Manish Thakur
Biographic Data
| ID | 3686820 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Manish Thakur |
| GIVEN NAMES | Manish |
| FAMILY NAME | Thakur |
| SIGNATURE | THAKUR M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Indian Institute of Management Calcutta |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2479-1540 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 19 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 29 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
A Shattered Dream? Nostalgia, Partisanship and the Studied Indifference Towards Democratization
Taking Krishna Kumar’s book Thank you, Gandhi as its point of engagement, this review essay critically examines the conflict of political values in post-Independence India. It presents a synoptic review of the defence of the Nehruvian India amidst the growing rise of Hindu nationalism. While highlighting the role of democratization in the political negotiation of competing ideological frameworks, it assesses the role of intelligentsia in furtheri…
Education and the Constitution of the Contested Social-National: A Conceptual Excursus
This article, with its main focus on the colonial period, highlights two interrelated aspects as far as education and the constitution of the social are concerned: (a) the centrality of the state in the constitution of the social through the instrumentality of education, and (b) a deep and continuing contestation of the intermeshing of the social and the national. Whereas colonial modern education offered nationalist elites an opportunity to conc…
Forging and Foraging Ethnic Identity: The Sylhet Association of Delhi
In 1874, Sylhet, a district of Bengal Presidency, was transferred to Assam. In 1947, following the Sylhet Referendum, Sylhet, except for three and a half thanas of the Karimganj sub-division that remained in India, was transferred to East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). The Sylhet referendum and partition of India (Assam) provided, among others, the context for the articulation of a reconstructed Sylheti identity. Drawing on the particular case of the…
Uncertain itineraries: Dual system of training and contemporary TVET reforms in India
Over the past decade and a half, skill development has assumed critical importance in India’s policy discourse. In this context, in 2016, a German inspired vocational training programme called Dual System of Training was adopted by the Indian government to ensure a judicious balance of classroom learning and on-the-job training for young people. Based on semi-structured interviews with twenty-five national level policy makers in India we examine …
Critical Reflections on Economy and Politics in India: A Class Theory Perspective, written by Das, Raju. J
The strength of strong ties: Wasta and migration strategies among the Mappila Muslims of northern Kerala, India
The scholarship on cross-border labour migration in India is characterised by the notoriety of the labour intermediaries. However, such a focus often eclipses the mutually beneficial social exchanges found among the migrants, would-be migrants, and their larger social circle. Against this backdrop, this paper focuses on the migration strategies of a leading migrant community in India- the Mappila Muslims of Kerala. Our findings suggest that, alth…
Rapid surveillance of Covid-19 by timely detection of geographically robust, alive and emerging hotspots using Particle Swarm Optimizer
The ‘Economic’ in Indian Sociology: Genealogies, Disjunctions and Agenda
A cursory glance at the century-old history of Indian sociology reveals its relative under-engagement with economic phenomena and processes. Although the ‘economic’ did get studied under the influence of agrarian and village studies, and certain apparently economic themes such as industry and labour did attract scholarly attention from some sociologists, we notice the absence of a sustained and robust academic tradition of sociological studies of…
Studying Bureaucracy in Post-Colonial India: The Normative and the Quotidian
This article presents a critical assessment of the new wave of anthropological scholarship on bureaucracy and its relevance in India. Dealing primarily with everyday bureaucratic practices, and their entanglements with local hierarchies of power, status and wealth, such studies underline the contingent and contextual nature of the enterprise of ‘state-making’. Moreover, they direct our attention away from the normative, formal-institutional confi…
From Protests to Policies: Actors, Spaces and Processes
This paper addresses a rather understudied aspect of the ways through which protests get translated into policies by focussing on the actors, spaces and processes. It further identifies key actors in the policy making formulation process, which we call ‘policy intermediaries’. It discusses the emergence of ‘policy intermediaries’ in relation to the history of social movements in post-colonial India. It situates the policy making processes in the …
The Changing Rural-agrarian Dominance: A Conceptual Excursus
Based on a review of extant literature, this article entreats for thorough-going empirical investigation of rural-agrarian dominance in the context of the fundamental transformation of the ‘village’ from the spatial habitat of the traditionally ‘dominant’ to the ‘waiting room’ for the aspiring and the despairing. 1 Against the backdrop of the cultural devaluation of agriculture as an unrewarding profession and the village as the dark underbelly o…
The Politics of Indigenous Social Science: Invoking a Lucknow Sociologist
A deep sense of ambivalence towards the Western social scientific categories has been a characteristic feature of the growth and development of social sciences in postcolonial societies. Indian sociologists, in particular, have frequently turned their critical gaze on the ethnocentrism of the Western social sciences. In fact, there have been extreme responses on the issue—from the impossibility of an Indian sociology to the calls for an Indian et…
Sociological traditions: Contexts, claims and practices
Students of sociology are likely to come across synoptic accounts of the 'Lucknow School' in courses relating to the growth and development of sociology in India. Most, if not all, may find names such as Radhakamal Mukerjee, D.P. Mukerji and D.N. Majumdar, the 'three Ms' as T.N. Madan (2013: 3) calls them in his recently edited volume entitled Sociology at the University of Lucknow: The First Half Century (1921-1975),1 somehow familiar. This fami…
Democracy, Pluralism and the Religious Minorities: The Muslim Question in India
On the basis of a critical examination of the report of the high-level committee on the social, economic and educational status of Muslims in India (also known as the Sachar Committee Report) and the Justice Ranganath Misra Commission Report, the article foregrounds issues relating to the perceived appeasement, marginalisation, discrimination and social exclusion of Muslims in India. Despite being the largest religious minorities group in the cou…
Radhakamal Mukerjee and the Quest for an Indian Sociology
The State of Resistance
Global Discourses and Local Mobilisations: The Case of ‘Barh Mukti Abhiyan’
This paper examines the nature of claim-making and the mobilisation politics of 'Barh Mukti Abhiyan' (BMA) in the state of Bihar in the context of its interactions with globally circulating discourses on big dams, river-valley projects, and embankments. It presents a differentiated and contingent understanding of BMA without prejudging it as a heroic environmental movement with a sense of common purpose and identity. While appreciating the signif…
The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics by Tania Murray Li
India's New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform by Leela Fernandes
Lines of the nation: Indian railway workers, bureaucracy, and the intimate historical self - By Laura Bear
The meaning of the local: Politics of place in urban India - Edited by Geert De Neve & Henrike Donner
Crisis and Contention in Indian Society
The Anthropology of Development and Globalization: From Classical Political Economy to Contemporary Neoliberalism edited by Marc Edelman and Angelique Haugerud
Data Collection and Analysis 2nd Edition
Visions in conflict: The village in the nationalist discourse
Early colonial scholar-administrators preferred to describe Indian society as a sum total of self-sufficient ‘little republics’-its villages. The view stemmed not from the prevailing constitution of the Indian society but because of the imperatives of consolidating an empire over an alien land. Post-Independence, the caste-view of Indian society overtook the village-view. The village declined in significance as labelling of social groups and reco…
Radhakamal Mukerjee and the Quest for an Indian Sociology
The Changing Rural-agrarian Dominance: A Conceptual Excursus
Based on a review of extant literature, this article entreats for thorough-going empirical investigation of rural-agrarian dominance in the context of the fundamental transformation of the ‘village’ from the spatial habitat of the traditionally ‘dominant’ to the ‘waiting room’ for the aspiring and the despairing. 1 Against the backdrop of the cultural devaluation of agriculture as an unrewarding profession and the village as the dark underbelly o…
Sociological traditions: Contexts, claims and practices
Students of sociology are likely to come across synoptic accounts of the 'Lucknow School' in courses relating to the growth and development of sociology in India. Most, if not all, may find names such as Radhakamal Mukerjee, D.P. Mukerji and D.N. Majumdar, the 'three Ms' as T.N. Madan (2013: 3) calls them in his recently edited volume entitled Sociology at the University of Lucknow: The First Half Century (1921-1975),1 somehow familiar. This fami…
Democracy, Pluralism and the Religious Minorities: The Muslim Question in India
On the basis of a critical examination of the report of the high-level committee on the social, economic and educational status of Muslims in India (also known as the Sachar Committee Report) and the Justice Ranganath Misra Commission Report, the article foregrounds issues relating to the perceived appeasement, marginalisation, discrimination and social exclusion of Muslims in India. Despite being the largest religious minorities group in the cou…
Forging and Foraging Ethnic Identity: The Sylhet Association of Delhi
In 1874, Sylhet, a district of Bengal Presidency, was transferred to Assam. In 1947, following the Sylhet Referendum, Sylhet, except for three and a half thanas of the Karimganj sub-division that remained in India, was transferred to East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). The Sylhet referendum and partition of India (Assam) provided, among others, the context for the articulation of a reconstructed Sylheti identity. Drawing on the particular case of the…
The strength of strong ties: Wasta and migration strategies among the Mappila Muslims of northern Kerala, India
The scholarship on cross-border labour migration in India is characterised by the notoriety of the labour intermediaries. However, such a focus often eclipses the mutually beneficial social exchanges found among the migrants, would-be migrants, and their larger social circle. Against this backdrop, this paper focuses on the migration strategies of a leading migrant community in India- the Mappila Muslims of Kerala. Our findings suggest that, alth…
Studying Bureaucracy in Post-Colonial India: The Normative and the Quotidian
This article presents a critical assessment of the new wave of anthropological scholarship on bureaucracy and its relevance in India. Dealing primarily with everyday bureaucratic practices, and their entanglements with local hierarchies of power, status and wealth, such studies underline the contingent and contextual nature of the enterprise of ‘state-making’. Moreover, they direct our attention away from the normative, formal-institutional confi…
Global Discourses and Local Mobilisations: The Case of ‘Barh Mukti Abhiyan’
This paper examines the nature of claim-making and the mobilisation politics of 'Barh Mukti Abhiyan' (BMA) in the state of Bihar in the context of its interactions with globally circulating discourses on big dams, river-valley projects, and embankments. It presents a differentiated and contingent understanding of BMA without prejudging it as a heroic environmental movement with a sense of common purpose and identity. While appreciating the signif…
Dalit politics and the Indian State: Changing landscape, emerging agendas
The conscious effort on the part of dalit activism to take the issue of dalit empowerment beyond the pale of the agency of the modernising State and firmly place it in the arena of global civil society, and the frequent appeal to the United Nations or the international human rights bodies to pressurise and morally coerce the Indian State, is part of the new dalit political tactics. This dampens the formation of a critical dalit consciousness by a…
Remembering Arvind Narayan das (1948–2000)
How Effective are ‘Pani Panchayats’? A Fieldview from Maharashtra
Cet article fait part du developpement du systeme d'irrigation des pani panchayat en Inde. L'A. explique ici l'emergence de ce systeme agraire qui participe a la reduction des inegalites sociales et compare son effectivite dans plusieurs endroits, pour s'interroger sur l'indiference gouvernementale ainsi que sur les possibilites de developpement durable d'une telle organisation sociale
Dalit politics and the Indian State: Changing landscape, emerging agendas
The conscious effort on the part of dalit activism to take the issue of dalit empowerment beyond the pale of the agency of the modernising State and firmly place it in the arena of global civil society, and the frequent appeal to the United Nations or the international human rights bodies to pressurise and morally coerce the Indian State, is part of the new dalit political tactics. This dampens the formation of a critical dalit consciousness by a…
National Institute of Rural Development: A Study of an ‘Epistemic Community’
Visions in conflict: The village in the nationalist discourse
Early colonial scholar-administrators preferred to describe Indian society as a sum total of self-sufficient ‘little republics’-its villages. The view stemmed not from the prevailing constitution of the Indian society but because of the imperatives of consolidating an empire over an alien land. Post-Independence, the caste-view of Indian society overtook the village-view. The village declined in significance as labelling of social groups and reco…
Crisis and Contention in Indian Society
The Anthropology of Development and Globalization: From Classical Political Economy to Contemporary Neoliberalism edited by Marc Edelman and Angelique Haugerud
Data Collection and Analysis 2nd Edition
India's New Middle Class: Democratic Politics in an Era of Economic Reform by Leela Fernandes
Lines of the nation: Indian railway workers, bureaucracy, and the intimate historical self - By Laura Bear
The meaning of the local: Politics of place in urban India - Edited by Geert De Neve & Henrike Donner
The State of Resistance
Global Discourses and Local Mobilisations: The Case of ‘Barh Mukti Abhiyan’
This paper examines the nature of claim-making and the mobilisation politics of 'Barh Mukti Abhiyan' (BMA) in the state of Bihar in the context of its interactions with globally circulating discourses on big dams, river-valley projects, and embankments. It presents a differentiated and contingent understanding of BMA without prejudging it as a heroic environmental movement with a sense of common purpose and identity. While appreciating the signif…
The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and the Practice of Politics by Tania Murray Li
Radhakamal Mukerjee and the Quest for an Indian Sociology
Democracy, Pluralism and the Religious Minorities: The Muslim Question in India
On the basis of a critical examination of the report of the high-level committee on the social, economic and educational status of Muslims in India (also known as the Sachar Committee Report) and the Justice Ranganath Misra Commission Report, the article foregrounds issues relating to the perceived appeasement, marginalisation, discrimination and social exclusion of Muslims in India. Despite being the largest religious minorities group in the cou…
Sociological traditions: Contexts, claims and practices
Students of sociology are likely to come across synoptic accounts of the 'Lucknow School' in courses relating to the growth and development of sociology in India. Most, if not all, may find names such as Radhakamal Mukerjee, D.P. Mukerji and D.N. Majumdar, the 'three Ms' as T.N. Madan (2013: 3) calls them in his recently edited volume entitled Sociology at the University of Lucknow: The First Half Century (1921-1975),1 somehow familiar. This fami…
The Politics of Indigenous Social Science: Invoking a Lucknow Sociologist
A deep sense of ambivalence towards the Western social scientific categories has been a characteristic feature of the growth and development of social sciences in postcolonial societies. Indian sociologists, in particular, have frequently turned their critical gaze on the ethnocentrism of the Western social sciences. In fact, there have been extreme responses on the issue—from the impossibility of an Indian sociology to the calls for an Indian et…
The Changing Rural-agrarian Dominance: A Conceptual Excursus
Based on a review of extant literature, this article entreats for thorough-going empirical investigation of rural-agrarian dominance in the context of the fundamental transformation of the ‘village’ from the spatial habitat of the traditionally ‘dominant’ to the ‘waiting room’ for the aspiring and the despairing. 1 Against the backdrop of the cultural devaluation of agriculture as an unrewarding profession and the village as the dark underbelly o…
From Protests to Policies: Actors, Spaces and Processes
This paper addresses a rather understudied aspect of the ways through which protests get translated into policies by focussing on the actors, spaces and processes. It further identifies key actors in the policy making formulation process, which we call ‘policy intermediaries’. It discusses the emergence of ‘policy intermediaries’ in relation to the history of social movements in post-colonial India. It situates the policy making processes in the …
The ‘Economic’ in Indian Sociology: Genealogies, Disjunctions and Agenda
A cursory glance at the century-old history of Indian sociology reveals its relative under-engagement with economic phenomena and processes. Although the ‘economic’ did get studied under the influence of agrarian and village studies, and certain apparently economic themes such as industry and labour did attract scholarly attention from some sociologists, we notice the absence of a sustained and robust academic tradition of sociological studies of…
Studying Bureaucracy in Post-Colonial India: The Normative and the Quotidian
This article presents a critical assessment of the new wave of anthropological scholarship on bureaucracy and its relevance in India. Dealing primarily with everyday bureaucratic practices, and their entanglements with local hierarchies of power, status and wealth, such studies underline the contingent and contextual nature of the enterprise of ‘state-making’. Moreover, they direct our attention away from the normative, formal-institutional confi…
Rapid surveillance of Covid-19 by timely detection of geographically robust, alive and emerging hotspots using Particle Swarm Optimizer
The strength of strong ties: Wasta and migration strategies among the Mappila Muslims of northern Kerala, India
The scholarship on cross-border labour migration in India is characterised by the notoriety of the labour intermediaries. However, such a focus often eclipses the mutually beneficial social exchanges found among the migrants, would-be migrants, and their larger social circle. Against this backdrop, this paper focuses on the migration strategies of a leading migrant community in India- the Mappila Muslims of Kerala. Our findings suggest that, alth…
Uncertain itineraries: Dual system of training and contemporary TVET reforms in India
Over the past decade and a half, skill development has assumed critical importance in India’s policy discourse. In this context, in 2016, a German inspired vocational training programme called Dual System of Training was adopted by the Indian government to ensure a judicious balance of classroom learning and on-the-job training for young people. Based on semi-structured interviews with twenty-five national level policy makers in India we examine …
Political science (20 works) · Sociology (20 works) · Politics (15 works) · Law (14 works) · Law (10 works) · South Asian Studies and Conflicts (10 works) · Social science (9 works) · Geography (8 works) · Social and Economic Development in India (8 works) · Political economy (7 works)