Year of Entry: 2015

Research interests: Democracy; Development; Inequality; Bureaucracy; Social Policy

Dissertation project: Claims, complaints and democratization of the local state in India

My research looks at the institutionalization of new modes of local governance for public participation, claim-making and oversight that are embedded in India’s welfare rights architecture. I find that these new openings in the state are not merely technocratic initiatives but bear the stamp of movements and ordinary peoples’ long struggles against state power and are deeply contested within and outside the state. The dissertation project traces how these forums for participation and accountability are built and sustained over time in fragmented contexts and offer the possibilities for assertion of democratic rights by historically marginalized groups. I examine two sites of the claim-making encounter in the state of Bihar- social audits, which facilitate collective claims and a right to grievance redress law, which has created forums for individual complaints to be heard. I find that a gradual democratization of the local state can be explained by the distinct but complementary ways in which these two tracks to welfare are shaping the field of the local bureaucracy and civic action. 

Select peer-reviewed publications: 

Adhikari, Anindita, Navmee Goregaonkar, Rajendran Narayanan, Nishant Panicker, and Nithya Ramamoorthy. 2020. Manufactured Maladies: Lives and Livelihoods of Migrant Workers During COVID-19 Lockdown in India. The Indian Journal of Labor Economics, 63 (4): 969-997.

Adhikari, Anindita, and Vasudha Chhotray. 2020. The Political Construction of Extractive Regimes in Two Newly Created Indian States: A Comparative Analysis of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh. Development and Change. 51 (3): 843-873.

Chhotray, Vasudha, Anindita Adhikari, and Vidushi Bahuguna. 2020. The political prioritization of welfare in India: Comparing the public distribution system in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. World Development, vol 128.

Adhikari, Anindita and Taylor, Peter. 2016. Transformative education and community development: Sharing learning to challenge inequality in an Indian context, in Class, Inequality and Community Development, edited by Mae Shaw and Marjorie Mayo, Policy Press: University of Bristol

Adhikari, Anindita and Bhatia, Kartika. 2010. NREGA Wage Payments: Can we bank on the banks? Economic and Political Weekly Vol. 45 No. 1. 

Select other writing: 

To Get Trains, Migrants Stuck With English Forms, OTPs And More, NDTV, May 12th

Holes in the Security Net, Indian Express, 23^rd February 2017

Survey of social security pensions in Jharkhand shows the problems Universal Basic Income could face, Scroll.in, 8^th August 2017

After 15 years of BJP rule, will vote for change bring in a coalition government in Chhattisgarh?, Scroll.in, 1 December

Undermining MGNREGA, Deccan Herald, 29 March 2019 

Awards: 

Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship, Social Science Research Council (2019-20)

Joukowsky Research Award (2017), Brown University

Graduate Program in Development Fellowship (2016 and 2017), Brown University

Centre for Contemporary South Asia, Research Fellowship (2016), Brown University