Understanding the State


The focus of this research theme is on grounding theory about the State in social-historical processes. We aim to study development of institutions, political mobilisations and electoral systems, education, literacy, print capitalism, legal frameworks, and ideological regimes which make up the State, as a historical artefact. The State has always been studied through a synchronic method where apriori, ahistorical theories are postulated and then actual historical State formations are studied according to these postulates. Theorists of the State typically build abstract models from first principles, and these models then are deployed to understand and explain the nature of States, and how they work. In this research theme we hope to build political theory by foregrounding historical processes of State formation, by looking at the historical record of how States and their institutions were built over time (and space) and how they variously come to embody various concepts and ideologies. We wish to foreground actual experiences of people in the working of the State in our research, and build theory on that.

The projects which are currently ongoing under this theme are:

  1. (2021-2026) Political Geography of India’s Elections: This project combines GIS and quantitative social sciences to study voting patterns in India. It hopes to find new patterns and insights into voting behaviour, political practices, party politics, and correlations between political / electoral patterns and socio-economic data. We hope this will help us understand modern Indian dynamics in a more comprehensive manner.
  2. (2020-2025) Creating and Curating India Social Archive: This project aims to build an archive of citizen engagement with the contemporary State in India by bringing together born digital data, digitising paper and intangible records, press and media, social media resources, as well as recording oral histories. It started with a multi-institutional effort to archive the various media created by citizens during the Farmers’ Movement in 2020-21. It is now working to expand itself to other regions and themes.
  3. Examining Political Narratives in India:Political analysis of elections in India introduces and encourages us to explore shifting political narratives. However, certain domains of the 'political' remain understudied. This project attempts to 'understand the state' through analysing how various pertinent issues—say questions of environment and climate change—play out in the political and electoral arena. We intend to use mixed methods and a variety of sources including pamphlets, interviews, speeches and debates to build a broader understanding of contemporary politics.
There is one project which was completed (2021-22) under this theme which was about studying working conditions of tea garden workers in Assam and working to build an information and grievance digital interface for them (most of whom are poor and under-educated).

Faculty involved: Aakansha Natani, Aniket Alam, Radhika Krishnan

Students involved: Keshav Bajaj, Devesh Marwah, Ayush Maurya