Lekha, Kumar M., and their team of contributors embark on a transformative exploration of 'Intersectionality' in the Indian context, where gender, culture, and development intersect to shape the destinies of diverse groups. Drawing from extensive research and nuanced analyses by scholars across the country and a few scholars on India from outside the country, the handbook uncovers the intricate connections between gender inequalities, cultural norms and practices, and developmental traject...

In this fascinating collection of writings, Srilatha Batliwala, feminist thinker and practitioner, explores the many dimensions of what empowerment means for, and to, women. Looking back on a life lived through commitment to a cause—rather than to an organisation or to a sector—and working for it at many levels and locations, she traces the evolution of the concept from the late 1980s till now, unravelling its ambiguities, highlighting insights gained through practice, and analysing how an...

This book comprehensively conceptualises disaster resilience leadership within the macro context of a risk society. Leadership for disaster resilience has gained prominence in the face of global environmental change, and the need for collaboration, integration, and synergy in addressing this crisis is starker than ever. Drawing on case studies from across India, the volume focuses on leaderships of individuals, bureaucratic and political actors, civil society actors, and institutions. It l...

This book brings rarely voiced lives and experiences of women in Nepal to light and combines rich ethnography with discourse analysis. Multifaceted and critical, the volume situates its narrative in the profoundly transformative period after the turn of the century when ‘New Nepal’ was rising on the horizon and sheds light on Nepali women’s experiences in multiple sites, crossing class and ethnic lines. It is based on extensive fieldwork among women domestic workers, construction workers, ...

This book unpacks the complexities of social development in India, focusing on the institutional bottlenecks that hinder effective policy implementation.While governments and organizations design ambitious policies for economic growth, human capital development, education, agriculture, and social welfare, their impact is often diluted due to governance inefficiencies, bureaucratic inertia, and weak last-mile service delivery. Through a blend of empirical and evidence-based research...

Saikia, Chalmers, Michael and Orrell explore the impact of social education on gender inequalities in rural Tamil Nadu where highland women’s lives are damaged by discrimination, marginalisation and deprivation. Social education refers to agent-oriented learning experiences focused on power relations designed to help oppressed people regain their humanity in the struggle for empowerment.The book begins with the recognition that wellbeing is dependent on access to opportunities give...

Communicating Social Change: Structure, Culture, and Agency explores the use of communication to transform global, national, and local structures of power that create and sustain oppressive conditions. Author Mohan J. Dutta describes the social challenges that exist in current globalization politics, and examines the communicative processes, strategies, and tactics through which social change interventions are constituted in response to the challenges. Using empirical evidence and...

This book fills an important gap in the existing literature on economic liberalization and globalisation in India by providing much needed ethnographic data from those affected by neoliberal globalisation. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews, it reveals the complexity of the globalisation process and describes and accounts for the contradictory attitudes of the lower middle classes. The authors challenge the notion of a homogeneous Indian middle class as being the undoubted bene...

Presenting an analysis of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in India, this book looks at the unique roots of the concept in India. It examines Gandhi’s philosophical moorings that inform India’s approach to CSR, and the role of civil society in setting an agenda for championing the rights of the stakeholders. The book goes on to focus on the role of the government in grooming the Indian business to be sensitive of its social concerns.Drawing on rich empirical data, the book sho...

Universalization of primary education has been high on the policy agenda in India. This book looks at the reproduction of social inequalities within the educational system in India, and how this is contested in different ways. It examines whether the concept of `education for all’ is just a mechanically conceived policy target to chasing enrolment and attendance or whether it is a larger social goal and a deeper political statement about the need for attacking entrenched social inequalitie...

This book explores what difference development aid has made to the size, complexity, style of functioning, values and future direction of the NGO sector in India. It does this, first, by giving a comprehensive documentation of the experience of Indian NGOs with foreign aid since Independence. Simultaneously, it also analyses, in a broad historical perspective, some of the issues which are the subject of contemporary debate regarding the voluntary sector and aid, such as who decides ‘what’ ...

Knowledge-for-development is under-theorised and under-researched within development studies, but as a set of policy objectives it is thriving within development practice. Donors and other agencies are striving to improve the flow of information within and between decision-makers and so-called ‘poor and marginalized groups’ in order to promote economic and social development, including the empowerment of women. Gender, Power and Knowledge for Development questions the assumptions ...