Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The global rise of indigenism as a framework for political claim-making is an ambiguous phenomenon. At first sight it appears to stem from the increased political possibilities for indigenous people today. However, my fieldwork on the Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha, a political movement that emerged in the early ‘90s and centers on land rights for so-called ‘tribal’ people in Kerala, actually suggested a more ambivalent interpretation. There, marginalized working-class indigenous people engaging the legal framework of indigeneity to achieve their political aims were confronted with the ‘essentializing proclivities of law’ (Cowan, Dembour and Wilson 2001), which are all the more strong in combination with the trope of ‘indigenous culture’ and made the indigenous rights a framework highly problematic tool for action on the ground. I saw in detail how it tended to enlarge the difference between public representations and daily realities, reinforce cleavages between leaders and ordinary movement participants, and thereby feed back into political hegemonies. The popularity of the indigenous rights framework therefore seems to lie more in the lack of possibilities for other, more organic kinds of action that local-global processes of governance and economic restructuring have to offer today.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper probes the post-reform political economy of the Indian State of Kerala. It examines Kerala's turn toward the global economy in recent years and explains changes in policy as being determined by institutional and interest group factors.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Our study examines whether son preference (parents’ systematic preference for male children) arises in a society previously considered gender-egalitarian in this regard. We analyze how the rise of male-centric kinship, family, and marriage systems, along with social and economic developments that prioritize the productive roles of males over those of females, influence rising son preference. We examine these questions by a qualitative study among the Nayar caste of Kerala state in Southern India. Our research documents the association between transformation of key societal traditions in Kerala society, (the move away from matriliny, the continued strength of patriarchy, and the lack of female occupational chances; despite the spread of education) with the rise of son preference in this society that was hitherto egalitarian in this regard. We document emergence of substantial verbal son preference, and limited use of prenatal sex-selection technologies to realize this bias, in the Nayar community.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: For more than three decades, local level political workers of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sangh (RSS) in Kerala, South India have used relentless violence against each other. In district and higher courts they have been charged with crimes ranging from murder, attempt to murder and criminal intimidation of workers of other political parties. For every minute spent in conspiring and/or committing a crime, these political workers have spent thousands more dodging the clutches of law, to whose tenets consequently they are compelled to submit. In this paper I draw on my ethnography of a widely publicized trial of seven Communist Party workers for the murder of a RSS local leader. The trial culminated in August 2003 with the imposition of the death sentence on five of the seven accused. Upon the court proceedings, I bring to bear my reading of laws, procedures and precedents associated with the imposition of capital punishment in postcolonial India. I argue that the judiciary’s imposition of capital punishment mirrors the violent practices of the political workers it sentences to death. Like the practitioners of retaliatory political violence in Kerala, the juridical arm of the state kills those who seek to usurp the state’s power as sovereign – the power over life and death. However, it does so by depoliticizing and dehumanizing the usurpers or political workers, by configuring them as “depraved” and “diabolical.” Disavowal of the political nature of the workers’ violence is a precondition for punishing it with death. It is an instance of what Michel Foucault has called the “racist logic of a normalizing society” and the logic of a state that functions in the governmental and “biopower mode.” Such a state does not purport to kill to establish victory over a political adversary; instead, it represents him as a dangerous monstrosity who poses a veritable biological threat to the well being of a population. I demonstrate how the Indian state and the reasoning its judiciary employs to administer capital punishment may be characterized in these terms.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Given the rise of fiscal decentralization, it is worth examining the developmental experiences of two localities in China and India—Wenzhou and Kerala, respectively—which are considered developmental successes, albeit for different reasons. Wenzhou is best known within China as a locality that developed a vibrant private sector in the early reform era, i.e., before private enterprise was formally sanctioned by Beijing. Meanwhile, Kerala is known internationally as a locality that has a relatively low per capita GDP, but performs impressively well on human development indicators. In short, the Wenzhou model represents a successful case of indigenously generated petty capitalism, while the Kerala model represents a developmental success story in terms of literacy levels, quality of health care, and grassroots participation. Given the remarkable achievements of these localities, observers have suggested that their experiences represent “models” that are worthy of emulation/replication. This paper critically analyzes the assumptions underlying popular conceptions of these models and makes three arguments. First, although both models sound inspiring, their success is contingent upon a particular mix of conditions that is unlikely to be found in other contexts—even within the same country. Second, over time neither “model” has proven to be fiscally and/or financially sustainable. Third, local developmental strategies that yield productive results initially may ultimately undermine themselves over time.