This year’s subjects included engagements with dynamics of new urbanism in Pune, historical trajectories of matrimonial classifieds, Popular music and issues of regional and gendered identities urban memories and question of representations, narratives and desires, geographies of capital and labour in Trivandrum, historical construction of goondas in context of Great Calcutta Killings of 1946 and many worlds of beauty and the beauty industry.
Abstracts
1.Amit Ranjan Sharma, Memories and Narratives of Delhi
An experiment in creative writing, the project intends to rediscover old language and old city through the stories of families that have stayed in the city and juxtapose this with contemporary memoires, like the 1984 riots. Amit is working on a collage, a non-fiction form to give expression to his research and creativity.
2.Jhelum Biswas, Calcutta in Modern Indian English Literature
The project shall delve into the concept of city novel and what fascinates generations of writers about the city of Calcutta, that is half decadent, and half on the rise again.Jhelum proposes to underatke this by looking at the works of some contemporary writers i.e. Amitav Ghosh, Indrajit Hazra, Raj Kamal Jha where Calcutta features either promnently or as the fulcrum.
3.Swati Das, Exploring the Impact of Audio-Video Recording of Women’s Songs in Bihar
Swati will be investingating the interface of oral traditions and ever growing cassettes industry of folk genre in Bihar. This will be done by documenting commercial video-taping of marriage events, exploring how cassettes replace women’s voice and their images get omitted, analyse the reformulation of both the context and performances of folk songs and by looking at songs celebrating female sexuality.
4.Surbhi Tiwari, The Corrupt Son of the Erupting City: Kolkata in Law and Lovely Matters like Relationship
With a close reading of a legal case of child-perent dispute initiated over the neglect of parents by their offspring, Surbhi wishes to explore how the city- Kolkata- becomes a site of reference for law. In the process the city is reflected on and perhaps modified by some recent legal statements, providing a degree of agency to the city itself.
5.Girija Duggal and Sudeep Duggal, Deconstructing Holy Matrimony- The Politics of the Matrimonial Classified in Delhi’s Leading Newspapers
This paper proposes to study the nature and content of matrimonial classifieds in the city’s leading newspapers and map dominant trends in them, compare the findings with dominant trends of previous decades and relate changes, if any, to socio-cultural, political, economic and technological factors. An attempt in documention of this media space, the project will also be aimed at geting an analysis of changing value systems particularly among urban middle class.
6. Sutapa Majumdar, Beyond the “Beauty Myth”: Exploring ‘Invention’, ‘Invisible Labour’ and ‘Consumption’ of Beauty Services
The research proposes to study the various ‘worlds’ of beauty and beauty Industry in Pune City. With an emphasis on different levels of heirarchy and gradation that exists within this service industry, attempt is to understand’beauty’ as a process of consumption of everyday life focusing on the services offered, labour structure, notion of space and hygine and its interface with the process of madicalisation of beauty.
7.Mythri Prasad, Geographies of capital and Labour in Trivandrum City, Kerala
Focusing on the road construction sites in Trivandrum city, the research attempts to understand the political economy of urban infrastructure building in the context of a regime of privatization. It explores the patterns and trajectories of relocations of ethnic communities of Bengal and Jharkhand in these new spaces of global capital. Pieces of legislation concerning roads, documents of international lending agencies and the public works department, conversations with workers and visits to their living quarters and work sites, and interviews with local contractors, engineers and workers are the major sources of this study.
8.Apurva, The Cultural Economy of New Urbanism, a Case of Magarpatta City in Pune
The research focuses on the dynamics of new urbanism in Pune. Apurva wishes to examine the new cultural economy that (re)organising and creating new forms of spatial segragation in the era of global capitalist economy. He will also be assessing the relationship between the production of space, class, culture and consumption by analysing a gated community in Pune called Magarpatta city.
9.Rajeev Ranjan Giri, Pushtakalaya aur shahar ke Baudhik Vikas ka Antarsambandh
The study is an attempt to understand the changing dynamics of a library and its relationship with the city. Focusing on a library with a long history, ‘Sharda Sadan Pushtakalaya’ from a small town of Lalgunj(Bihar), Rajeev will be documenting the changing readership trends of this town as well as the history of this library.
10.Shirish Khare, Little Bele Troup aur Chhau Nritya Parampara
The research is on a theatre group called Little Bele Troup of Indore and Bhopal. This thteatre group has developed a unique style by incorporating Chau dance movements/ rythems and acting gestures. The study will be a documentation of this group’s twenty-twentyfive years of activities. Shirish will be documenting materials and documents, newspaper reports, folders and brouchers, interview with people associated ith the group.
11.Ateya Khorakiwala, Development / Displacement : Understanding the Tools of Urbanization, B.Arch.
The study looks at the demolition drives that are some sort of ‘urban cleansing’ and tries to correlate it with the plans to develop and upgrade Mumbai. It looks at this by trying to understand how geographically located communities have been moved and shifted by the development plan. Ateya asks questions i.e. Is this drive towards urbanisation also a drive towards the depoliticisation of the city?
12.Rajesh Narayan Dwivedi, Varanasi ke Bunakaron ki Samkalin Chunautiyan: ek Sarvekshana
Rajesh attempts to document the challenges and different livelihood strategies of the weavers of few localities of Varanasi. With an intensive field work, the project aims to understand the ways in which weaver community has devised ways to negotiate with processes like globalisation. Issues of changing community identity, work culture and weaving traditions will be addressed in the study. A wide range of representational registers i.e. literary writings, documentary films, government records and newspaper reports will also be documented and analysed.
13.Deepak Kumar, Popular Music and Configuration of Jat Identity in Haryana
Deepak intends to study the emergence of cassette industry in Haryana and the forces by which opral tradition has been tapped not only legitimising this tradition but also the way in which a jat identity is forged through. The research will also explore networs of reception and dissemination, linkages with film music and other regional cassette industries.
14.Manoj Kumar Jha, Bikshipton par Parati Nigaahon ki Daastaan
Manoj wishes to explore urban responses to madness in general and mad people in particular. He is interested in understanding issues such as linkages and tensions between these mad people of today and the disillusioned saints of the past, presence of madness in the social memory and chnaging nature of social responses over madness The project aims at looking at literary registers, collect stories and accounts and folksayings related to mad people circulating in a north Indian town of Darbhanga.
15.Ramya Swayamprakash, Textile Dreams
This research would be a ‘walk’through the times of the textilemills of Mumbai. An attempt in the oral history, the idea is to explore the ‘migrants’ view of the city in the past two decades. It will also look at the viability of ‘ghost traits’ and relevance of trade unionism in Mumbai.
16. Deepa Palaniappan, Invisible in New Delhi: Spatial Narrative of the Disabled in City ‘Public’ Spaces
This is an attempt to document various imageries that constitute the city space for teh disabled by studying the mobility patterns of their everyday life in New Delhi The study aims to ascertain if the disabled are able to participate in / contribute to the ‘everyday spaces’ that culturally define a city.
17.Pawas Bisht and Sukanya Sen, Situating “the small town desire”: Space and memory in Bunty Aur Bubli
Through a semiotic and an ideological analysis of a block buster, Bunty aur Babli ( 2005), the objective of the study is to get an analysis of the process and the politics of the transference of urban space and collective memory onto the cinematic text Secondly, an attempt in reception study, it explores the relationship between the cinematic city, as a site of the collective memory and the audience.
18.Sugata Nandi, A Criminal Riot: The Calcutta Riot of August 1946 and the Goondas
Sugata seeks to look into the mechanisms employed in producing the discourses in which the riot of Calcutta, August 1946, has been represented as a carnival of crime actualized by the goondas, the urban criminals of the city. The proposed work will take as its source the varied set of discourses, ranging from Government reports produced at the time of the riot or soon after its conclusion to newspaper reports and memoirs on the riot. It will look into the manner in which the concept of criminality was constituted in the context of the Great Calcutta Killing and then employed in a contest over claims at a correct and definitive account of the riot.
19.Vaibhav Iype Parel, Brahmin Gali, Ehthnography of a Bylane
Vaibhav plans to do an ethnographic study of a bylane, called Brahmin gali of Delhi. It is an attempt to highlight intersecting contexts of intense brahmanical spiritualism, aggressive materialism, a rigid caste hierarchy and patriarchal structures arising out of a complicated and interwoven relationship with the city.
20. Amruta Sadanand More, Development of Marathi Experimental Theatre in Pune in Post 90s
Proposed research will study the influence of changes in Pune city on the content, themes, forms, sensibilities and language of the Marathi Experimental Theatre in Pune. The study will closely analyse changing structures of society and their linkages with this cultural group in the last decade of twentieth century.