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Life after School for Rural Youth in India

April 22, 2025
By 19633

Higher education is a distant dream for many students in rural India owing to limited resources and cultural barriers. In May 2024, Khinvraj Jangid (Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2009–11) hosted an SLI workshop in his hometown of Jodhpur to share insights on the paths local students can take to pursue their aspirations.

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Education remains an elusive privilege for millions residing in rural India, where access to quality schooling is constrained by systemic inequities. Successfully completing basic education often hinges on fortuitous circumstances, which in turn influence prospects for higher education, gainful employment, and economic self-reliance.

With approximately 65% of India’s population living in rural areas and 47% reliant on agriculture for subsistence, the youth in these regions grapple with formidable socioeconomic challenges. Their aspirations frequently confront structural limitations, beginning with underfunded village schools administered by government bodies struggling to allocate adequate resources.

Indian governments have historically faced the herculean task of addressing fundamental needs, such as livelihood generation, housing, water and sanitation, transportation, electricity, and healthcare. Under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the government has made significant strides, such as by constructing over 100 million toilets in rural areas since 2014 and providing more than 100 million cooking gas cylinders to rural households to alleviate health risks from wood-burning stoves.

While laudable, these initiatives underscore the stark developmental gaps that define rural India.

“What Will Education Achieve?”

In this context, rural childhoods are often bereft of libraries, books, arts and crafts, stationery, or literature. Yet, despite these deficiencies, the intellectual curiosity and aspirations of rural youth remain resilient, frequently outstripping the limited resources available in their schools.

The absence of meaningful infrastructural and pedagogical support often results in a stifled potential that remains unfulfilled unless external interventions—mentors, scholarships, or access to facilities—become available.

As someone born and raised in a rural village in Rajasthan, I was fortunate to encounter inspirational educators and to access a library outside my village, which enabled me to transcend the constraints of my immediate environment. Such experiences highlight the transformative power of even modest interventions, which can help break the cycles of poverty and stagnation that characterize rural life.

For most rural youth, though, the transition from school to life beyond often represents uncharted terrain. Many adults in these communities do not pursue education beyond high school due to the prohibitive costs and geographical inaccessibility of colleges. Even those who manage to attend often return disillusioned when their academic qualifications fail to translate into employment opportunities, reinforcing the pervasive skepticism encapsulated in the phrase, padhne se hoga kya (what will education achieve?).

This sentiment, prevalent when I was a student three decades ago, remains deeply entrenched today. The disconnect between higher education and employment is exemplified by the alarming case in 2018, when tens of thousands of overqualified individuals—holding PhDs and master’s and bachelor’s degrees—applied for peon positions in Uttar Pradesh, a role requiring only a fifth-grade education. These cases reflect not only the dearth of quality job opportunities but also the systemic inefficiencies in linking education with skill development and labor market needs.

While some individuals achieve success through self-motivation, perseverance, and familial financial support, they are often regarded as anomalies, unattainable exemplars for the majority lacking comparable resources or mentorship.

Persistent Sense of Inferiority

The transition from rural to urban spaces involves not only academic challenges but also cultural and social adaptation. Rural students must navigate the complexities of competition, meritocracy, and the academic rigor demanded by city-based institutions, while simultaneously contending with the cultural dissonance of urban life.

This adjustment encompasses language barriers, behavioral norms, and societal expectations, all of which can profoundly influence a student’s academic trajectory. The inadequacies of village schools in preparing students for such transitions are particularly pronounced with regard to the English language, which dominates as the medium of instruction in reputable institutions.

For rural students, English is often a foreign tongue, absent from their households, neighborhoods, and schools, resulting in acute underconfidence and a persistent sense of inferiority. The lack of early exposure to English not only hampers their academic performance but also perpetuates a sense of social exclusion, as they struggle to communicate effectively in environments dominated by urban and cosmopolitan peers.

While acquiring proficiency in English is feasible, the interim period is fraught with challenges, as rural students find themselves at a disadvantage compared to their urban peers, who possess linguistic fluency and cultural capital.

Need for Institutional Support Mechanisms

This disparity frequently engenders a sense of alienation among rural students in urban educational settings, spaces they perceive as gateways to a brighter future. Coping with this alienation often entails enduring loneliness as they strive to form connections with peers whose backgrounds and experiences differ markedly from their own.

The psychological toll of this transition is compounded by the constant pressure to adapt quickly, a task made more difficult by the absence of institutional support mechanisms that could facilitate smoother integration. For instance, mentorship programs, bridge courses, or targeted language training could significantly alleviate these challenges, but such interventions remain sporadic and underfunded.

It was to provide such intervention that I organized the workshop “Life after School for the Rural Youth of Jodhpur” as a Sylff Leadership Initiative in May 2024. The workshop aimed at providing information, inspiration, and assistance to enable the rural youth of Jodhpur, India, to move on to higher education.

Specifically, the agenda included (a) addressing the aspirations and fears of the village youth about higher education, (b) identifying essential skills (such as reading, writing, and speaking), (c) highlighting the critical role of the English language in higher education, and (d) cultivating emotional intelligence and self-awareness with the help of life coaches.

The author discusses higher education opportunities with participants of the May 2024 workshop in Jodhpur, India.

Forty high school students participated, a majority of them girls. The results of this workshop were extraordinary and rewarding for them. It was the first of its kind for their parents as well, who joined the orientation and concluding sessions and committed to supporting the education of their daughters and sons upon learning, through the workshop, that there are plenty of accessible opportunities—something that they knew little about before.

Participating in workshops, summer schools, and short seminars before completion of one’s schooling can be life-changing experiences. All the students were grateful for such an experience and for the many takeaways, including new insights into how to pursue a subject, what is crucial in language skills, how to work on personality development, and interpersonal skills.

Surmounting Structural Inequalities

Despite the challenges they face, many rural students demonstrate remarkable resilience and adaptability. Their journeys often exemplify the interplay of determination, resourcefulness, and external support. The process of overcoming these barriers demands resilience and determination, driven by the aspiration to attain personal growth and socioeconomic stability. For rural youth, education represents both a pathway to opportunity and a stark reflection of the structural inequalities they must surmount to succeed in a rapidly evolving India.

However, for education to truly serve as a vehicle for empowerment, systemic reforms are imperative. These include enhanced investment in rural schools, targeted mentorship programs, and robust policies that bridge the gap between education and employment. Only then can the potential of rural youth be fully realized, transforming not only their lives but also the socioeconomic landscape of India.

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Bridging Cultures, Building Futures: Empowering the Amahuaca through an Innovative Educational Model

August 5, 2024
By 31278

A major challenge for Indigenous peoples transitioning from a forest-dwelling life to a settled one is lack of access to formal education as a pathway to empowerment. Even when schooling is available, though, new issues can arise, such as the loss of language and identity. To address these challenges, Pilar Valenzuela (University of Oregon, 1995–96) used an SLI grant to develop a novel approach to preserving traditional knowledge while meeting modern needs.

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How is it possible for a community to exist in the twenty-first century without access to school, with residents lacking the opportunity to acquire basic literacy and numeracy skills? Sadly, this stark reality confronts certain Indigenous communities in the Peruvian Amazon, particularly those families who are part of the initial generation transitioning from a forest-dwelling life to settling in a village and establishing regular contact with Peruvian society. Among these communities, the Amahuaca people residing in the upper reaches of the Inuya River face significant challenges, including lack of access to formal education.

In Alto Esperanza, the village that serves as their home, leaders passionately express their desire for a primary school. They envision a pathway for their children to access formal education, not only to protect them from unscrupulous individuals seeking to manipulate or exploit them but also to empower them so they may safeguard their territory and exercise their rights as both Indigenous people and Peruvian citizens.

The residents of Alto Esperanza are not willing to sacrifice their language and culture, though, in exchange for educational access. This, unfortunately, has been the choice other Amahuaca villages have had to make when establishing primary schools, as non-Amahuaca teachers invariably conduct classes exclusively in Spanish.[1] The children who attended these schools no longer speak their Native language, severely compromising their identity as members of the Indigenous community.

Motivated by a desire to find a solution to these challenges, I embarked on a collaborative effort with the villagers of Alto Esperanza to devise an alternative educational model—a school that values and integrates the language, culture, and knowledge of the Amahuaca people while simultaneously teaching children Spanish and introducing them to Western culture and science. Thanks to a Sylff Leadership Initiatives grant, the initial stage of this crucial project was successfully completed in January 2024.

Developing Teaching Materials

A dedicated team consisting of representatives from Alto Esperanza, Amahuaca educators, Amahuaca leaders, and myself as the linguist collaborated in the nearby city of Atalaya to meticulously design a tailored preliminary curriculum for Alto Esperanza. The curriculum incorporates an outline of monthly projects that align with the community’s engagement in such activities as hunting, fishing, gathering turtle eggs, opening small clearings in the forest sustainably for horticultural practices, and utilizing medicinal plants in a traditional manner. Additionally, we developed a range of teaching materials focused on fostering children’s literacy skills, encompassing essential aspects, such as reading, writing, and numeracy.

A page from the curriculum material incorporating both Spanish and Amahuaca vocabularies.

During this period, we also had the privilege of conducting classes for two boys and one girl from Alto Esperanza who were eager to learn and unwilling to wait for the opening of a local school in their village. Over a span of three weeks, they participated in both morning and afternoon sessions, held daily from Monday through Saturday. Each child received personalized instruction delivered by a dedicated Indigenous teacher.

Jacinto,[2] an 18-year-old young man with no prior school experience, started from the basics, mastering fundamental motor skills required for writing. He successfully learned the Amahuaca vowels, basic numbers, and simple additions. The second child, Liliana, approximately 12 years old, had received one year of education in another village. She achieved proficiency in learning some syllables and doing simple additions. The third child, Carlos, around 15 years old, had undergone two years of elementary education, also in another Amahuaca village. He exhibited substantial progress in reading, writing, and arithmetic during the project’s duration. Overall, we were deeply impressed by the children’s desire to learn and their remarkable knowledge about the Amazon rainforest. Moreover, upon their return to Alto Esperanza, I was thrilled to learn that Carlos has started conducting classes with seven Amahuaca children!

Liliana, a student of the class, practices writing.

A Viable Alternative for Other Communities

The project was a resounding success, and we believe that the schooling model we are developing can serve as a viable alternative for other Indigenous groups facing similar challenges. Our focus now is on securing funding to ensure the successful launch of the community school in September 2024. We plan on launching a GoFundMe campaign and are keeping our fingers crossed to obtain the necessary resources to make the elementary school in Alto Esperanza a reality. Alto Esperanza has already decided on the school’s name: Vachi Maitiya, which means “Those wearing the Amahuaca tall headdresses.”

By bridging cultures and building futures, we are not only providing educational opportunities but also empowering the Amahuaca people to preserve their language, culture, and identity while acquiring the knowledge and skills necessary to navigate the world outside of their community. Together, we can create a brighter future for the Amahuaca community and inspire others to embrace innovative educational models that respect and celebrate diverse cultures.

[1] Schools in rural areas, such as those along the upper Inuya River, often have only one teacher overseeing all six grades of primary education.

[2] In order to protect the privacy of the individuals involved, the names of the children mentioned in this article have been changed.

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Education and Social Mobility in India: Campus Socialization and the Process of “Self-Making”

June 7, 2024
By 29668

Through an exploration of the differential experiences of students across social backgrounds of caste, class, religion, and gender, Taniya Chakrabarty (Jawaharlal Nehru University, 2021–23) explores how diversity—often promoted as a virtue in modern corporate culture—is viewed, understood, experienced, structured, and reproduced on the campuses of India’s elite universities.

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The role of structure and agency and the relevance of the individualization thesis remain an ongoing debate in the social sciences. In recent years, a consensus has emerged among scholars that although education, in principle, creates new opportunities, the structures and processes through which education is imparted often give rise to inequalities, as not all members of society equally benefit from it (Chitnis 1972; Rivera 2012; Littler 2017). Given the complex but close relationship between education and occupation in modern capitalist societies, inequalities in the system of education also give rise to inequality in matters of employment and social mobility (Beteille 1991).

In this regard, elite educational institutions play an important role not simply in conferring academic credentials but also in cultivating cultural fit and merit that together valorize individualism in terms of hard work and capabilities. Under such a system, individuals are forced to internalize the market perspective of competition and hard work and are made to believe in the need to invest in all-round development to make themselves suitable for the market.

It is commonly argued that there are differences in aspirations among people depending on whether they are located in the margins or the mainstream. In recent years, the policy of reservations in India has enabled students from marginalized backgrounds to secure admission to elite, public-sector educational institutions,[1] giving them not only access to high-status credentials and skill training but also the opportunity to interact and socialize with the privileged classes and to cultivate social and cultural capital (Khan 2023). Although still disproportionate in terms of presence, through their admission into eminent institutions, educated students belonging to lower castes and classes have been able to successfully enter previously restricted markets for high-status, high-paying jobs. As a consequence, the Indian middle class of today is an expanding space with variable levels of privilege and claims to merit, making the discussion on merit significantly more interesting and complicated.

Using a primarily qualitative method of in-depth interviews and focus-group discussions, my SRG study looked at the process of “self-making” among MBA students at a premier business school in Kolkata, India. Through an exploration of the differential experiences of students across social backgrounds of caste, class, religion, and gender, my study explored how diversity—often promoted as a virtue in modern corporate culture—is viewed, understood, experienced, structured, and reproduced in elite campuses.

Merit, Culture, and Social Identity: Understanding the Linkages

Elite educational institutions in India, have a distinct institutional habitus comprising several formal and informal norms for academic, nonacademic or extracurricular, and social or interactional pursuits. The management training offered at in premium B-schools are known for their distinct quantitative pedagogy and the system of relative grading that assesses students based on the performance of their colleagues. Students reported relying on group studies as a means of matching up with each other; described as “cooperative competition,” such a method of learning acclimatizes students to the cultures of competition and teamwork prevalent among elite educational institutions and business corporations.

©Hindustan Times via Getty Images

Following implementation of the policy of reservations, the MBA batches on campus included students from both reserved or marginalized and unreserved or dominant segments of society. However, because of its unilateral benchmark for performance, the system of relative grading was found to overlook histories of inequality in opportunities and outcomes among students in expecting them to compete for a common standard of performance. While such methods, in principle, can be expected to promote collaborative learning, students from marginalized backgrounds argued that they, in practice, are often unequal and exclusionary, as they create a graded pattern of competency, where success is dependent on their relative positions of privilege.

Guided by the concept of “cooperative competition,” whereby cooperation is fostered to produce competitive outcomes, students reported relying on group studies and projects to meet educational standards. However, the groups formed were described to follow traditional norms of collective formations, that is, students largely collaborated with colleagues belonging to similar social and cultural backgrounds and levels of academic competence. This, in turn, meant that students from less privileged or diverse backgrounds had little room to collaborate with their higher-performing peers and were instead left to either study by themselves or collaborate with students experiencing similar struggles. Such a practice shifted the onus of performance onto weaker students to match up to their privileged peers but with limited opportunities for learning.

Yet again, within the institutional habitus (Bourdieu 1986), relative grading reinforced the set boundaries of social reputation and status. Early investment in education, such as good schooling, tutoring, and mentorship, significantly impacted methods of acquiring knowledge, training, and proficiency among students. Although relative grading in practice indicates students’ performance relative to that of their peers and not their actual quality of knowledge, those unable to match up to their colleagues were observed to adopt several strategies, such as altering their choice of courses or withdrawing from social engagements due to lack of confidence or fear of social judgment.

In addition to academic engagements, top-ranked business schools also greatly emphasize extracurricular activities as part of the self-making exercise, providing multicourt sports stadiums, inter- and intra-collegiate sports events, and institute clubs for dance, music, debates, quizzes, and the like. Those proficient in such activities are often rewarded with positions of responsibility and viewed as the elites or “campus stars.” Although, in principle, such opportunities are available to all students, in practice, not all students actively participate in such activities. Students struggling to academically compete with their privileged counterparts were observed to largely withdraw or maintain a low profile in such activities. However, with potential employers increasingly emphasizing extracurricular activities as endorsements for soft skills and culture fit at the time of recruitment (Rivera 2012), such acts of withdrawal or reduced participation worked against applicants during the recruiting process.

In keeping with market prescriptions, MBA students closely emulated the cultural norms, behaviors, and expectations associated with corporate culture, following specific guidelines for acceptable and desirable behavior in various aspects of campus social life, including fashion and style, personal hygiene, appearance, hangout spaces on and off campus, food and beverage consumption, the nature of interactions, self-preservation, presentation styles, social behavior, attitudes, and personalities—all of which were observed, compared, and consciously embraced by students as part of their self-making process.

Accordingly, respondents in this study were observed to adopt a process of cultural adaptation through alterations in language and discourse; lifestyle and consumption choices; appearance and presentation; social behavior during interviews, preselection corporate dinners, and events; participation in extracurricular activities like sports, quizzing, or debating; and consumption patterns. Such markers of merit and corporate fit identified by respondents necessitate early investments of social, cultural, and symbolic capital that together form the ideas of self among students.

Adhering to pervading notions regarding competition and merit, students on campus were broadly categorized into two categories: the negative “complainer” who would express their dissatisfaction, struggles, or annoyance with the competitive system, and the positive “go-getter” who would consider such difficulties as a challenge and work toward overcoming them to succeed within the system. Through exhortations like “Don’t be a complainer but a go-getter,” the university’s cultural habitus compels students to accept and internalize competition as both inevitable and aspirational while simultaneously disallowing students the space to speak of their struggles in coping with such a system.

Self-Making and Social Mobility: Confirmation or Anticipatory Socialization

Bourdieu (1986, 46) argued that to retain their claims to privileged positions, the elite creates an “imaginary universe of perfect competition or perfect equality of opportunity, a world without inertia, without accumulation, without heredity or acquired properties, . . . and every prize can be attained, instantaneously, by everyone, so that at each moment anyone can be anything.” With role models in their habitus (Bourdieu 1967), the process of “self-making” or reputation building among privileged students is not something new or unfamiliar; rather, it is a reproduction of inherited knowledge and shared experiences learned in their homes and performed with ease (Khan 2012); such students are not required to alter what they learned through their primary socialization. Evidence of this was found among respondents who succeeded in this system. Primarily coming from families with histories of academic and professional achievement, such students exhibit familiarity and ease with success, ascribing this to their “winning attitude”; in contrast, students from less privileged backgrounds, often encountering this system for the first time, spoke of their struggles and repeatedly requested that their circumstances be given greater consideration.

Many less privileged students were observed to engage in a process of anticipatory socialization, where they viewed the ideas, values, attitudes, lifestyles, and communication and behavioral styles of their privileged peers as reference for their cultural training (Merton 1957). Even though they struggled to adapt culturally, students from marginalized backgrounds, especially first- and second-generation learners, nevertheless found that this experience contributed to a sense of self-realization and offered them a chance to re-envision their future. Students from marginalized castes, classes, or religious backgrounds are less likely to have a network of rich, influential, and resourceful people and/or lack the cultural knowledge required to form market associations. Some respondents pointed out that their families often held opposing cultural beliefs. In this regard, elite educational institutions offer such students a rare opportunity to socialize and form networks of information and cultural exchange:

“Some of us did not learn about business, investment, generating funds, or having a risk appetite in our homes. But here we learned about these in class, from case studies, etc., but also from our classmates who learned all of this from their fathers or brothers. So now even we dream of starting something of our own one day and have the confidence that we can make it work. Because we now know people who did that. Some of the guys here already have that experience, and we learn from that.”

With professional training and exposure to ideas concerning business, investment, planning, strategy, and risks, respondents from socially disadvantaged sections were found to alter and reorient their aspirations. This change in ideas of self and outlook for the future was also observed among women students.

Although still disproportionately low, female representation in the MBA course has been increasing. Further, following widespread calls for gender-diverse hiring policies, female students were reportedly hired early in the placement process; but they nonetheless encountered stagnation post-recruitment, as diversity policies were limited to entry-level positions and did not extend higher up the organizational hierarchy. An interesting corollary has been that while female students reported feelings of empowerment due to their high-status jobs, emerging as critical providers for the family—a role traditionally designated to males—owing to their increased earnings, they also reported difficulties in finding suitable marriage partners with comparable income levels.

The hiring of professionally trained individuals thus appears to be strongly influenced by social and cultural factors. Successful performance is based not on individual effort alone, moreover, but is significantly conditioned and constructed through such collective determinants as family history, educational and vocational histories, cultural exposure, social networks, and experience of cultural adaptation. Although individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds have indeed demonstrated their abilities and achieved upward social mobility, my study has shown that their success is nevertheless contingent upon their proximity to middle-class cultural norms.

Conclusion

My SRG study was an attempt to unravel the processes of self-making and privilege reproduction, as well as the struggles that students from marginalized backgrounds encounter as they strive to validate their achievements and claims of merit within established institutions. It examined the process of self-making experienced by students from diverse backgrounds, especially through specialized education.

My research revealed that as students from socially marginalized families adapt to corporate culture, they are simultaneously engaging in a process of self-development and navigating potential conflicts with their families and with themselves. It may be worthwhile in the future to examine how educational institutions are responding to the changing social and cultural composition among their students and also to investigate the policy changes institutions are implementing to maintain their exclusivity while simultaneously complying with affirmative action policies.

[1] The reservation policy in India is an affirmative action process of reserving a certain percentage of seats (with a maximum limit of 50%) for socially marginalized groups like Scheduled Castes (SCs), Scheduled Tribes (STs), Other Backward Classes (OBCs), religious minorities, and more recently Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) in educational and employment organizations. However, the policy is binding only in the public sector. Private-sector institutions have successfully lobbied to remain outside the purview of these quotas.

References

Beteille, A. (1991). The Reproduction of Inequality: Occupation, Caste and Family. Contributions to Indian Sociology, 25(1), 3–28.

Bourdieu, P. (1986). The Forms of Capital. In J. Richardson, ed., Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 241–58.

Bourdieu, P. (1987). The Force of Law: Toward a Sociology of the Juridical Field. Hastings Law Journal, 38.

Chitnis, S. (1972). Education for Equality: Case of Scheduled Castes in Higher Education. Economic and Political Weekly, 1675–81.

Khan, S. R. (2012). The Sociology of Elites. Annual Review of Sociology, 38, 361–77.

Khan, S. R. (2023). Legacy Admissions Don’t Work the Way You Think They Do. Guest Essay. New York Times. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/07/opinion/alumni-affirmative-action-legacy-admissions.html.

Littler, J. (2017). Against Meritocracy: Culture, Power and Myths of Mobility. Taylor & Francis.

Merton, R. K. (1957). The Role-Set: Problems in Sociological Theory. The British Journal of Sociology, 8(2), 106–20.

Rivera, L. A. (2012). Hiring as Cultural Matching: The Case of Elite Professional Service Firms. American Sociological Review, 77(6), 999–1022.

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Farewell to Religious Freedom: Persecution of Christians and Muslims in Hindu India

April 4, 2024
By 28804

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party of Prime Minister Modi has fanned the flames of Hindu nationalism to reap political gains at the expense of India’s religious minorities and the ideals of secular democracy and cultural diversity, writes Amit Singh (University of Coimbra, 2020–21), who notes that religious intolerance could also lead to the curtailing of academic and press freedom.

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Alarm about an impending genocide of Muslims and the persecution of Christians in India has been sounded, triggering a crisis in human rights. Why has a nation known for religious diversity and cultural unity turned against its own citizens—particularly Christian and Muslim minorities? The answer lies in the ideology of Hindu nationalism (also known as Hindutva) that has guided the government of Narendra Modi, who came to power in 2014 seeking to transform secular India into a Hindu state. The rise of Modi as prime minister has emboldened Hindu extremists to carry out violence against religious minorities with tacit government approval. Hindu nationalists employ religion and nationalism to polarize the masses and capture political power.

Hindu nationalism is an ethnic ideology that seeks to achieve the dominance of the Hindu religion and culture over religious minorities. It is often associated with the belief that Indian Muslims and Christians are not loyal to the state and should thus be seen as foreigners. Hindu nationalists accuse them of defiling the purity of the country and Hindu culture and have promoted violence from time to time, such as the communal riots in Gujrat (2002), Orissa (2008), Delhi (2020), Gurugram (2023), and more recently Manipur (2023–24).

When India gained independence in 1947, it chose to become a secular state, rather than a Hindu nation. Secularism was considered essential to Indian democracy in order to prevent the Hindu majority from dominating religious minorities. Some Hindu nationalists who believe in the supremacy of the Hindu religion were troubled, however, by the idea of religious equality, which granted the same constitutional rights to Muslim minorities. The Indian Constitution guarantees the freedom of religion to all religious minorities, including Christians and Muslims. It affirms that all Indian citizens are equal, irrespective of their religion, and that the State shall maintain an equal distance from all religions, denying any role of religion in state affairs.

A Changed Situation

On January 22, 2024, Prime Minister Modi crossed the line separating religion and state by participating in the inauguration ceremony for a controversial Hindu temple in Ayodhya. This, at least metaphorically, made India a Hindu state. The visit to the Ayodhya Ram temple, built where a mosque was demolished in 1992 by Hindu fundamentalists, was a stark warning to all who still believed in religious equality and cultural diversity in secular India.

The Ram temple premises in Ayodhya (photo taken by the author).

What does a Hindu India mean for Christian and Muslim minorities? It means “subordination to the Hindu majority and living as second-class citizens, just like the Jews under Nazi Germany,” a Christian priest in the north Indian district of Varanasi told me, adding, “Religious persecution of Christian minorities by Hindu fundamentalists has reached a critical stage.”

Musa Azmi, a Muslim activist in Varanasi, expressed concern that large-scale riots against Muslims may be organized by Hindu fundamentalists before the national election in 2024. “Even the local courts are taking decisions that favor the Hindu majority,” he complained. Indian religious minorities feel that they no longer enjoy the religious freedom and rights they had under the secular Congress Party until 2014. 

In the first eight months of 2023, there were 525 attacks against Christians in India. Manipur has experienced several incidents of targeted violence against Christians amid ongoing civil unrest. According to a report by the United Christian Forum (UCF), Christians are also legally harassed, as the police have failed to prosecute perpetrators of mob violence. Statements made by ruling party leaders appear to have acted as a force multiplier, leading to greater impunity. The ruling Hindu nationalists party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has threatened Catholics in Goa with calls to “wipe out” the history of Portuguese presence.

Hijacking Religion for Political Gain

Most of the religiously motivated attacks have been carried out by ultranationalist, right-wing Hindu groups, such as Hindu Yuva Vahini, Hindu Jagran Manch, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Bajrang Dal, and Vishva Hindu Parishad. These groups are linked to the ruling BJP, which uses the Hindu identity and religion to turn the sentiments of the majority against not only Christian and Muslim minorities but also the core of principles of the Indian Constitution, such as secularism, religious pluralism, and respect for cultural harmony and diversity. The Modi government has hijacked Hinduism and the national media to demonize religious minorities and the political opposition, who are portrayed as enemies of the Hindu religion.

Public acts of violence against Muslims appeal to core Hindu nationalist supporters. In their efforts to restore India’s lost glory, Hindu nationalists pursue such policies as securing the site of the Babri mosque for a Hindu temple and renaming places with Hindu names (often replacing Muslim names). The identities of religious minorities are being erased, and past events are being retold to create an “official” Hindu state history. Simultaneously, they have been stripping Jammu and Kashmir of its special status through the dilution of Article 370, and moving towards a new Citizenship Law with the potential to exclude Muslims from Indian citizenship.

Studies have shown that religious strife politically benefits the Hindu nationalist party, and this has encouraged violence against religious minorities and their sacred sites. Now that the Ram temple has been inaugurated, the controversial Gyanvapi Mosque in Varanasi appears to be the BJP’s next target in an effort to win the national election in 2029. This means that religious polarization and the vilification of religious minorities are likely to increase in the coming years.

The author published a study on the impact of Hindutva on secular democracy and human rights in 2024.

The use of the Hindu religion under the Modi government has reached new heights, leading to an increase in the Hindu majority’s hostility toward religious minorities. Not only religious freedom but academic and press freedom have also been severely curtailed in India. With the growing influence of Hindu nationalism on Indian society, the religious persecution of minorities is likely to escalate in tandem with a decline of secular democracy.

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The Viability of Coproduction in South Africa’s Local Governments

January 15, 2024
By 28866

Leon Poshai (University of the Western Cape, 2020) used an SRG award to conduct interviews with both local leaders and residents in five South African municipalities to assess the extent to which coproduction—the formalized process by which local governments engage with citizens—can be used to address community problems and enhance the effectiveness of service delivery.

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My research sought to assess the viability of coproduction as a strategy for ensuring that citizens have a voice in the policymaking processes in the context of local governance in South Africa. Coproduction refers to the formalized process by which the government engages with citizens when making decisions that affect them (Khine et al. 2021). In the context of local governance, coproduction involves consulting and engaging with residents and their local leaders when reaching decisions on how services should be delivered. The process of coproduction has been regarded as a best practice for the cogeneration of actionable knowledge to address community problems (Osborne, Radnor, and Strokosch 2016).

The overall aim of the study was to assess the extent to which the coproduction model can be used to enhance the effectiveness of service delivery in South Africa’s local government institutions. In this regard, the research explored the various measures that local governments in South Africa are using or can use to ensure that there is regular engagement between local government leaders and residents as recipients of services. For example, the photo below shows ward councillors interacting with residents on community development, which can be seen as coproduction in action.

Citizen-government interaction forms the core of the process of coproduction, https://twitter.com/CityofJoburgZA, accessed June 16, 2023.

Through a qualitative research approach deploying the interview method, I was able to interact with residents and local government leaders in five cities in South Africa, namely, Cape Town, Mpumalanga, Pretoria, Limpopo, and Johannesburg. Their selection was based on the fact that they are major municipalities in South Africa, making them a rich social laboratory for the collection of diverse data from a larger population. I combined both convenience sampling and purposive sampling in selecting the participants. Both face-to-face interviews and telephone interviews were used, based on the availability of the participants.

Through the interviews, I managed to obtain a balanced overview of the utility of coproduction from both the residents and local leaders. I traveled to these cities to interact with residents and obtain an in-depth understanding of the issue investigated in its natural context. This enabled me to gain an appreciation of the need for coproduction as a response to the different service delivery challenges facing South Africa’s local governments.

The study was guided by the following research question:

  1. What are the current strategies for promoting the codesign of policy solutions to address local government challenges in South Africa?
  2. What can local government institutions in South Africa do to improve their citizen engagement methods toward the codesign of solutions to challenges confronting their communities?

The main findings of the study indicate that in local governance, coproduction is the glue that binds societies together, as it brings the governors (leaders) and the governed (residents) together in defining the problems affecting their communities and in designing appropriate solutions to address those challenges. The photo below shows the leadership-resident interface in a South African local government.

Deliberations between a local leader and residents on policy issues, https://twitter.com/CityofJoburgZA/status/1115171024973312000/photo/3, accessed August 21, 2023.

The study also revealed that coproduction enables the kind of regular interaction between the local leadership and residents that is crucial for local development, allowing for collaboration and idea transfer. Without coproduction, it is difficult for local leaders to know what problems are affecting residents and what solutions are needed to address the problems. Thus, the study found that the development of relevant policy responses to local problems hinged on the engagement or collaboration between the leaders and the residents, which is made possible through coproduction.

The study also revealed that when coproduction is not practiced, residents often resist the resolutions passed by their local leaders, sometimes leading to protests or unrest in the communities. Thus, citizens expect that they are duly consulted by their leaders in the decision-making process, and when this is not done, they feel that they are neglected. Residents will not support decisions made without their participation. Interactions with residents revealed that the main reason for protests in different South African municipalities was because of the imposition of decisions by their leaders without their input. Picketing at government offices occurs when residents feel that they are sidelined in the formulation of decisions that have a direct bearing on their lives, and this underscores the need for leaders to engage residents in the decision-making process and the need for coproduction. Interviewed residents highlighted that they feel valued if their leaders engage them before making decisions that affect them, and if this is not done, they will protest against that decision as reflected in the image below: 

Picketing because of poor government-resident engagement, https://www.groundup.org.za/article/tembisa-residents-meet-councillors-over-reblocking-demolitions/, accessed October 25, 2023.

Residents interviewed in Limpopo noted that coproduction is the only way in which they can share their grievances with their local leaders. They indicated that solutions for community problems should come from the members of the community themselves and not be imposed by their leaders. As such, residents indicated that they expect to be consulted by their leaders, such as mayors, councillors, and municipal managers, when decisions affecting their lives are made. The residents indicated that the main service delivery functions that they expect to be consulted on as part of the process of coproduction include issues of water provision, road construction and maintenance, sewer reticulation, waste management, and general good governance. The views shared by the residents emphasized the need for coproduction, which allows for regular engagement between local leaders and residents in designing solutions to problems faced in their areas.

Furthermore, the study showed that coproduction contributes to greater transparency in local governance. The use of local financial resources (local budget) can be done in a more transparent manner if there is open dialogue and communication between the leaders and the residents, which coproduction enables. In particular, transparency in financial resource utilization is achieved through agreements on the areas of resource prioritization. The existence of a pre-agreed strategic plan on the utilization of financial resources enables residents to monitor if the utilization process is in line with the agreed plans, and this helps to minimize the chances of corruption and abuse of public funds (Bandola-Gill et al. 2023). Interviewed municipal officials in Pretoria and Cape Town indicated that they consult and involve residents in developing local budgets and keep them in the loop regarding financial decision-making. This is a major component of coproduction, which creates a sense of transparency in the utilization of financial resources. The residents also concurred that they are consulted in the budget formulation process, and, as ratepayers, this helps them to check the extent to which their rates are being used for agreed priorities.

The research also established that coproduction is key to bridging the gap between governments and citizens. It represents the principal avenue for citizens and the government to engage on issues that matter most, particularly issues of service delivery, helping to build trust between the leaders and the residents. Trust is a fundamental pillar of sound governance, as it nurtures an honest relationship between the government and the citizens (Campanale 2020). Coproduction engenders dialogue between the government and the citizens, which helps in cosetting the local development agenda and policy priorities. 

The study revealed that coproduction should be promoted through public consultations, public opinion surveys, local hearings, and community engagement programs—activities that help provide residents with the necessary information in the decision-making process. Coproduction in South African municipalities creates an open space where residents can share their concerns, offer feedback, and develop proposals for action with their leaders. This helps to ensure that the decisions made by the leaders are resonant with the expectations and realities of the residents. The interview with community leaders in Mpumalanga indicated that the policy decisions made using the coproduction model are highly likely to be responsive to the challenges faced by the communities.

Scholars like Moallemi et al. (2023) have argued that coproduction enables the sharing of information on activities and programs being implemented by the government and helps raise awareness on policy issues. In addition, the process of coproduction leads to greater clarity on the roles that both leaders and residents must play in the efforts to resolve community challenges. Some residents indicated that information on government programs remains erratic, however, as most decisions continue to be made without their input. This raises concerns about the effectiveness of stakeholder engagement in the South African local government system. It has been argued that the disclosure of information allows citizens to gain an understanding of the issues that affect them. Thus, local government institutions are encouraged to promote the proactive disclosure of relevant information in a clear and timely manner.

The topic of coproduction was chosen because it enables an examination of the interface between the local government leadership and residents. The topic provided a formal way of demonstrating why collaborative engagement between the governors and the governed are important. The findings of this study can contribute to society by enhancing understanding of the need for government and residents to collaborate in defining problems and in generating solutions to address them together. These findings can help local government practitioners in different parts of the world develop strategies for engaging residents and formulate relevant solutions to the challenges facing contemporary local government institutions.

References

Bandola-Gill, Justyna, Megan Arthur, and Rhodri Ivor Leng. 2023. “What is co-production? Conceptualising and understanding the co-production of knowledge and policy across different theoretical perspectives.” Evidence & Policy 19(2), 275–298.

Campanale, Cristina, Sara Giovanna Mauro, and Alessandro Sancino, 2021. “Managing co‑production and enhancing good governance principles: Insights from two case studies.” Journal of Management and Governance 25(1), 275–306.

Khine, Pwint Kay, Jianing Mi, and Raza Shahid. 2021. “A Comparative Analysis of Co-Production in Public Services.” Sustainability, 13(12), 6730.

Moallemi, Enayat A., Fateme Zare, Aniek Hebinck, Katrina Szetey, Edmundo Molina-Perez, Romy L. Zyngier, Michalis Hadjikakou, Jan Kwakkel, Marjolijn Haasnoot, Kelly K. Miller, David G. Groves, Peat Leith, and Brett A. Bryan. 2023. “Knowledge co-production for decision-making in human-natural systems under uncertainty.” Global Environmental Change 82, 102727.

Osborne, Stephen P., Zoe Radnor, and Kirsty Strokosch, 2016. “Co-Production and the Co-Creation of Value in Public Services: A suitable case for treatment?” Public Management Review 18(5), 639–653.

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Popular Identity of the Czech Political “People”

September 22, 2023
By 29662

Democracy rests on the idea of popular sovereignty, but how can the collective will of a social construct called “people” be accurately ascertained? Lukáš Lev Červinka (Charles University, 2021) used an SRG award to conduct a survey on Czech popular identity, finding unexpectedly strong identification with state actors and also some disturbing corollaries about ethnocentric nationalism.

*     *     *

All concepts of modern democracy regard self-governance by the people as a cornerstone of this system of government; without it, there is no democracy. However, even though democracy presupposes the existence of a “people” expressing its collective will, claims to represent such will are usually treated with caution, given that “good” dictators and authoritarian régimes want to assert that their policies reflect the general will (volonté générale) of the people.

People as a collective is an elusive beast whose nature is tricky to identify, but at the same time, it is generally assumed that if there is democracy, then there must be people as a ruling entity—a collective with a will, sense of membership, values, memory, goals, and everything else that is usually associated with a collective or group. However, how can we define “people” without succumbing to oversimplification, generalization, or even mythicization?

Research Focus and Objectives

My first goal in launching the Establishment Research Project,[1] supported by a Syllf fellowship, was to find a theoretical framework that would enable me to treat people as a collective and study its inner processes and values. This led me to the social systems theory of Niklas Luhmann,[2] the social imaginaries of Charles Taylor,[3] and the imagined communities of Benedict Anderson.[4] By adapting those theories, I have conceptualized “people” as an autopoietic organizational system—in other words, a social construct that is determined by its decisions. The people as a democratic sovereign is, therefore, not to be understood as individual citizens or inhabitants but as an imagined community of those who participate in its self-governance by making the decisions through which their identity as a collective is established.

In my Sylff-supported PhD thesis on Anti-Establishment Political Parties: Threat to Democracy or Chance for Its New Equilibrium, written at the Faculty of Law of Charles University in the Czech Republic and at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, Italy, I concluded that the decisions that articulate the popular identity of a people are not only participation in elections, referenda, demonstrations, strikes, and, sometimes, revolutions but also appropriation of cultural products, such as songs and the constitution. Through these decisions, the “people” can manifest themselves as a collective body and create an identity that articulates their social demands and values.

To test the viability of this theory and determine whether it can be used in practice, I have conducted a survey, funded with an SRG award from the Sylff Association, to explore which actors articulate the popular image of the Czech people, what decisions determine their identity, and on which values this identity is built.

Observations

When surveying which actors articulate the image of the Czech people, the most positive score (the difference between the percentage answering that an actor articulates values of the Czech people and the percentage saying it does not) was +44.8 received by “scholars and scientists.” This is of little surprise, considering the technocratic nature of Czech society, which places a high value on formal education, academic titles, and expert knowledge. This is supported by the much lower score (+14.1) received by “experts outside of academia.” Quite striking, though, was the high scores received by actors of the state, such as “courts of justice,” “police,” “armed forces,” and the “president of the republic” (see table below).

How Well Do the Following Actors Articulate the Values of the Czech People?

Actor

Score

Political parties

−20.4

Scholars and scientists

+44.8

Religious organizations

−37.5

Experts outside academia

+14.1

Public media

+15.0

Private media

−18.9

Artists

+9.2

Trade unions

+1.4

NGOs

−5.0

Courts of justice

+31.1

Police

+37.7

Armed forces

+37.3

President of the republic

+45.0

Note: Scores are the percentage of respondents identifying an actor as articulating the values of the Czech people minus the percentage saying it does not.

 

Interestingly, the answers regarding the values represented by such public holidays as New Year’s Day, Czech Statehood Day, and May Day suggest not only a strong nonreligious (or even antireligious) nature of the Czech popular identity but also people’s strong identification with state actors—despite the fact they are often depicted as an enemy of the people in Czech pop culture. This demonstrates that the Czech state is considered a tool of the Czech people in articulating their social demands and defending their interests. 

 

An image generated by using the prompt, “Czech state-people intertwinning,” by Midjourney (https://docs.midjourney.com/).

 

The close relationship between the Czech state and Czech identity is not in itself bad, but survey results using the modified Bogardus social distance scale[5] showed some disturbing patterns. When asked whether they would allow a Czech citizen of Roma ethnicity to stand for the office of the president of the republic, only 82.1 % of respondents said yes. The results were even more worrying for a Czech citizen of Ukrainian ethnicity (65.5 %) and a Czech citizen who cannot speak Czech (51.1 %).

 

An image generated by using the prompt, “Ethnic-centred Czech people,” by Midjourney (https://docs.midjourney.com/).

 

Finally, when asked where to put the Czech people regarding their values, most of the respondents chose the Visegrad Group countries (Czechia, Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary), rather than the Euroatlantic space. This, unfortunately, supports the argument that the Czech people still find themselves inside the post-Habsburg space of conservative nationalism and bureaucratic étatism.

The SRG-funded survey revealed not only the usefulness of the theoretical concept of “people” as an organizational system and a living, democratic sovereign but also the disturbing, ethnicity-centred nature of the Czech popular identity and its deep intertwining with the structures of the Czech state.

 

[1] More about the project at https://establishment.cz

[2] Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995) .

[3] Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries, 2nd ed. (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2004).

[4] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, New York: Verso, 2006).

[5] The Bogardus scale was adapted to show the social distance of excluded communities within Czech society, that is, those not regarded as part of Czech self-governance.

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Has the Hindu Majority Developed a ‘Nazi Conscience’ in India?

August 28, 2023
By 28804

Emboldened by state support, Hindu nationalists have unleashed violent attacks on religious minorities in India, writes Amit Singh (University of Coimbra, 2020-21), leading to the development of a ‘Nazi conscience’ among the country’s Hindu majority.

*     *     *

Organized and sporadic violence by Hindu extremists against religious-ethnic minorities in India has shocked the world, particularly ethnic violence in Manipur. Under the Hindu nationalist Prime Minister Narendra Modi, cases of mob-lynching and killings are becoming pattern in a religiously polarized Hindu India, targeted to minorities. The prominence of ethnic revival, large number of Hindu participations in such violence, and lack of their condemnation of these acts, all of these factors give rise to the question as to whether the Hindu majority has developed ‘Nazi conscience.’

Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. Photograph by the author

 
The idea of Nazi conscience was originally applied in the context of the genocide of Jews in Nazi Germany, where the Nazis, along with an ordinary Germans, morally justified the murder of Jews. A general apathy to the human rights of minorities, a lack of respect towards the life of ‘others,’ and normalization of violence against them are fundamental parts of the Nazi conscience. 

In the Indian context, Hindutva as a vehicle of Hindu nationalism has ignited a kind of Nazi conscience in ordinary Hindus that makes violence against religious minorities seem normal and justified. This includes witnessing daily violence against Muslim minorities and Dalits and not intervening in such acts.

The Hindutva’s political narrative of past invasions by Muslim rulers and their atrocities against Hindus in the middle ages and the partition of India in 1947 has made the Hindu majority hostile to Muslims. Constitutional privileges such as personal family rights for Muslims and religious grants anger the Hindu majority. They feel victimized and insecure, and Hindutva leaders manipulate these anti-Muslim sentiments for political victory.

Ideologically Justified Violence

The RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), a Hindu militant organization, has shaped Hindu nationalism into a hegemonic ideology and propagates Hindu exclusivity of religion and culture. The Hindutva ideologue MS Golwalkar asserted that the country's minorities should be treated in the same way as the Nazis treated the Jews. With its political front BJP currently in power, the RSS has succeeded in influencing the collective Hindu psyche to take vengeance against Muslims.

These calculated attempts by the RSS have been instrumental in creating a militant identity and Nazi conscience amongst the Hindu majority against perceived foreign “invaders,” such as Muslims and Christians. With each passing ethno-religious riot, the Hindu collective self is gradually being desensitized and freed from collective guilt in the observation or killing of human life. For a person with a Nazi conscience, violence is now perceived to be morally righteous.

Violence has become essential for Hindutva politics, and in this way it could be said that the Hindu majority has developed a ‘Nazi conscience.’ The Hindus have lost historical sensitivity towards religious minorities with whom they have lived for hundreds of years. The use of ‘Hindu nationalism’ in post-colonial India has actually benefited the BJP in elections. However, at the same time, Hindu nationalism has done great harm to communal harmony of Indian society. Hindus have been turned against Muslims—although, in some exceptional cases, Hindus did save the lives of Muslims.

Modi’s Hindutva state has played a key role in this process. The state has granted impunity to those involved in the lynching of Muslims and has rewarded those responsible for inciting riots. And the State has constantly harassed those who have come out in protest against Hindu intolerance and Islamophobia.

In large-scale riots, such as the Gujrat riots in 2002 and ethnic violence in Manipur, the perpetrators were Hindu extremists and victims were primarily religious ethnic minorities. Big riots, moreover, usually happen with the complicity of the state machinery and the Hindu majority. So, the majority is not just a passive onlooker but a participant in the ritual of violence.

Rewarding the Islamophobic Leader    

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is notorious for his complicity in the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujrat in 2002. He has built his political career on the basis of communal violence and fear. And the Hindu majority reelected him in 2019. The Hindu majority bears deep resentment against Muslims. In fact, one study reveals that the BJP gains in the polls after every anti-Muslim riot.

Under the RSS-backed Modi’s regime since 2014, anti-Muslim narratives have been strategically propagated by the government. The mainstream media has consistently cultivated a deep animosity against religious minorities. This process of vilification has normalized violence against them. The ascendency of Hindu nationalism has given Hindus ‘the power to claim, and receive, impunity for violence from elected governments.’

Muslims and Dalits have been lynched by mobs of Hindutva fanatics; violence against them is normalized and seems to be supported by the Modi government. Vijay Narayan, a political activist in Varanasi, argues that the Hindu majority is influenced by the fascist ideology of Hindu nationalism.

Failed Secularism

After the bloody partition in 1947, secularism was introduced as an alternative to Hindu nationalism to protect Indian society from communal frenzy and religious fanaticism. Indian secularism, unique in its kind, is associated with religious tolerance. Yet, ironically, the Hindu majority has never abandoned the idea that India is a Hindu nation. It has rejected traditional Hindu tolerance, an idea that enabled communal harmony among India’s diverse population.

Indian secularism has failed to prevent the rise of Hindutva and the communalization of the Hindu masses. As long as the public institutions and the mainstream media are under the influence of the Hindu nationalist government, the process of Nazification of the Hindu majority cannot be checked. Alarm about the possibility of an impending Muslim genocide is already being sounded. To achieve communal harmony, the state must rid itself of Hindutva and follow constitutional secularism. This seems almost impossible under the present Hindu nationalist government.

If the influence of Hindutva on the Hindu majority and the Hindu religion increases, the general state of human rights, especially freedom of expression and rights of religious-ethnic minorities, and secularism is likely to deteriorate. However, we must remember that religious tolerance and resistance is a part of the India’s ancient secular traditions that challenged Hindu fundamentalism thorough the various periods of Indian history. In the longer run, there is a possibility of resistance to Hindu religious bigotry that could weaken the influence of Hindutva on Indian society. It can bring secular democratic change stalling the process of the Nazification of the Hindu majority and preventing them from becoming a Nazified Hindu.

This article was originally published in The Loop and is reprinted here following slight modification by the author. The views presented here are of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Sylff Association.

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The Experiences of Indian Couples during the COVID-19 Pandemic

December 6, 2022
By 29781

Priyanshi Chauhan is a 2021 Sylff fellow conducting doctoral research at the Centre for South Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. In this article, which is based on a study first published in Gender Issues, Chauhan discusses how gender inequalities have become more prevalent in India under the COVID-19 pandemic. Read on to learn about the ways in which the adoption of work-from-home arrangements has affected men and women differently among dual-earner families in Indian cities.


* * *

The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the already existing gender inequalities, with substantial implications on how women navigate the work-from-home settings. One of the ways in which the pandemic has affected women differently than men is through the increased burden of unpaid work. Prior to the pandemic, women in India were already spending more time on unpaid work (351.9 minutes a day) as compared to men (51.8 min/day) (NSO 2019). In addition, women spent an average of 367 min/day on paid activities compared to 486 min/day by men (NSO 2019). Thus, not only do women already bear a disproportionate burden of unpaid work, but employed women work for much longer hours than men.

Adding to it, the pandemic has created new types of unpaid work including homeschooling, caring for more people who now stay indoors, and sanitization and hygiene needs, which have added to women’s work. Simultaneously, the pandemic has led to the collapse of spatial separation between the workplace and household due to the adoption of work from home. This is significant because the distinction between paid work and unpaid care work emanates from the site of their performance. As both paid and unpaid work are performed within the household during the pandemic, this is likely to have implications on how men and women navigate work from home. Accordingly, I conducted semistructured interviews with 30 dual-earning married couples in India in the months of April and May 2021 to understand how gender intersects with the experiences of work from home in the household (Chauhan 2022). All participants in the study are from tier-1 metropolitan cities in India: 12 from Delhi, 6 from Bangalore, 5 from Mumbai, 3 from Chennai, and 4 from Hyderabad. All are post-graduates and are working professionals in the corporate sector. Interviews were conducted virtually because of the pandemic-related restrictions. All participants were interviewed separately from their partners. The findings are discussed below.

 

Sharing of Unpaid Work

Both men and women reported that their time spent on unpaid work increased during the pandemic. However, it would be amateur to conclude that gender inequalities in unpaid work have vanished. It has been found that for men, unpaid work is in addition to activities like relaxation, leisure, and pursuing hobbies, as compared to women, for whom household chores and care work have replaced these activities.

The type of unpaid work that men and women perform can also be categorized as masculine type and feminine type. Men are found to be doing such unpaid work as grocery shopping and laundry, which need to be performed with less frequency and can be done based on their availability and convenience. On the other hand, women are responsible for such work as cooking and related work and cleaning the dishes, which have to be performed multiple times during the day and are time bound. In childcare as well, a distinction is evident where women are responsible for work that is essential to the everyday needs of the children, such as feeding and bathing, as compared to men, who are mostly their children’s playmates or watch over them when their mother is not available. Thus, women play a primary role as household managers and primary caregivers, while men contribute only in supportive roles.

Indian women struggle to maintain work-life segregation. (Source: Freepik)


Navigating the Gendered Space-Time Arrangements at Home

Men also have greater control over the use of household resources, such as a work desk or private workspace. Men’s productive work is prioritized over their responsibilities for unpaid work as well as women’s responsibilities for both unpaid and paid work. Since there is a higher value placed on men’s productive work, the household facilitates their professional commitments in the work-from-home arrangements. Men’s workspace requirements along with their need to maintain privacy and artificial segregation between work and life are prioritized over women’s requirements.

As per the findings, women have a private workspace with adequate infrastructure only in cases where there is enough space to have two separate rooms dedicated to work. The majority of women work from either their bedrooms or the living room. In both cases, women’s allocation of workspaces is contingent on men’s allocation of better workspaces for themselves. For instance, the women who are working from the bedroom have reported that their husbands have a separate private work room. Similarly, for women working from the living room, their husbands have used the limited space in the bedroom to make a workspace for themselves. As such, these women have involuntarily moved to the common spaces to continue working from home. Only two couples in the sample reported men working from the living room and women using separate private workspaces for themselves. This is because even if men continue to work from the living room, they are rarely interrupted by the family. On the other hand, moving to the living room for their wives would mean regular interruptions and expectations from the family members that they are available for them all the time.

Unpaid work is also an important factor in determining women’s schedule of paid work. This leads to the integration of work and nonwork domains not only in terms of physical boundaries but also at the level of behavioral and cognitive boundaries. For men, unpaid work does not determine their scheduling of paid work. Rather, it is the other way around, where their professional commitments determine their availability and participation in unpaid household chores and care work.

 

Return-to-Work Preferences

There is a preference for the hybrid work model among both men and women. However, there are gender differences in the factors that determine the preferences about returning to work. For women, continuation of work from home is contingent on the availability of domestic workers and other family members working from the office. Factors that are common to both men and women include spending more time with children, work-life balance, and social isolation, among others. Some women also expressed their preference to shift toward part-time jobs or quit the labor force permanently to better manage their household responsibilities. This is because of the increasing challenge of work-life balance that women faced during the lockdown and the lack of support by family members for women pursuing their career ambitions.

 

Critiquing the Assumption of Gender Neutrality in Work from Home

The experiences thus indicate that the assumption of gender neutrality in the mainstream work-from-home models is misleading. The mainstream models of work from home are popular for providing flexibility and greater control over work. However, when gender is integrated into work-from-home models, it constrains the autonomy of women in deciding when and where to work. The perceived control and autonomy of women in making choices regarding working from home is in itself a product of gender norms and gender roles. Unpaid work is also at the core of boundary management between the work and nonwork domains.

Men have managed to demarcate the two domains to a greater extent, especially for behavioral and cognitive boundaries due to their gender privilege. The relatively high value that is placed on men’s productive work has offered them options to create artificial segmentation in the work-from-home arrangements regarding physical boundaries as well. By contrast, women have experienced a complete merging of the two domains.

It is therefore necessary to mainstream gender considerations and unpaid work in the work-from-home frameworks. In the process, it needs to be underscored that women’s needs in the work-from-home arrangements are not addressed in isolation from the gender dynamics that unfold within the household. Gender equality is not only a woman’s issue but a power relation between the genders. As such, men must be equally engaged in conversations on gender equality both at the workplace and at home.

 

References

Chauhan, P. 2022. “‘I Have No Room of My Own’: COVID-19 Pandemic and Work-from-Home through a Gender Lens.” Gender Issues 39, no. 4 (December 2022): 507–33. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12147-022-09302-0.

NSO (National Statistical Office). 2020. Time Use in India—2019. New Delhi: Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India.

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Pursuing an International Strategy to Promote and Protect Indigenous Peoples’ Land Rights in Brazil

November 17, 2022
By 26115

Bruno Pegorari, a 2017 Sylff fellow, has been proactively involved in advocating for the rights of Indigenous peoples, including the Guarani Kaiowá in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. He has contributed a brief article providing an overview of the situation that the Guyraroká community of the Guarani Kaiowá faces in Brazil.

* * *

In 2019, I was very fortunate to be awarded a Sylff Leadership Initiative (SLI) grant to continue my legal work with members of the Guyraroká community of the Guarani Kaiowá Indigenous people and their allies in Brazil. This SLI project helped me to carry out specific legal actions oriented at strengthening the community engagement with international human rights institutions in the face of Brazilian institutions’ evasive responses to the community’s attempts to recover their traditional territory. As a matter of law, the Brazilian Constitution and international treaties protect the right of Indigenous peoples to their traditional lands, among them the Guarani Kaiowá. However, it is important to highlight that this SLI project touched upon only a fraction of the broader political and legal struggle of the Guarani Kaiowá from Guyraroká. In this short article, I introduce some aspects of the Guyraroká Guarani Kaiowá’s battle for their traditional territory and explain why this struggle is not only representative of similar experiences faced by other Indigenous communities but also central to the resolution of the legal problem concerning all Indigenous peoples in Brazil.

 

Dona Miguela Vilhalva, a Guarani Kaiowá, greets the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Rapporteur for the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Antonia Urrejola during her 2019 Brazil visit. (Source: CIMI 2019)


Guyraroká is part of the Guarani Kaiowá territory located in today’s Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul. Although Guyraroká is not officially recognized as Guarani Kaiowá territory today, its occupation by the Guarani Kaiowá goes far back, to before the arrival of settler colonizers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Guarani Kaiowá call their territories Tekohá. Guyraroká is a Tekohá, which combines the notion of land and life in a holistic, symbiotic manner. Teko means “mode of living” while há means “physical place.” So, according to Kaiowá cosmology, Tekohá is the land where the mode of living of Guarani Kaiowá takes place. One does not go without the other. The teko is profoundly affected if the há (the land) is taken from them.[1]

During most of the twentieth century, the Brazilian government incentivized settlers to occupy Indigenous lands in the Midwest. During this period, settlers seized Guyraroká and expelled their inhabitants from the land. For many decades, members were banned from their traditional land, which had been turned into monoculture farmlands aimed at export. This massive land expropriation created severe consequences for the Guarani Kaiowá people. For many, the only alternative to ensure survival was to “integrate” into settler society and detach from their former Indigenous identity and territory or to stay around and work for the settlers running their stolen traditional lands under precarious labor conditions.

In the 1990s, the Guarani Kaiowá initiated a movement to take back their stolen territory. In 1999, community members finally reoccupied Guyraroká and brought the Guarani Kaiowá mode of living back to the land. The movement sought inspiration and legitimacy in the Brazilian Constitution.[2] Although anchored in a solid legal foundation, the take-back movement clashed with the economic interests of settler occupants, who had developed a stable agriculture export economy out of Indigenous lands and labor. As a result, the Brazilian Indigenist Agency (FUNAI) initiated demarcation procedures to resolve the issue. If successfully demarcated, Guyraroká would finally return to the community. However, in the final stages of the demarcation, settler landowners filed a lawsuit against FUNAI, claiming that because community members were not physically occupying Guyraroká at the date the Brazilian constitution was enacted (1988), the Guyraroká community and others under similar circumstances were to be deprived of their right of land restitution. The Supreme Court accepted the settlers’ argument in a biased and controversial decision. It ruled that, in the case of Guyraroká, the right to private property should override Indigenous rights to traditional land. Because of this case’s success, many farm owners across the country started to bring legal claims against ongoing Indigenous land demarcation procedures, producing a cascade effect. This is why the Guyraroká case is so important. It represented a large-scale backlash against Indigenous territorial rights that affected the Guyraroká community and many others all over the country.

Because the highest instance of the Brazilian judiciary had failed to protect the inherent land rights of Indigenous peoples, the Guyraroká community, under the guidance of the Guarani Kaiowá Great Assembly (Aty Guasu) and their allies, decided to appeal to international human rights institutions that have a legal mandate to oversee states under its jurisdiction, including Brazil. This is where this SLI project comes into play. The project helped to advance the international action plan to pursue reparations for the harms committed by the Brazilian judiciary against the community (that is, not protecting their land rights). So far, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (Washington, DC) has granted a Precautionary Measure to the community based on the rights enshrined in the American Convention on Human Rights, to which the Brazilian government is a party.[3] Among other things, the commission requested that Brazil take measures to stop surrounding farmers from dumping aerial pesticides over the community.

While the case does not reach the Inter-American Court of Human Rights—the institution that holds the legitimate authority to order final, binding reparations to Brazil—the community and its allies continue to advance their international strategy to expose Brazil’s violation of the fundamental land rights of Guyraroká community members.

 

[1] Tonico Benites, “Recuperação dos territórios tradicionais Guarani-Kaiowá. Crónica das táticas e estratégias,” (2014) 100 Journal de la Société des américanistes 100, no. 2 (2014): 229–40. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24606548.

[2] The 1988 Brazilian Constitution switched from the paradigm of assimilation to one of protection and respect of Indigenous distinctiveness through the recognition of their rights. Article 231 recognizes Indigenous peoples’ “social organization, customs, languages, creeds and traditions, . . . as well as their original rights to the lands they traditionally occupy.” The same article also established that “The Federal Union has the responsibility to demarcate [their] lands and to protect and ensure respect for all their property.”

[3] A press release on the commission’s decision is vailable here:  https://www.oas.org/en/iachr/media_center/PReleases/2019/244.asp.

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Mechanisms for Conflict Resolution in Employment Relations at a Multinational Company in Nigeria and South Africa

November 14, 2022
By 29628

Western and Southern Africa is a hub for multinational companies to operate their business. Olaniyi Joshua Olabiyi, a Sylff fellow in 2019 and SRA awardee in 2021, conducted his PhD fieldwork in Lagos and Cape Town. This led to research on the mechanisms available for multinational enterprises to avert industrial conflict in their host community.

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Introduction and Background

The existence of labor disputes is inherent in all labor relations systems (ILO 2001). Collective bargaining breakdowns usually occur when the process of collective bargaining reaches its breaking point and then results in industrial actions, such as strikes or lockouts. Sound labor relations policy, according to the International Labor Organization (ILO 2001), is based on a system for preventing and settling labor disputes. Employee-employer relationships are characterized by divergent interests and deferred objectives from each party that frequently lead to conflict (Venter 2003). 

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Methodology of the Study

The study focused on the assessment and effectiveness of conflict resolution mechanisms in Nigeria and South Africa, two host countries of the multinational company Huawei. It focused primarily on collective bargaining mechanism processes. A portion of this work was devoted to applying and interpreting mechanisms that can be used when disputes arise between employers and unionized workers.

In addition, the study conducted a comparative analysis of conflict resolution mechanisms used in South Africa and Nigeria to improve our knowledge of how conflict resolution works in South Africa’s labor relations environment compared to the conflict resolution mechanism in Nigeria. In this study, we investigated the tools and frameworks of legislation that facilitate reconciliation and peace in employment relationships and result in fewer disputes in South Africa and Nigeria.

The study employed a nonexperimental descriptive research design based on a survey approach. For data collection, a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods was applied. In both Nigeria and South Africa, a questionnaire was distributed to 200 employees of the group in that country. After compiling the aggregate data generated from the responses of employees across Huawei group companies in both countries, 363 responses were obtained for data. The data collection activity took place over the course of three-plus months.

 

Data Analysis Procedure

The methods of data collection and analysis used in this study include both quantitative and qualitative approaches. Interviews and questionnaire surveys were conducted to determine the process followed in addressing industrial conflict. 

For qualitative data analysis, 20 senior managers from Huawei multinational were interviewed face-to-face. We asked each manager to describe two or three specific incidents that have mandated the implementation of conflict resolution processes, procedures, and mechanisms within the organization. We then followed how the conflict was resolved by learning what measures were taken to that end. The interviewer asked participants a follow-up question, and they answered according to their knowledge, thus generating sufficient data to meet the research objective. The responses were analyzed using software program called NVivo and ATLAS.ti. 

For the quantitative arm, a closed-ended structure questionnaire was used to select a total of 400 employees from the Huawei multinational enterprise group in Nigeria and South Africa as the optimal sample for the quantitative arm. Of the 200 employees who were given the survey at the Nigerian site, 177 completed the survey, 14 did not respond, and 9 were excluded due to undisclosed information. Thus, 177 employees were part of the data collection in Nigeria.

A questionnaire was likewise provided to 200 employees of the company by the South African counterpart of the study. A total of 186 employees responded and 14 refused to respond, so 186 responses were taken as the final sample. In all, 363 responses were gathered from Huawei group employees in Nigeria and South Africa for the study’s data analysis.

To analyze the quantitative data collected using descriptive and inferential statistics, we used the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 19.0 for Windows, as it offers a variety of parametric as well as nonparametric statistical tests. A demographic analysis was conducted to determine the demographic composition of the sample. The data was presented in graphs, charts, and tables.

Data Coding and Cleaning

The data collected from Huawei group companies in South Africa and Nigeria needed to be coded and cleaned. Babbie and Mouton (2015) describe how social science data can be manipulated and read by computers and similar machines based on quantitative and qualitative data analysis. By using closed-ended questions with limited answers, data could be analyzed unpretentiously and directly, along with graphs.

There were two sections for demographics and research questions. For the researcher to perform a credible analysis, demographics and research questions were collected independently. Data analysis was performed on the quantitative data to analyze the theme and subject of the research. To ensure that the cleaning and coding processes are free of error, they were systematically observed several times at random.

Findings and Results

The mechanism for resolving conflict was more successful in South Africa than in Nigeria. Moreover, the study showed that industrial conflicts in Nigeria were not well managed. The reason for this was the Nigerian government’s spineless approach to labor legislation and resolution of labor disputes. The lack of intent to improve employment relations was due to the volatile labor relations environment in Nigeria. Within the South African space of labor relations, meanwhile, the labor policy was highly regulated, and the procedures were properly followed and implemented.

A total of 4.0% of respondents agreed that Nigeria’s organization had an appropriate and efficient conflict resolution mechanism. The majority of 44.1% disagreed that there was an effective and efficient mechanism for resolving conflict. In the South African organization, 58.6% of respondents agreed that an effective and practical conflict prevention device exists in their organization, while 2.2% disagreed. The Nigerian organization demonstrated through the low percentage of positive responses to both statements that it did not have a functioning dispute resolution mechanism.

In the survey of South African employees, 58.6% of respondents believed that formal mechanisms are necessary to explain how conflict should be handled within an organization. Another 21.0% strongly agreed that a conflict resolution device is present within the organization, adding up to 79.6%. Conflict resolution mechanisms were perceived as prevalent by approximately 2.2% of respondents and strongly so by 0.5%. The positive responses from 79.6% of employees indicate that a just conflict resolution mechanism is present in South Africa’s organization. This conclusion comes from the fact that if unbiased conflict resolution mechanisms exist between management and labor, it automatically enhances harmony in the workplace.

Of the Nigerian respondents, 44.1% disagreed with the assertion that the organization enforces or ratifies international labor standards. Since the largest percentage of employees disagreed with the statement, it appears that the Nigerian organization disallowed internationally accepted standards of work practice regarding conflict management. In total, 79.7% of respondents agreed with organizations upholding and promoting the international labor framework for conflict resolution, while 4.5% disapproved, 0.6% strongly agreed, and 15.3% said they were neutral about it.

In the South African survey, 82.3% of respondents approved of and accepted international labor standards for managing conflicts in employment relations; 3.2% said they did not, and 14% said maybe or unsure. There was a significantly higher percentage of employees who answered “yes” than those who answered “no.” This is because the organization consented to the worldwide framework for adjudicating workplace conflicts. In view of the foregoing, it is clear that organizations within South Africa use the mechanisms of international labor standards for conflict resolution. This is because they resolve conflict whenever it arises within the organization. Consequently, that organization would practice labor relations in a way that is fair, equitable, and equal in terms of conflict resolution mechanisms.

Concluding Remarks

The study concludes by recommending that host countries of multinational corporations in Africa constantly review their conflict resolution frameworks. This is so that the frameworks serve as a guide for multinational companies operating within their borders. As part of such mechanisms, the study points out that there needs to be a process of sincere dialogue between employers and employees. This must be accompanied by effective channels of communication between them. The study suggests that a nonviolent workplace environment can be facilitated by encouraging accommodating and congruent conflict resolution strategies among employees.

The report from the study revealed a case in which a multinational company that originally intended to infuse the international standard of employment relations into its host country’s conflict mechanisms abandoned and neglected the prevailing international practices of employment relations. In such a circumstance, the host country may have regressed from its labor relations legislation standard regarding conflict resolution. The multinational company has been able to sidestep the normal dispute resolution process by following the easiest route, disregarding normal protocol. Consequently the development of the host country, such as Nigeria, has been adversely affected. If a foreign corporation fails to observe the labor laws of the host country, how will the government sanction this behavior? Is there a procedure or regulation for dealing with such transgressions in the host country’s legal framework? It is common for governments to lack mechanisms to keep them in check.

As is evident from the findings presented in the study, multinational companies believe that they have influenced the host country’s environment by using the appropriate international standard for labor relations practice. This has resulted in the development of mechanisms that limit conflict among members of the workforce. Employees of the company in Nigeria, as well as reports of operations and actions of a multinational company in Nigeria, provide some support for this assertion. Even though multinational enterprises reap a tremendous number of economic and financial benefits, they have served as contrarian vehicles for capital flight from their host nations, exclusively in Africa (Allen-Ile and Olabiyi 2021).

 

References

Allen-ILE, C. O. K., and J. O. Olabiyi. 2021. “A Preliminary Comparative Perspective on the Role of Multinational Enterprises in Influencing Labour Relations of Their Host Nation.” Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal 6, no. 12 (December 2019): 298–318. https://doi.org/10.14738/assrj.612.6980.

Babbie, E., and  J. Mouton. 2015. The Practice of Social Research. South Africa ed. Oxford University Press Southern Africa (Pty) Ltd.

ILO (Internationa Labour Organization). 2001. “Substantive Provisions of Labour Legislation: Settlement of Collective Labour Disputes.” Chap. 4 in Labour Legislation Guidelines. International Labour Organization. Available online at http://www.ilo.org/public/english/dialogue/ifpdial/llg/index.htm (accessed November 20, 2019).

Venter, R. 2003. Labour Relations in South Africa. 2nd ed (revised). Cape Town: Oxford University Press Southern Africa.