Taking stock of electoral innovations at the local level, 1993-2023: In India’s federalism, local elections are a state subject, therefore the rules governing local elections may vary from one state to another. While there is no doubt that several political experiments have taken place regarding local elections, we know very little about them because these innovations are highly dispersed across Indian states; they are sometimes short-lived; and they most often go under the radar of national news media. This project aims at (i) documenting the electoral reform process in seven major Indian states, characterized by the great diversity of objectives, procedural paths, and actors involved; and (ii) mapping the different conceptions of political representation that underlie, implicitly or explicitly, the many reforms.
Co-funded by the Max Weber Forum, South Asia, and the LabEx TEPSIS, this project has been implemented at CSH since 2022. A dataset of amendments to the Panchayati Raj Act and the Municipalities Act in each state was built; seven field trips were done in order to conduct a series of interviews in each state under study; and a dataset of court cases around local electoral reforms is currently under construction.
Head researcher: Stéphanie Tawa Lama.
Research assistant: Deshdeep Dhankhar
Gender Inequalities in Higher Education and Scientific Careers: Examples from Engineering and Medicine in India: This project, led by the CSH, has been selected by the “Women and Science” Chair of the University of Paris Dauphine-PSL. Led by Prof Odile Henry (CSH and University of Paris 8), the project is being conducted by Prof Pradeep Kumar Choudhury (Assistant Professor of Economics, Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies, JNU, Delhi), Prof Seema Singh (Associate Professor in Economics & Head, Department of Humanities, Delhi Technological University, Delhi) and Dr Aprajita Sarcar, postdoctoral researcher at the Laureate Centre for History and Population, University of New South Wales, Australia and Associate Researcher at the CSH).
Head researcher involved: Prof. Odile Henry
Palanpur Survey: The re-survey of Palanpur village was undertaken as part of the larger project on ‘Extreme poverty-building evidence for effective action’. While survey work was completed in 2022, much of the analysis and writing of the paper happened in 2023. As part of the research project, the data was utilised to complete a working paper jointly with Peter Lanjouw on the findings from the survey. The working paper has been submitted to the University of Copenhagen and is soon likely to be available for the public. Presentations from the findings were also presented in several conferences in India and internationally. Among the major conferences, findings were presented at the India Policy Forum 2023 at New Delhi, Winter School at IFP Pondicherry and at Free University, Amsterdam. Currently, a conference has been planned to share the findings from various village surveys in different states in India. the conferences, in collaboration with CNRS, IFP and MIDS will be organised in November 2024 with Indian and international participants.
Head researcher involved: Himanshu
