Manish K. Jha is Professor at School of Social Work at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. He has served as Dean, School of Social Work (2015-2018) and Chairperson, Centre for Community Organisation
Journal of Asian and African Studies, Feb 28, 2023
Through delineating the struggles and challenges of Dalits in making of the Dalit middle class, t... more Through delineating the struggles and challenges of Dalits in making of the Dalit middle class, this article seeks to argue that the struggle and aspiration of Dalits to live a dignified life and urban as a space of ‘liberation from caste’ represents a high point in making of the new Dalit middle class. However, existing literature about the Dalit middle class revolves around identity, provision of reservation in education, employment and cultural assertion, but many unfolded narratives of the Dalit middle class exist. This article attempts to reveal the struggle and challenges of the new Dalit middle class to achieve the status of the middle class. Keeping this in mind further, this article aims to explore the transformations in everyday life of the new Dalit middle class regarding consumer behaviour and lifestyle. Besides this, the article provides a detailed narrative of the new Dalit middle class and about their experience of caste and class in the city.
Page 254. 15 Human security crisis in India From the fiery field of a conflict zone Manish K. Jha... more Page 254. 15 Human security crisis in India From the fiery field of a conflict zone Manish K. Jha Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India The inception and progression of the concept of human security has been received differently ...
Disasters and crisis are becoming more complex with deadly cascading effects. The current coronav... more Disasters and crisis are becoming more complex with deadly cascading effects. The current coronavirus pandemic is viewed as the newest form of health and socio-economic crisis that has disrupted the flow of normal life for millions. Viewing the pandemic as a unique or unpredictable occurrence shifts responsibility and accountability from a host of institutional actors to those who were unable to protect themselves from the direct and indirect effects of the pandemic and incurred heavy losses. Situating the pandemic within the well-established policy debates around disasters enables us to understand how the novel coronavirus rapidly transformed into a humanitarian crisis in India. Successful disaster risk reduction involves the creation of a “culture of resilience” but resilience thinking has been criticized as lacking in “moral compass”, showing a poor understanding of power relations and as governance that emphasizes individual responsibility. Chronically poor people can be “resili...
Based on the author’s engagement with humanitarian response after massive floods in the Kosi regi... more Based on the author’s engagement with humanitarian response after massive floods in the Kosi region in Bihar, this article highlights that the disaster caused by floods is not an accidental interruption but is linked to the socio-political structure of the state. Through an examination of the processes of social exclusion in times of disaster, the article situates the role of state and society in the context of recent floods. This article deals with the discrimination and exclusion of weaker sections of the society during rescue, relief and rehabilitation process. Individual and communities’ powerlessness, as was encountered immediately after floods, were put in the perspective of the structural situation in the region.
Everyday spaces for urban poor, informal workers and less privileged minority communities in the ... more Everyday spaces for urban poor, informal workers and less privileged minority communities in the city of Mumbai portray that right to the city is differentially constituted for different people and communities. The chapter employs Foucault’s notions of governmentality and biopolitics to elucidate the complex manner in which the government and affluent sections of the society ensure that the urban poor continue to provide services for them amidst persistent insecurity, informality and anxiety. The chapter draws from three different, yet interlinked, cases mentioned above to establish and demonstrate the exercise of biopower in governing the city of Mumbai and its people. It explains the use of biopolitical strategies, such as statistical enquiries, censuses and programmes for enhancement or curtailment of benefits and services through which social lives get regulated, disciplined and marginalized.
The International Journal of Community and Social Development, 2020
As countries shore up existing safeguards to address the social and economic impacts of the COVID... more As countries shore up existing safeguards to address the social and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, India faces a humanitarian disaster of unprecedented proportions. Ninety per cent of the Indian workforce is employed in the unorganised sector; uncounted millions work in urban areas at great distances from rural homes. When the Government of India (GOI) announced the sudden ‘lockdown’ in March to contain the spread of the pandemic, migrant informal workers were mired in a survival crisis, through income loss, hunger, destitution and persecution from authorities policing containment and fearful communities maintaining ‘social distance’. In this context, the article analyses how poverty, informality and inequality are accentuated by the COVID-19 pandemic experiences of ‘locked down’ migrant workers. The article examines the nature and scope of existing social policy, designed under changing political regimes and a fluctuating economic climate, to protect this vulnerable gro...
Social Policy is concerned with minimising poverty and inequality through redistribution of goods... more Social Policy is concerned with minimising poverty and inequality through redistribution of goods and services. In the twentieth century, after the Second World War, European parliamentary democracies enlarged its ambit by making social policy an important instrument to create equality setting the benchmark for other countries. For the new independent countries in the global South, such as India, social policy followed different trajectories. In the aftermath of independence, India relied on preventive instruments to address the effects of famine, de-industrialisation and high levels of deprivation. Despite achieving high economic growth and rapid poverty reduction in the following decades, its dependence on targeted poverty reduction programme has remained. Recently, there has been some attempt to replace these strategies by rights-based programmes supported by legal framework advocated by civil society groups. Through a case study of The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Fore...
The notion of two Indias has become increasingly more visible and finding entry into the debates ... more The notion of two Indias has become increasingly more visible and finding entry into the debates on expanding social and economic inequalities as the country marches into the club of middle income countries. While India continues to be home to the: largest number of $1.25 a day poor, highest number of malnutrioned children in the world with dismal child and maternal mortality figures, it is also home to the world’s sixth largest number of billionaires. In between these two distinct categories is positioned an amorphous category the heterogeneous middle class that can be characterized in terms of aspiration and distancing. Aspiration to achieve more, consume more, live a privileged life and move ahead; distancing from the poor and underprivileged. At one level one observes sporadic mobilization and collectivization of a section of middle class around specific issues and concerns; and on the other, this group is mostly characterized as a complacent class that is generally apathetic to...
Journal of Asian and African Studies, Feb 28, 2023
Through delineating the struggles and challenges of Dalits in making of the Dalit middle class, t... more Through delineating the struggles and challenges of Dalits in making of the Dalit middle class, this article seeks to argue that the struggle and aspiration of Dalits to live a dignified life and urban as a space of ‘liberation from caste’ represents a high point in making of the new Dalit middle class. However, existing literature about the Dalit middle class revolves around identity, provision of reservation in education, employment and cultural assertion, but many unfolded narratives of the Dalit middle class exist. This article attempts to reveal the struggle and challenges of the new Dalit middle class to achieve the status of the middle class. Keeping this in mind further, this article aims to explore the transformations in everyday life of the new Dalit middle class regarding consumer behaviour and lifestyle. Besides this, the article provides a detailed narrative of the new Dalit middle class and about their experience of caste and class in the city.
Page 254. 15 Human security crisis in India From the fiery field of a conflict zone Manish K. Jha... more Page 254. 15 Human security crisis in India From the fiery field of a conflict zone Manish K. Jha Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India The inception and progression of the concept of human security has been received differently ...
Disasters and crisis are becoming more complex with deadly cascading effects. The current coronav... more Disasters and crisis are becoming more complex with deadly cascading effects. The current coronavirus pandemic is viewed as the newest form of health and socio-economic crisis that has disrupted the flow of normal life for millions. Viewing the pandemic as a unique or unpredictable occurrence shifts responsibility and accountability from a host of institutional actors to those who were unable to protect themselves from the direct and indirect effects of the pandemic and incurred heavy losses. Situating the pandemic within the well-established policy debates around disasters enables us to understand how the novel coronavirus rapidly transformed into a humanitarian crisis in India. Successful disaster risk reduction involves the creation of a “culture of resilience” but resilience thinking has been criticized as lacking in “moral compass”, showing a poor understanding of power relations and as governance that emphasizes individual responsibility. Chronically poor people can be “resili...
Based on the author’s engagement with humanitarian response after massive floods in the Kosi regi... more Based on the author’s engagement with humanitarian response after massive floods in the Kosi region in Bihar, this article highlights that the disaster caused by floods is not an accidental interruption but is linked to the socio-political structure of the state. Through an examination of the processes of social exclusion in times of disaster, the article situates the role of state and society in the context of recent floods. This article deals with the discrimination and exclusion of weaker sections of the society during rescue, relief and rehabilitation process. Individual and communities’ powerlessness, as was encountered immediately after floods, were put in the perspective of the structural situation in the region.
Everyday spaces for urban poor, informal workers and less privileged minority communities in the ... more Everyday spaces for urban poor, informal workers and less privileged minority communities in the city of Mumbai portray that right to the city is differentially constituted for different people and communities. The chapter employs Foucault’s notions of governmentality and biopolitics to elucidate the complex manner in which the government and affluent sections of the society ensure that the urban poor continue to provide services for them amidst persistent insecurity, informality and anxiety. The chapter draws from three different, yet interlinked, cases mentioned above to establish and demonstrate the exercise of biopower in governing the city of Mumbai and its people. It explains the use of biopolitical strategies, such as statistical enquiries, censuses and programmes for enhancement or curtailment of benefits and services through which social lives get regulated, disciplined and marginalized.
The International Journal of Community and Social Development, 2020
As countries shore up existing safeguards to address the social and economic impacts of the COVID... more As countries shore up existing safeguards to address the social and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, India faces a humanitarian disaster of unprecedented proportions. Ninety per cent of the Indian workforce is employed in the unorganised sector; uncounted millions work in urban areas at great distances from rural homes. When the Government of India (GOI) announced the sudden ‘lockdown’ in March to contain the spread of the pandemic, migrant informal workers were mired in a survival crisis, through income loss, hunger, destitution and persecution from authorities policing containment and fearful communities maintaining ‘social distance’. In this context, the article analyses how poverty, informality and inequality are accentuated by the COVID-19 pandemic experiences of ‘locked down’ migrant workers. The article examines the nature and scope of existing social policy, designed under changing political regimes and a fluctuating economic climate, to protect this vulnerable gro...
Social Policy is concerned with minimising poverty and inequality through redistribution of goods... more Social Policy is concerned with minimising poverty and inequality through redistribution of goods and services. In the twentieth century, after the Second World War, European parliamentary democracies enlarged its ambit by making social policy an important instrument to create equality setting the benchmark for other countries. For the new independent countries in the global South, such as India, social policy followed different trajectories. In the aftermath of independence, India relied on preventive instruments to address the effects of famine, de-industrialisation and high levels of deprivation. Despite achieving high economic growth and rapid poverty reduction in the following decades, its dependence on targeted poverty reduction programme has remained. Recently, there has been some attempt to replace these strategies by rights-based programmes supported by legal framework advocated by civil society groups. Through a case study of The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Fore...
The notion of two Indias has become increasingly more visible and finding entry into the debates ... more The notion of two Indias has become increasingly more visible and finding entry into the debates on expanding social and economic inequalities as the country marches into the club of middle income countries. While India continues to be home to the: largest number of $1.25 a day poor, highest number of malnutrioned children in the world with dismal child and maternal mortality figures, it is also home to the world’s sixth largest number of billionaires. In between these two distinct categories is positioned an amorphous category the heterogeneous middle class that can be characterized in terms of aspiration and distancing. Aspiration to achieve more, consume more, live a privileged life and move ahead; distancing from the poor and underprivileged. At one level one observes sporadic mobilization and collectivization of a section of middle class around specific issues and concerns; and on the other, this group is mostly characterized as a complacent class that is generally apathetic to...
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Papers by Prof. Manish K Jha