Research Radio

In 2018, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched an ambitious plan to achieve universal health coverage in India: by covering medical expenses upto Rs 5 lakh per family for one in every three Indians. The government called the scheme Ayushman Bharat and also promised to revamp the primary health care system alongside the insurance coverage.

How has the Ayushman Bharat scheme fared? Scholars Sylvia Karpagam and Shailender Kumar Hooda join us on the podcast to examine key aspects of the program. Dr Sylvia Karpagam is a public health doctor and researcher who is part of the Right to Food and Right to Health campaigns. She is specifically interested in the regulation of the private healthcare sector and in the social determinants of health, especially caste and nutrition. Dr Shailender Kumar Hooda teaches at the Institute for Studies in Industrial Development, New Delhi, India. He has over a decade of teaching and research experience with a specialization in the political economy of health and healthcare, health economics and policy, pharmaceutical industry, institutional economics and applied econometrics.

We will be discussing Hooda’s articles titled “Decoding Ayushman Bharat: A Political Economy Perspective” and “Health Insurance, Health Access and Financial Risk Protection.” We will be discussing Karpagam’s articles titled “Falling Through the Gaps: Women Accessing Care under Health Insurance Schemes in Karnataka” and “Critique of the Model of Universal Health Coverage in Karnataka.” Our Reading List contains insights from EPW's archive on the Ayushman Bharat.

Audio courtesy: YouTube/Narendra Modi

The classroom can be a space for us to engage in deep learning, rigorous  debate, collaboration and critical thinking. It’s a space where our  senses can be active and nourished. However, entry into the classroom  has been historically limited to upper-caste cis men. What happens when  these exclusions are challenged?

Audio courtesy: Summertime by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060 [CC BY 3.0]

From academic writing to social media, Dr Ambedkar’s scholarship and  actions are receiving renewed attention due to the efforts by Dalit-Bahujan scholars and thinkers. This special programme produced by EPW is one specific example of this.

Our  guest today has been writing on Dr Ambedkar for several decades, and  has more recently focused on frameworks on how to read Ambedkar.  Professor Gopal Guru is currently the editor of EPW, and was formerly professor at the Centre for Political Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.

We will be discussing several works including “Ethics of Reading Ambedkar’s Text” and Guru's lecture at the English and Foreign Languages University from 2017, which was documented by the publication Dalit Camera.

Audio courtesy: Summertime by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060 [CC BY 3.0]

Dr B R Ambedkar has written extensively about economics and  development. Along with proposing landmark legislations, he was also  attentive to the impact of policies on those from marginalised castes  and on women. Our guests will examine the policy landscape in and focus on two landmark programmes— the National Food Security Act’s  provisions for maternity entitlements and the National Rural Employment  Guarantee Act—and whether they actualise Ambedkar’s vision of a  democratic socialist India.

Nitin Dhaktode and  Aditi Priya join us on Research Radio. Nitin is a senior doctoral  research scholar at the School of Development Studies, Tata Institute of  Social Sciences, Mumbai. He has also worked with social audit units for  over three and a half years in Hyderabad and across India. Aditi Priya  is a research associate at LEAD at Krea University, Sricity. She started  the group Bahujan Economists.  Her research interests include maternity entitlements, maternal and  child health and gender-based violence and the role of the police.

We will discuss Aditi’s article “Birth Pangs: Universal Maternity Entitlements in India” and Nitin’s article “Caste in MGNREGA Works and Social Audits.”

Audio courtesy: Summertime by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060 [CC BY 3.0]

What does it take to build unity among the working class? We'll explore how Dr Ambedkar led movements in the Konkan region against khots, or landlords, who gave unfair remunerations to tenants, and in the Bombay Presidency in favour of garnering humane working conditions for the working class, including mill workers.

Santosh Suradkar is our guest for this week. Dr Suradkar teaches at the Department of History, Gondwana University, Gadchiroli. His research  areas include peasant, labour, caste and Dalit history. We will discuss his EPW article “Mukti Kon Pathe? Caste and Class in Ambedkar’s Struggle.”

Audio courtesy: Summertime by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060 [CC BY 3.0]

What steps did Ambedkar take to counter patriarchy and the  caste-based order? Why should laws specifically consider caste in  addressing incidents of violence? What role have upper-caste women  played in furthering the women's movement in India?

These  are a few of the questions that Abhinaya Ramesh explores on this week's  episode of Research Radio. Professor Ramesh is a political scientist,  feminist theorist and human rights scholar. She was awarded the British Chevening fellowship and is currently based in Mumbai. Professor  Ramesh’s interests include citizen’s rights and their implementation in  India, India’s political system and western political thought.

We’ll discuss her articles “Dalit Women, Vulnerabilities, and Feminist Consciousness” and “Reflections on the 'Chalo Nagpur' Campaign.”

Audio courtesy: Summertime by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060 [CC BY 3.0]

What are the implications of studying Dr Ambedkar’s texts in an Indian public university? What are the multiple forms of violence that caste thrives on, and how are these contested? What is the importance of naming, particularly the use of the terms "Harijan," "Scheduled Caste" and "Dalit"?

These are a few of the questions that Parthasarathi Muthukkaruppan explores on this week's episode of Research Radio. Dr Muthukkaruppan teaches in the Department of Cultural Studies, English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad. His research interests include cultural theory, literature, cinema, visual culture and continental philosophy.

We will discuss his EPW article “Paramakudi Violence: Against Dalits, Against Politics." We will also explore his articles “Critique of Caste Violence” and “Dalit: the making of a political subject” published in Social Scientist and Critical Quarterly respectively.

Audio courtesy: Summertime by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060 [CC BY 3.0]

Thanthai Periyar and B R Ambedkar shared several similarities in their  analysis of Indian society. However, they held different views on the  nation-state, and women's sexuality, among other areas. V Geetha joins  us to discuss Dr Ambedkar and Periyar's thought. She also details Dr Ambedkar's views on fraternity, political change, Savarnas, the law. Dr Geetha is a feminist historian and translator who writes in English and  Tamil on gender, caste, education and labour. She has worked on the Tamil on-brahmin and anti-caste movements, and on feminist practices in  the Indian context.

She has published several articles in EPW, and we’ll focus on two today: "Of Whales and Wheels: Buddhist Lessons in Democracy" and "Invitation to Practise Social Fellowship." Also, read Geetha's article "Ambedkar and Periyar’s intellectual comradeship," which was published by Forward Press.

Audio courtesy: Summertime by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060 [CC BY 3.0]

Welcome to the first part of our new Research Radio special programme. This series will focus on Dr B R Ambedkar, and his mission of achieving “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity.” For the next two months, every Wednesday, we’ll learn about Dr Ambedkar’s thoughts and actions from scholars across disciplines— from history, to literary studies and  economics. Through this series, we hope to get closer to the  multidisciplinary approach through which Dr Ambedkar viewed Indian  society. Most episodes will offer deep dives into his views on Marxism, Buddhism, Brahminism, patriarchy, the Indian state, and his engagement with Periyar, Jotirao Phule, and others. A handful of episodes will  analyse work by scholars who have followed an Ambedkar-inspired approach in their scholarship.

To start us off Chinnaiah Jangam joins us. Dr Jangam is an Associate  Professor in the Department of History. His research focus is on the  social and intellectual history of Dalits in modern South Asia. He’s published several articles in EPW that employ innovative archival research methods. Here are two that we discuss in this episode: “Dalit Chronicles from the Telugu Country” and “Politics of Identity and the Project of Writing: a A Dalit Critique.” 

Audio courtesy: Summertime by Tokyo Music Walker https://soundcloud.com/user-356546060 [CC BY 3.0] 

"Hindu culture and the caste system," writes Gail Omvedt in her EPW article on Jotirao Phule in 1971 "rested upon Brahmanism; hence Phule, who aimed for the complete destruction of caste, superstition and inequality  within Indian tradition, linked his thought with a movement of opposition to the Brahman elite." On Phule’s birth anniversary, we’ll  discuss his writing on caste, class, and gender relations in South Asia  and importantly, the methods he used to counter Brahmanism and patriarchy in collaboration with his co-traveller and wife Savitribai Phule.

Tejas Harad joins us on Research Radio to discuss his engagement and research primarily on Jotirao Phule. Tejas has worked at EPW since 2013 as a copy-editor and regularly contributes to multiple news publications in his individual capacity. We will also partially focus on Savitribai Phule, but this episode does not cover the depth of her  work. Last year, Tejas started a bilingual journal called the Satyashodhak to make the Satyashodhak Samaj archive more accessible to people but the portal's focus is not limited to that, in his words.

A few articles on the Jotirao Phule and related topics:

Audio courtesy: The last ones by Jahzzar [CC BY-SA 3.0].