When the pandemic hit, many of us who planned qualitative research were preparing to travel to our field sites. What was initially a ‘wait and watch’ scenario, ended up being a situation where we had to consider a complete revamp of our methodologies; I know of colleagues who had to change their topics entirely because […]

Kerala was lauded for being both, the most responsive to the pandemic, as well as the most effective in its state response to the pandemic. Oftentimes, the state’s response was seen as more restrictive than the national response, especially in the early days of the pandemic. As we will see, subsequent state action was aligned […]

This is my final report on my summer research project, previously described here and here. — A striking feature of the literature of the ‘Indo-Anglian’ period is the proliferation of memoirs and autobiographical narratives that engage in what we would today call auto-ethnography. In libraries of the better sort, these memoirs can take up entire […]

English! Six-armed God, Key to a job, to power, Snobbery, the good life, This separateness, this fear — from “Diwali”, by Vikram Seth In my previous post for the CASI Student Programs blog, I provided a brief outline of my research plan for the summer of 2020. Thanks to generous support from CASI, I’m happy […]

I am a second-year doctoral student in the Political Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania. I am primarily interested in comparative politics and the political economy of development in modern India. Broadly, my research pertains to questions of state capacity and the role of identity in public provision of goods and services in developing […]

When I first thought to write an honors thesis for my Health and Societies major, I didn’t know what to expect. The idea of leading my own research and crafting my own interviews felt daunting, to say the least. A few months later, as I am nearing the end of my research phase, I look […]

This summer I conducted phone interviews with elites, frontline workers, and resident men and women in Bihar. The goal has been to to use this as a hypothesis and theory building exercise for my dissertation project. I have completed 20 interviews that have helped me hone research questions and also shed light on the lives […]

One of the most exciting dimensions of data analysis is when you start to find patterns in your data. This summer, with the support of CASI Summer Research Funds, I have been analyzing data from 45 interviews I conducted in 2018 and 2019 with unmarried and recently married young Indians in New Delhi. As I […]

This summer I worked on a chapter of my senior thesis that tracks the activities of the Ford Foundation in India between 1951-62. Since I have already blogged about my findings, I thought it would be useful to summarize the process of doing research during the pandemic. Step 1: Complain to your friends, family, or […]

I am a fifth year doctoral student in the Political Science department at the University of Pennsylvania. I hold an M.A. in Political Science from the University of Chicago and a B.A. in Psychology from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, where I grew up. My research focuses on studying media and political behavior in India. My […]