CITY & SEXUALITY
Geography and You|Issue 142 - 143, 2020
An Auto-Ethnographic story telling of caste, class and Queerness in Delhi
Dhiren Borisa
CITY & SEXUALITY
What makes a city liveable? Often we are situated at various margins of a city—social, spatial and sexual. This paper uses auto-ethnographic storytelling of social-sexual differences that produce our everyday geographies. From gay parties to parks, public sex and dating apps, it opens up questions of caste, class, desires in Delhi from a Dalit queer standpoint. These geographies of survival, I argue, are ephemeral, imagined and performative. They survive as temporal entities in their ability to collapse. These are messy geographies of how the queer survive through caste, class and such other identity particularly when social standing is closely linked with the material one.

Cities always fascinated me. They were grand, glamorous and unattainable. Like many people who come from marginalised locations, I felt, these were promising, but difficult to survive. They are fantastical and glamorous. But not for everybody. I have lived most part of my life in a small town in Rajasthan and it has almost been a decade that I have survived Delhi. Growing up, my grandmother would teach me to dream big, but she also told me to be afraid of the big city. She is one of the fiercest Dalit women I know, always inspiring, and yet.

She carried her four young children including my infant mother from a village after her husband died, and ran to the nearby town to labour as a construction worker. She repeatedly said, I am not sending my children to the cities. They kill us. Our children who go there to study do not come back alive.

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MÁS HISTORIAS DE GEOGRAPHY AND YOUVer todo
Geography and You

TO PLUCK AT WILL: FRUIT TREES IN COMMON PROPERTY

Despite many governmental initiatives, malnutrition in India remains a major health challenge. There is a marked deficit of fruits in the diet of most Indians, consuming much lower than what is recommended by the World health organisation (Who). One of the reasons behind this is the high price of fruits and thus its inequitable access. As we prepare ourselves to live in a world marred by COVID-19 and a shrinking Indian economy, we must think of new ideas to manage access to food, especially micro nutrient rich fruits. This paper explores the possibility of planting endemic fruit trees in public spaces like roadsides and parks, that can help in increasing the consumption of fruits amongst the poor. It also attempts to analyse whether this can serve as a long term solution to bridge the gap between fruit production and consumption in India.

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7 minutos  |
Issue 146, 2020
Geography and You

Migrants & borders: My wishlist in a post-Covid-19 world

Former Professor of Economics and Education, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. bkhadria@gmail.com.

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5 minutos  |
Issue 146, 2020
The Antiquity and Continuity of the Caste System In India - Dalit Perspective
Geography and You

The Antiquity and Continuity of the Caste System In India - Dalit Perspective

Why has the caste system survived in India for more than millennia is a question that baffles many. In order to understand it one may have to look into its past and how it was transferred generation after generation. People in denial at most profess to believe that it plays a role only in marriages. Is endogamy not the single most factor for the maintenance of the caste system? There is therefore a need to revisit factors that have kept this system alive and how it is being nurtured even today. Manifestations of the caste system and the inequality and violence it entails are quite broad.

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7 minutos  |
Issue 142 - 143, 2020
Social Diversity, Hierarchy and cultural Heterogeneity Among Muslims of India
Geography and You

Social Diversity, Hierarchy and cultural Heterogeneity Among Muslims of India

Though the media and other journalistic literature in recent years have projected Muslims as socially ‘monolithic’ and with the same ‘identity’ of ‘Muslimness’, Muslims in India, are as diverse and as disparate as ‘Hindus’. The religion as a thin veneer is spread over a block of diverse social practices and conceptions of sub-continental origin like caste, community, kinship, race, gender, language and food habits. This is why, Muslims in India have largely remained unaffected from social and political movements among Muslims elsewhere.

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9 minutos  |
Issue 142 - 143, 2020
Identity And The Political Economy of Agrarian Change
Geography and You

Identity And The Political Economy of Agrarian Change

Despite significant changes in the agrarian structure and affirmative action in various spheres, caste-based exclusion and discrimination continue to be widely prevalent. In the rural, agrarian economy in India, both social exclusion and adverse inclusion—in terms of assets and access to markets and institutions, act as the basis of caste-based discrimination. as a result of historical biases in ownership of and access to resources, including information and institutions, both structural discrimination in asset-ownership and wealth and its manifestations in the market transactions point to the various ways unequal opportunities shape the trajectories of rural transformation in contemporary India.

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9 minutos  |
Issue 142 - 143, 2020
Caste, Class and The power of Water
Geography and You

Caste, Class and The power of Water

The Socio-Political Ecology of Drinking Water in Rural India

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10 minutos  |
Issue 142 - 143, 2020
THE 2018 KERALA FLOOD: BEST PRACTICES AND LESSONS LEARNT
Geography and You

THE 2018 KERALA FLOOD: BEST PRACTICES AND LESSONS LEARNT

It is imperative to reconnoiter the potential best practices, lessons learned and way forward from the Kerala 2018 floods, which include community response to disaster risk reduction and institutionalizing capacity building for flood risk management. In order to support this review the significance of social capital in initial response as first responder and the need of institutionalizing this social capital is critically analysed. The paper also suggests a way forward for flood risk reduction.

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Issue 139 - 140, 2020
Multi Hazard Disaster Risk Assessment: A Step Towards Disaster Resilience
Geography and You

Multi Hazard Disaster Risk Assessment: A Step Towards Disaster Resilience

GVV Sarma, Member Secretary, National Disaster Management Authority, talks to G’nY about building multi-disaster resilient infrastructure through comprehensive and integrated guidelines by involving entire geographic and socio-economic ecosystems.

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8 minutos  |
Issue 139 - 140, 2020
DISASTER RESILIENCE - JOURNEY TO SUSTAINABLE INDIA – 2030
Geography and You

DISASTER RESILIENCE - JOURNEY TO SUSTAINABLE INDIA – 2030

Planning and implementing disaster risk reduction requires integration pathways and appropriate tools. The transition from Hyogo Framework for Action to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction has brought focus on specific goals, integrating climate change adaptation and environment disaster linkages—mainstreaming it across all developmental sectors. This paper examines emerging issues of research and strategies for disaster risk framework strengthening and network development to achieve the designated goals by 2030, as also envisaged under the Prime Minister’s 10 Point Agenda on Disaster Risk Management.

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8 minutos  |
Issue 139 - 140, 2020
TRIAGING FOR MAINSTREAMING HOMEOPATHY
Geography and You

TRIAGING FOR MAINSTREAMING HOMEOPATHY

Homoeopathy, as a system of medicine, is a science of ‘similars’ and ‘overalls’. The role of homoeopathy in alleviating chronic ailments like skin, respiratory, gynaecological, joint, paediatric and psychiatric problems is promising.

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7 minutos  |
Issue 141, 2020