Books & ideas

The fabric of a communal ghetto in India

Léo Pellerin — 2025-02-24T10:53:50Z

What constitutes a ghetto? Zeyad Masroor Khan offers an intimate portrayal of life in a marginalized neighbourhood shaped by persistent communal violence. Writing from Aligarh in North India, he vividly describes the spatial, social, and emotional dimensions of the ghetto.

Castes and State in India

Jules Naudet — 2024-04-19T07:30:00Z

Quotas in India contribute to the emancipation of lower castes while producing perverse effects that are difficult to control. Rohini Somanathan questions the right balance between targeted positive discrimination policies and public policies with a universal vocation.

The Empowering King of Bollywood

Hugo Ribadeau-Dumas — 2022-02-14T08:30:00Z

Shah Rukh Khan, one of the most celebrated Bollywood actors, has contributed to shape the sense of respect, intimacy, and independence of generations of Indian women across boundaries of caste, class and religion. Adoring a film star could actually prove to be an empowering experience.

Delhi, a Bourgeois City

Marie-Hélène Zérah — 2021-05-31T07:00:00Z

Efforts to make Delhi a “global” city have gone hand in hand with the destruction of nature and the commons, as well as the relegation of the poor to the periphery. The development of this metropolis attests to the urgency to reconcile ecological justice and social justice.

Basic Urban Services in India: a Paradoxical Bricolage

Hugo Ribadeau-Dumas — 2021-03-15T08:00:00Z

Why is India still unable to efficiently supply basic services to all urban dwellers? When the public authorities concentrate large projects in megalopolises, small towns improvise heterogeneous solutions, thereby reinforcing segregation.

The Unmaking of Caste

Tabea Schroer — 2020-12-14T08:00:00Z

Meritocracy claims that educational titles are vested on the basis of achievement and not inherited ascription. Examining an Indian elite education institution, Ajantha Subramanian shows how upper castes use this discourse to make their caste privilege invisible. The processes of the social (un) making of caste then serve the reproduction of inequality

The Covid-19 Crisis in India

2020-04-13T07:00:00Z

The lockdown in reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic will have terrible consequences on an informal economy that relies first and foremost on movements and will deepen the socioeconomic inequalities that divide the country. The risk of people dying from hunger is extremely high and the death toll worsened by poor health infrastructures.

Participation Against Democracy

Olivier Roueff — 2019-07-01T07:00:00Z

The historically informed study of participatory mechanisms in the Indian capital, New Delhi, shows that democracy resides less in procedural engineering, whether participatory or electoral, than in the mobilizations that take advantage of it.

Gods and Rupees

Smriti Sharma — 2019-05-16T06:00:00Z

What can economics teach us about belief systems? As an institution, religion has implications for education, social cohesion, and politics, all of which are linked to economic growth and inequality. Sriya Iyer uses the tools of economics in an expansive study of one of the most religiously diverse countries in the world— India.

Where Does the Left Stand in India?

Jules Naudet & Stéphanie Tawa-Lama Rewal — 2018-09-10T07:00:00Z

In India as in Europe, the left wing is struggling. Looking beyond the financialisation of the economy and disparities in social conditions, this essay sheds light on other factors explaining the weakness of the Indian left wing, from electoral dynamics to the criminalisation of the political class.