Dolly Daftary
Biographic Data
| ID | 168576 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Dolly Daftary |
| GIVEN NAMES | Dolly |
| FAMILY NAME | Daftary |
| SIGNATURE | DAFTARY D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Massachusetts Boston |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3360-5690 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
OBCs, Adivasis, and the Persian Cosmopolis in India’s Heartland
This paper recovers the way that the project of majoritarian boundary-making is unsettled when we explore lives lived at the geographic, environmental, and economic margins of India. I focus on Islamicate nominative practices among cultivator-caste Kolis denoted OBC and Adivasis, the shared spiritual belongings of Kolis, Dalits and Muslims; and everyday linguistic practices related to governance and justice at the borderlands in Gujarat. These il…
Television and Temples: Hindutva and OBC and Adivasi Self-Making in Borderland Gujarat
This paper describes how Kolis—who are an OBC—and Adivasis in Gujarat negotiate and are constituted by militant Hinduism. Once the anchor of a secular political coalition, the political personhood of Kolis has shifted since 2014. The television complex and temple-building activities of Hindu chauvinism create a context in which identification with Brahmanical Hinduism, a vegetarian normativity, and distancing from Muslims transpires. However, the…
Hindutva, OBCs, and Koli Selfhood in Western and Central India
This paper describes how cultivator caste Kolis, who are the largest electoral bloc in Gujarat, India's flagship state of Hindu chauvinism, navigate, circumvent, and are constituted by the intensification of Hindu chauvinism in the state's borderland districts dominated by subordinated social groups. Once the centerpiece of a secular political coalition in Gujarat, the personhood of Kolis at the intersection of the Aravali hills and Malwa plateau…
Democratic decentralization, microcredit, and the workings of local government in rural India
While democratic decentralization in India has commonly been studied as a project of deepening democracy, this article discusses decentralization as a form of state spatial restructuring in the epoch of market reforms. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork, I trace the shift in the nature of elected local bodies and their retooling to deepen financial markets in rural India. The case of the Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana, the Indian state’s la…
Cultivating a Market Like the State: Rural Development and Democratic Decentralization in India
Global policy organizations, financial institutions, and national governments have emphasized high-value agriculture in the world's semi-arid areas inhabited by the greatest proportion of its poor, stressing linking households to markets to improve their well-being. This is assumed to involve state withdrawal and the ascendance of self-evident market forces. By means of ethnographic fieldwork in semi-arid western India, this paper discusses how t…
Elected local bodies, space, and the governance of market expansion in rural India
How democratic decentralisation facilitates, sustains, and interrupts market-driven development in India
Democratic decentralisation has emerged as an instrument to implement market-driven development, and elected bodies now extend commercial inputs for commodity production and link households to firms. However, the nature of market-driven development under this condition is understudied. This article focuses on an Indian case where, while access to market inputs was shaped by political capital with elected leaders, narrowing market participation, l…
Market-driven dairying and the politics of value, labor and affect in Gujarat, India
Ethnography in Gujarat, India's poster-state of market reforms, recovers what transpires when the individual embraces capital for market-driven production. This contribution reports on resource-poor rural households who embark on dairying through buffaloes acquired with microcredit. The essay discusses the politics of economic value, and economic value encountering other values, lifeworlds and affective relations related to work, humans and non-h…
Development in Post-liberalization India: Marketization, Decentralization and Informalization in Gujarat
Development in an Era of Economic Reform in India
This article explores transformations of development practice after economic reforms, through an empirical account from Gujarat, western India - the country's poster-state of neoliberal reforms. It draws upon ethnographic fieldwork on the Hariyali watershed development intervention and the delivery of state-sponsored microcredit through the Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana programme in Dahod district, eastern Gujarat. This study of development…
Elected Leaders, Community and Development: Evidence on Distribution and Agency from a Case in India
Although democratic decentralisation or community development by elected leaders is hypothesised to broaden development, there is little evidence on just how elected leaders make distributional decisions and far less on how communities in turn shape their leaders' decisions. This study combines structural equation modelling with ethnography in India to investigate how leaders of elected local bodies called panchayats distribute development. While…
The impact of associational membership on political engagement: A comparative investigation of Brazil and India
While membership in civic associations is regarded as an instrument of political engagement, literature has largely ignored the diversity of associations. In an empirical investigation of Brazil and India, we find that membership in social and political associations affects political engagement differently, and in addition, political interest influences political engagement
Youth Service: A Comprehensive Perspective
When youth are involved in their communities, they typically do so through institutional structures. We construe youth service as a type of long-term, intensive volunteerism or civic service, which takes a range of institutional forms including service-learning, national service, and international service. We define these forms as having common operational features, and summarize what is known about them and their effects on youth and the individ…
Development in Post-liberalization India: Marketization, Decentralization and Informalization in Gujarat
Youth Service: A Comprehensive Perspective
When youth are involved in their communities, they typically do so through institutional structures. We construe youth service as a type of long-term, intensive volunteerism or civic service, which takes a range of institutional forms including service-learning, national service, and international service. We define these forms as having common operational features, and summarize what is known about them and their effects on youth and the individ…
Market-driven dairying and the politics of value, labor and affect in Gujarat, India
Ethnography in Gujarat, India's poster-state of market reforms, recovers what transpires when the individual embraces capital for market-driven production. This contribution reports on resource-poor rural households who embark on dairying through buffaloes acquired with microcredit. The essay discusses the politics of economic value, and economic value encountering other values, lifeworlds and affective relations related to work, humans and non-h…
Development in an Era of Economic Reform in India
This article explores transformations of development practice after economic reforms, through an empirical account from Gujarat, western India - the country's poster-state of neoliberal reforms. It draws upon ethnographic fieldwork on the Hariyali watershed development intervention and the delivery of state-sponsored microcredit through the Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana programme in Dahod district, eastern Gujarat. This study of development…
Democratic decentralization, microcredit, and the workings of local government in rural India
While democratic decentralization in India has commonly been studied as a project of deepening democracy, this article discusses decentralization as a form of state spatial restructuring in the epoch of market reforms. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork, I trace the shift in the nature of elected local bodies and their retooling to deepen financial markets in rural India. The case of the Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana, the Indian state’s la…
The impact of associational membership on political engagement: A comparative investigation of Brazil and India
While membership in civic associations is regarded as an instrument of political engagement, literature has largely ignored the diversity of associations. In an empirical investigation of Brazil and India, we find that membership in social and political associations affects political engagement differently, and in addition, political interest influences political engagement
Youth Service: A Comprehensive Perspective
When youth are involved in their communities, they typically do so through institutional structures. We construe youth service as a type of long-term, intensive volunteerism or civic service, which takes a range of institutional forms including service-learning, national service, and international service. We define these forms as having common operational features, and summarize what is known about them and their effects on youth and the individ…
Elected Leaders, Community and Development: Evidence on Distribution and Agency from a Case in India
Although democratic decentralisation or community development by elected leaders is hypothesised to broaden development, there is little evidence on just how elected leaders make distributional decisions and far less on how communities in turn shape their leaders' decisions. This study combines structural equation modelling with ethnography in India to investigate how leaders of elected local bodies called panchayats distribute development. While…
The impact of associational membership on political engagement: A comparative investigation of Brazil and India
While membership in civic associations is regarded as an instrument of political engagement, literature has largely ignored the diversity of associations. In an empirical investigation of Brazil and India, we find that membership in social and political associations affects political engagement differently, and in addition, political interest influences political engagement
Development in an Era of Economic Reform in India
This article explores transformations of development practice after economic reforms, through an empirical account from Gujarat, western India - the country's poster-state of neoliberal reforms. It draws upon ethnographic fieldwork on the Hariyali watershed development intervention and the delivery of state-sponsored microcredit through the Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana programme in Dahod district, eastern Gujarat. This study of development…
Development in Post-liberalization India: Marketization, Decentralization and Informalization in Gujarat
Elected local bodies, space, and the governance of market expansion in rural India
How democratic decentralisation facilitates, sustains, and interrupts market-driven development in India
Democratic decentralisation has emerged as an instrument to implement market-driven development, and elected bodies now extend commercial inputs for commodity production and link households to firms. However, the nature of market-driven development under this condition is understudied. This article focuses on an Indian case where, while access to market inputs was shaped by political capital with elected leaders, narrowing market participation, l…
Market-driven dairying and the politics of value, labor and affect in Gujarat, India
Ethnography in Gujarat, India's poster-state of market reforms, recovers what transpires when the individual embraces capital for market-driven production. This contribution reports on resource-poor rural households who embark on dairying through buffaloes acquired with microcredit. The essay discusses the politics of economic value, and economic value encountering other values, lifeworlds and affective relations related to work, humans and non-h…
Democratic decentralization, microcredit, and the workings of local government in rural India
While democratic decentralization in India has commonly been studied as a project of deepening democracy, this article discusses decentralization as a form of state spatial restructuring in the epoch of market reforms. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork, I trace the shift in the nature of elected local bodies and their retooling to deepen financial markets in rural India. The case of the Swarnajayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana, the Indian state’s la…
Cultivating a Market Like the State: Rural Development and Democratic Decentralization in India
Global policy organizations, financial institutions, and national governments have emphasized high-value agriculture in the world's semi-arid areas inhabited by the greatest proportion of its poor, stressing linking households to markets to improve their well-being. This is assumed to involve state withdrawal and the ascendance of self-evident market forces. By means of ethnographic fieldwork in semi-arid western India, this paper discusses how t…
Hindutva, OBCs, and Koli Selfhood in Western and Central India
This paper describes how cultivator caste Kolis, who are the largest electoral bloc in Gujarat, India's flagship state of Hindu chauvinism, navigate, circumvent, and are constituted by the intensification of Hindu chauvinism in the state's borderland districts dominated by subordinated social groups. Once the centerpiece of a secular political coalition in Gujarat, the personhood of Kolis at the intersection of the Aravali hills and Malwa plateau…
Television and Temples: Hindutva and OBC and Adivasi Self-Making in Borderland Gujarat
This paper describes how Kolis—who are an OBC—and Adivasis in Gujarat negotiate and are constituted by militant Hinduism. Once the anchor of a secular political coalition, the political personhood of Kolis has shifted since 2014. The television complex and temple-building activities of Hindu chauvinism create a context in which identification with Brahmanical Hinduism, a vegetarian normativity, and distancing from Muslims transpires. However, the…
OBCs, Adivasis, and the Persian Cosmopolis in India’s Heartland
This paper recovers the way that the project of majoritarian boundary-making is unsettled when we explore lives lived at the geographic, environmental, and economic margins of India. I focus on Islamicate nominative practices among cultivator-caste Kolis denoted OBC and Adivasis, the shared spiritual belongings of Kolis, Dalits and Muslims; and everyday linguistic practices related to governance and justice at the borderlands in Gujarat. These il…
Political science (12 works) · Economics (8 works) · Politics (7 works) · Social and Economic Development in India (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (5 works) · Decentralization (5 works) · Economic growth (5 works) · Microfinance and Financial Inclusion (5 works) · Corporate governance (4 works)