A.R.Vasavi
A.R.Vasavi is a Social Anthropologist who received her master’s degree in sociology from the Dept of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, and a Ph.D in Social Anthropology from Michigan State University. She was a Visiting Professor at Tufts University (Mass, USA), faculty at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and has lectured in several universities across the world. She took premature retirement from the School of Social Sciences, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bengaluru, and is currently Secretary at PUNARCHITH. Her areas of interest are alternative education, rural and agrarian studies, sociology of education, sociology of India, and contemporary social theory.
At PUNARCHITH she anchors the Integrated Learning Programme and coordinates the overall activities and work of the organisation.
Selected Publications
2022: Book: ‘Differentiation and Disjunction: Interrogating India’s Education System’ was published by Orient BlackSwan, Hyderabad.2022.
Economic & Political Weekly – The Everyday Wars on World Agri-cultures | English PDF
Samuhik Pahal – Lessons from learners | English PDF
Adverse Integration of Rural India | English PDF
The Support that Rural India Needs: Maximum Support Policy | View online
Ten Months on, What lessons have we learnt from the farmers’ movement? | View online
As Covid and Institutional Failure Ravage us, a lament for our times | View online
UNESCO 2020 : Rethinking mass higher education: towards community integrated
learning centres | English PDF
NRAS 2020: State of rural and agrarian India report 2020 | English PDF
The Absent Agriculturist in International Affairs | Engish PDF
Societies in motion | Engish PDF
Re-imagining education | Engish PDF
‘Social Transformative Learning’ In India | Engish PDF | Kannada PDF
Suicides and the making of India’s agrarian distress | Engish PDF
‘The education question’ from the perspective of adivasis: conditions, policies and structures | Engish PDF
The Displaced Threshing Yard 2018 | Engish PDF
ಗ್ರಾಮೀಣ ಭಾರತಕ್ಕೆ ಬೇಕಿದೆ ಹೊಸ ’ಎಂಎಸ್ಪಿ’ – ’ಗರಿಷ್ಠ ಬೆಂಬಲ ನೀತಿ’ | Link
Compiled and Edited the Kannada version of the booklet,’ The State of Rural and Agrarian India 2020’.
‘India’s Disembedded Rural Landscapes’, in the Landscape Architecture Journal, July 2022.
Newspaper and Online Journal Articles:
- The 2023 Battle for Karnataka: (Indian Express)
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/a-r-vasavi-writes-at-stake-in-karnataka-polls-the-soul-of-a-state-8533668/ - A Position Paper to Echo a Master Narrative.
https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/main-article/a-position-paper-to-echo-a-master-narrative-1129200.html - Russia’s New Farmers (Deccan Herald)
https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/panorama/russias-new-farmers-and-their-significance-1152761.html - Dollar Dreams in the Land of Rupees (Deccan Herald)
https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/in-perspective/dollar-dreams-in-the-land-of-rupees-1168852.html - Our Silenced Selves: India at 75 (Indian Express)
https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/india75-looking100-on-the-road-to-2047-the-state-of-our-democracy-cannot-be-a-distant-concern-8497338/ - The MSP that Rural India Needs: Maxium Support Policy, INDIAN EXPRESS, Nov.2021 (https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/msp-rural-india-needs-maximum-support-policy-7638071/)
- A Budget that Overlooks Real Needs: INDIAN EXPRESS, Feb 2022 (https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/a-budget-that-overlooks-real-needs-7757560/)
- Ten Months On: What have we learned from the Farmers’ Movement? INDIAN EXPRESS (https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/farmers-protest-india-delhi-punjab-bjp-7540336/)
- As Covid Ravages us, a lament for our times, INDIAN EXPRESS, (https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/covid-crisis-institutional-failures-coronavirus-death-7324973/)
- Chamarajanagar district’s health sector needs an overhaul, DECCAN HERALD (https://www.deccanherald.com/specials/insight/chamarajanagar-districts-health-sector-needs-an-overhaul-984024.html)
- ‘Nava Bharatake Nava Karnatak?’ (A New Karnataka for a New India?), PRAJAVANI, Nov 1st, with Janaki Nair. https://www.prajavani.net/explainer/future-and-life-of-karnaraka-in-kannada-rajyotsava-and-living-index-880273.html
INTERVIEWS:
- 1. On ‘Agrarian Distress and the Web of Risks’ for the network, Doing Sociology. (https://doingsociology.org/2022/06/30/agrarian-distress-and-the-web-of-risks-a-conversation-with-a-r-vasavi/)
- 2. On Education, for the Research Group on Education in South Asia, University of Pennsylvania.
Lectures:
- On India’s agrarian issues for the University of Delhi, JNU, Sikkim University, Ambedkar University, and University of Milano (Italy)
- Presented a paper on ‘From Magic to Miracles: Shifts in the Significance of Land’ for the Anthropology of Land seminar organised by the Wenner Gren Foundation, New York.