore: A Study of City and Tacit Knowledge
This paper is an attempt to understand the notion of technical knowledge, technical training and technology management in relation to small scale industrial production at Coimbatore, Tamilnadu. I am trying to analyze the factors which are considered to be important in deciding the quality of worker and product and also other sociological factors involved in this production process. As far as the workers concerned I am trying to analyze the notion of experience, and their actual experience in these workshops. I am also trying to compare the workers in mechanical engineering workshops and automobile workshops. The paper also attempts to bring the theoretical discussion on social constructivist argument on technology and to arrive at a frame work for analyzing technological process in a post colonial region. Through-out this paper I am trying to question the concept of technology as an objective and universal knowledge system.
After completing B-Tech in Production engineering and MA in Sociology from Keralam, I joined Centre for Studies in Science Policy at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi where I submitted my MPhil. My dissertation was on narratives of material production in Thiruvithamkoor 1850-1920, where I tried to analyze the relation between caste and technology and the governmentalization process during this period. Now I am leaving for Emory University, Atlanta, USA, for my PhD. I will be working with Dr. Gyanendra Pandey in the History department. I am planning to work on artisan caste of Malabar from 1900 to current period.
19. Rajesh Komath: Ethnography of Teyyam Performance - as practitioner - case study
This study attempts to analyse how long-term social transformation reflects on the life of a community in terms of their adherence to the Teyyam performance and their traditional social position as legitimate artists/workers of the Teyyam. The purpose of the study is to understand the predicament of marginal communities in the larger stratified society. Historically, marginalized/indigenous communities have been relegated to the conditions of existence of the most backward communities in the hierarchical social structure of India. This study intends to investigate social meanings, and aesthetic practices of cultural production in the contexts of Teyyam; a spirit medium ceremony performed by lower castes and Adivasi communities which can be say as a revenge against oppression by the dominant groups in the northern districts of Kerala State, India. The analysis will be an ethnographic and folkloristic discourse on behalf of the communities. This study will have an advantage of an “insider perspective”, as researchers himself is an active performer of the Teyyam and will be able to combine individual experiences with the social, cultural and economic aspects of the community.
Rajesh Komath is an artist and researcher. Rajesh did his Bachelor Degree in economics, Nirmalagiri College, Kuthuparambu, Kannur; completed his Post Graduation in Development Economics, Dr.John Matthai Centre, University of Calicut and travelled a long way to capital of Kerala—Trivandrum to do his MPhil and PhD at Centre for Development Studies, affiliated to Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. His research is on Social Development of Teyyam Performing Community and change.”As I have been born into a community of Teyyam performers, traditionally belonging to North Malabar, this form has become, since childhood onwards, my life itself.”
20. Naresh Kumar: Festival of Music in the City of Sports: Harballab Sangeet Mela of Jalandhar
As Sarai fellow I have been working on Harballabh Sangeet Mela of Jalandhar, a 130 years old festival of national character that concentrates on Hindustani classical music only and doesn’t allow any light music to be performed on its stage. Its evolution, different phases, organizational aspects patronage networks, local audience etc will come in this study. In addition to this my focus would be on how the festival is taken in memories and what factors make this sammelan so unique that for organizers, performers and for the common people it is thought as something ‘divine.
To earn my bread and butter I teach social science in a government school at Delhi. Listening to Hindustani classical music is one of my weaknesses and I also possess some theoretical understanding of it. I am a student of history and presently working on the early phase of gramophone industry with special reference to classical music. The history of listening in twentieth century north India is going to be the topic of my future research. History of domesticity, gender studies, disability studies etc are my other areas of interest.
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