Suraj Jacob is a Political Economist at Azim Premji University, Bengaluru, where he teaches development and policy, and is a CASI Fall 2023 Visiting Scholar. His research draws on his training in political economy and collaborations with anthropologists and development practitioners. Suraj’s research explores development policy, institutions, governance, and social practices.
About the Seminar:
About the Seminar:
“Farming isn’t what it used to be.” That’s what people across Kalimpong told me when I was there in summer 2022 after a COVID-induced fieldwork hiatus. Something had shifted. In the before-times, people were quick to valorize farming as the thing that distinguished Kalimpong, a district of West Bengal in the Himalayan foothills. Farming, and tenurial rights to land, gave the Nepalis and Indigenous Lepchas and Bhutias who call Kalimpong home a different political consciousness.
About the Seminar:
Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Uttarakhand, this seminar explores growing tensions around the presence of ethnic and religious outsiders, particularly migrants, in mountain villages. In particular, it examines how sexual anxieties about clandestine and unsanctioned romances become a fertile site for anxious debates about rural belonging and the identity of a village.
About the Seminar:
About the Book (from Princeton University Press)
A mural in India’s new parliament building has become an object of controversy in South Asia. Alluding to the idea of Akhand Bharat, this ancient map appears to depict most of the current South Asian states as part of a larger, undivided polity of the past. Subsequently, the reveal has evoked negative responses from Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh. These states raised concerns about how the claims implied in the map threaten their independence and sovereignty.
India’s market for emotion recognition technologies has grown significantly in the last few years. AI start-ups are offering Indian employers the “dark personality inventory” that claims to identify “negative” traits like self-obsession and impulsiveness in potential hires.
