1st RIOC - Page 5

Living on the Edge: Interrogating Migrant Labourer Lives of Bengaluru/Bangalore

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228 views

Navami T. S.

PhD Scholar, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Kharagpur. Email: navamiskumar@gmail.com

  Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s30n3

 Abstract

This paper proposes to create a discourse of migrant labourers in the city of Bengaluru/Bangalore, especially during the current period of crisis ensued by COVID-19 pandemic. Despite being an essential part of the informal sector economy these workers are often rendered invisible from the urban social, cultural and political spaces of this global city. The United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Development (Habitat III), held in Quito, Ecuador in October 2016 declared the New Urban Agenda (NUA) — that was adopted as the guideline for urban development for the next twenty years — with the vision of ‘cities for all’. But in reality, for their regional, linguistic, cultural, class and caste differences, the migrant labourers in the city are marginalized from the mainstream urban scene. The paper investigates the historiography of the migrant labourers in the city to interrogate the space they occupy in Bengaluru/Bangalore. Some of the important questions the paper attempts to grapple with are also about their fight for survival amidst the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic and the relief measure responses from the state. Evidences show, the immigrant labourers are perceived as the city’s necessary ‘Other’ who are needed to build the city but barely finds any representation in the planning grids of urban architects. Their direct experiences and negotiations with ‘the lived city’, available from news archives and other secondary sources, will be interrogated through the lens of ‘the Right to the City’, a concept introduced by Henri Lefebvre. The paper attempts to explore if they have any agency to assert their rights to the city and become a meaningful stakeholder in the democratic control over Bengaluru/Bangalore.

 Keywords: Migrant labourers, COVID-19, Space, the Right to the City

Documenting Migrant Lives of Sugarcane Harvesting Labourers in Maharashtra– Autoethnographic Reflections

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338 views

Mithunchandra Chaudhari1 & Ruchi Jaggi2

1Assistant Professor, Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication, Symbiosis International (Deemed University), Pune, India. ORCID: 0000-0003-1833-3607. Email: mithunchandra.chaudhari@simc.edu

2Professor, Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication, Symbiosis International (Deemed University), Pune, India. ORCID: 0000-0002-4118-7671. Email: ruchi.jaggi@simc.edu

  Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s30n2

Abstract

Physical labour is not respected in India. Farm labourers are one of the most exploited labourers in India, and the world. Every year more than one million unorganised contract labourers, most of them from lower castes, migrate to the sugar belt in Western Maharashtra for around six months where sugar factories are concentrated. With around 200 sugar factories, Maharashtra ranks number one in sugar production in India. The labourers work for twelve or more hours a day and get poor returns. On the other hand, the working and living conditions violate basic human rights (Deshingkar, Start, 2003). Cane cutting is the most laborious farm work where the labourers have to bend for hours, pick up very heavy cane bundles and mount them at risky heights even during the night time. While injuries are very common among these labourers, occasionally, deaths too take place. The most recent reports reveal that the contractors force women labourers to remove their wombs so that they do not menstruate while working and therefore miss work. The number of such women estimates to around 30%. “Networks working on health and women’s issues say unwarranted hysterectomies among poor women in Beed and other places are the result of work-related pressures imposed on women, plus a grossly unregulated private medical sector and exploitative contractors and sugar factory owners who hire migrant workers” (Chatterjee, 2019).  Along with such health hazards, activists claim that women labourers are exploited by the male contractors at the worksite where physical abuse and rapes happen quite often though they are not formally reported. Young children of the labourers also travel with them at the destination leaving their schools and education behind to help their parents in their work to get trapped into the vicious cycle of bonded labour like their parents (making it a generation after generation trap). Marginalised, alienated and vulnerable in the migrated socio-cultural environment, the sugarcane harvesting backward class labourers face livelihood insecurities. Pregnant women and children have to work. Exploitation is both obvious and subtle. Still this seasonal life is a better opportunity for them. The hardly shared realities, including, women’s critical health issues, sexual exploitation, rapes among other sensitive issues of their lives are beyond imagination. This paper studies the observations made while making a documentary film (which is an ethnographic exploration) on migrant labourers’ challenges. Using an autoethnographic framework on part of the authors, this research paper will attempt to capture their fears, insecurities, subtle voice as well as the silences.

Keywords: Migration, Migrant Labourers, Lower Caste People, Women, Removal of Wombs

Reconceiving the Ecological Wisdoms of Ved?nta in Anthropocene: An Eco-aesthetical Perspective

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305 views

Pankaj Kumar Verma1 & Prabha Shankar Dwivedi2

1Research Scholar, Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati, India. ORCID: 0000-0001-8952-7906. Email: hs18d002@iittp.ac.in

2Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati, India. ORCID: 0000-0003-1620-2830. Email: prabhas.dwivedi@iittp.ac.in

  Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s29n2

Abstract

The paper aims to lay out a critical analysis of eco-aesthetical wisdom of pan-Indian society through the lens of ancient seers whose insights for environment and ecology were shaped in the form of the teachings of Vedas and Upani?ads. With the passage of time, the bond between humans and non-humans has largely weakened, and humans have increased exploiting the natural resources without caring for their regeneration. Consequent nature bred hostility is emerging as a bigger crisis in front of the 21st Century world that may sooner turn to be, if not taken seriously, an existential crisis for the whole human race. The Upani?ads enlighten us not only with the knowledge of maintaining the relationship between human beings and physical environment but also among various inhabitants of ecology. Therefore, as Deep Ecology proposes, there should be a shift from human at the centre (anthropocentricism) to ecology at the centre (ecocentrism) which very much was existing in Indian society. So, this paper attempts to deal with the global ecological crisis co-opting with the ecological/environmental ideas and attitude of the classical Indian treatises.

Keywords: Ecology, Eco-aesthetics, Ved?nta, Upani?ads, Anthropocene, Ecocentricism

Narratives of Epidemics: Topsy-turvy Conditions of Humans and Quest for Existence

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256 views

Abdel-Fattah M. Adel1, Mashhoor Abdu Al-Moghales2 & Suhail Ahmad3

1Department of English, College of Arts, University of Bisha, Saudi Arabia. Email: aadeal@ub.edu.sa, ORCID: 0000-0001-7968-8167

2Department of English, College of Arts, University of Bisha, Saudi Arabia and Taiz University, Yemen. Email: mamohammad@ub.edu.sa, ORCID: 0000-0001-7984-5388

3Department of English, College of Arts, University of Bisha, Saudi Arabia. Email: suhailahmed@ub.edu.sa, ORCID: 0000-0001-6611-2484

  Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s28n1

Abstract

Corpus of literature is replete with works that feature pandemics as central themes. As a response to diseases outbreaks, fiction writers portray the human condition and the shifts in human behaviour at these crucial junctures of human history. Plot structure and characterization accounts for the void –both within and without—: prevailing chaos, crumbling social structures, undermining of religious values, and Government’s apathy. Based on such themes, this paper examines, from Deterministic and Existentialistic perspectives, three representative fictions written in the 21st century: Reina James’s This Time of Dying (2006) on the deadly influenza of 1918, Amir Taj Elsir’s Ebola ’76 (2012) on the outbreak of Ebola in 1976, and Karen Maitland’s The Plague Charmer (2016) on the plague of 1361. The findings include: (a) the novels predict the contemporary society with their resonance of apocalyptic images and preventive measures, (b) they manifest ontological shifts as the orthodox worldviews are jolted, and (c) fictional and personal narratives are not less important than historical records on health in quest for existence.

 Keywords: Epidemic Novels, Human Conditions, Determinism, Freewill.

 

Contagion and Human Behavior: Examining “12 Monkeys and Contagion through the Pandemic”

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201 views

Manoj Kumar Behera

Ph.D. Scholar, Utkal University, ORCID ID/P ID: 344912331. Email: behera.manoj8@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s26n7

Abstract

A pandemic always teaches the value of life on earth. It also brings the real or primordial nature of humanity to the forefront. In this paper, I will examine the attitude of humans towards the virus, infected humans, and towards other humans in general. While examining these attitudes of humans I will move from specific to general. In order to support my ideas, I will discuss two films i.e. 12 Monkeys and Contagion in particular. Disability studies will be used as a theory to support my arguments.  Everyone in this world has experienced disability directly or indirectly. At present, the ongoing Corona virus pandemic has changed our perception regarding the meaning of our life. We are all vulnerable in this world and we can become the reason for making somebody vulnerable. The problem is that to whom we consider disable. Is it based on appearance or moral outlook?  How shall we respond or how shall we deal with such a situation?  Humanities closely observe world affairs. It predicts futuristic scenarios based on facts. It raises essential questions for the sake of humanity. Now an infected person is considered untouchable. It’s extremely sad to experience such an awful feeling. But in our society untouchability based on caste and disease is a common thing. A virus helps everyone to experience what Dalit humans had once experienced. Now strangers and our relatives are equally suspicious. Separation and inclusion both are associated with the infection. Social hierarchy has changed. Everyone is now untouchable.

Keywords- Pandemic, Disability, Untouchability, Isolation, Vulnerable

‘Working for/from Home’: An Interdisciplinary Understanding of Mothers in India

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312 views

Sucharita Sarkar

Associate Professor, D.T.S.S. College of Commerce, Mumbai, India.

Email: sarkarsucharita@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s26n6

Abstract

Situated in the context of the coronavirus pandemic, this paper begins by looking at the recent advertisement by Amul praising mothers who are ‘working from home’ and ‘working for home’ during the lockdown, with an accompanying cartoon visualizing the iconic Amul girl sitting beside her mother who is working on her laptop while keeping an eye on her daughter; in a juxtaposed cartoon, the mother is cooking in the kitchen while simultaneously scrolling through her smartphone. Amongst my groups of women friends, the advertisement elicited strong and contradictory responses: ranging from approval of the appreciation for maternal work to disapproval at the missing father. In order to critique this advertisement, I would use the lens of Motherhood Studies, an emerging area of scholarship that is inherently interdisciplinary.  Reading the advertisement as a cultural text, I will attempt to locate the maternal stereotypes embedded in it: the merging of the stay-at-home mother and the working-mother into the ideal neoliberal mother-worker, the supermom who effortlessly balances work and home, even in extraordinary times like the pandemic and lockdown. These entangled maternal stereotypes have been reified in popular consciousness through mythic, religious, literary and filmic artefacts. A cross-disciplinary tracing of the stereotypes will reveal the motherhood constructs and the cultural expectations that mothers encounter, and also attempt to explain why and how these constructs and expectations operate. The paper will look at the possibilities of resistance to these stereotypes, germinating in feminist, or posthuman, or matricentric approaches to motherhood. I will use the critical distinction between motherhood-as-ideology and mothering-as-agency to understand maternal resistances, some of which may be located in the responses to the Amul advertisement. The paper will conclude by assessing the emergence of Motherhood Studies as a legitimate field of interdisciplinary humanities and/or social sciences.

 Keywords: cultural studies; Indian mothers; interdisciplinary; matricentric feminism; motherhood studies

 

“When spotted deaths ran arm’d through every street”: Women-Healers and the Great Plague in Geraldine Brooks’ Year of Wonders

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258 views

Isha Biswas

PhD Scholar (English), Vidyasagar University, Faculty, Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis Mahavidyalaya. Email: yoshinokurosaki@gmail.com. Orcid ID: 0000-0001-8328-4579

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s26n4

Abstract

In the late 1600s, England was reeling under the recurrence of the pandemic that had swept continent-wide in the 14th century. However, it was not the only disease lurking around. At the heels of the scarlet-ringed Black Death, came the scarlet letter of witchcraft accusations, mostly geared towards Wise Women in the margins of society- women who exhibited knowledge and skill in medicine, herbal remedies and midwifery. Set in the time when religious fanaticism and Puritanical fear-mongering was at its height, Year of Wonders presents before us an opportunity to delve into the web of lies and life-threatening allegations that formed the bedrock of the English witch trials continuing in full swing since the incursion of Continental lore ever since James I came to power. Furthermore, with midwives and female herbalists in the area falling prey to targeted sexual and physical violence in the wake of the pandemic in the story, what needs to be inspected is the inescapable link between Church-backed patriarchy’s delusional fear, jealousy and consequent scapegoating of the economically and socio-sexually marginalized woman-healers in the countryside and the failure of the male-dominated medical field in effectively containing the spread of the virus. The paper investigates further the generational flow of biomedical wisdom in a female-oriented domain which becomes significant in the presentation of the two female leads inheriting the function of the Wise Women from the original holders of the position, thus solidifying the sense of found family and sisterhood standing against the mounting social pressure to bend to the will of the Church and the men in their lives.

Keywords: Witch, Wise Women, Black Death, Misogyny, Medicine, Women-healers

Economic and Psychosocial Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Badhai Hijras: A Qualitative Study

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370 views

Preeti1 & Shyamkiran Kaur2

1Dr. B.R. Ambedkar National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar, Punjab, India, email- preeti.hm.19@nitj.ac.in, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2279-6532

2Dr. B.R. Ambedkar National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar, Punjab, India, email- kaursk@nitj.ac.in, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8182-361X

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s26n3

 Abstract

Human history has witnessed various natural upheavals, pandemics being one of them. These pandemics whether The Black Death, The Great Plague of London, Russian Flu, Spanish Flu, Asian Flu, HIV/AIDS, SARS, etc. struck down every sphere of human civilization. The devastating economic and psychosocial impact of COVID-19 has been experienced by every group of population whether privileged or marginalised. Hijras (a term used by Serena Nanda for the transgenders in Indian Subcontinent) especially badhai hijras (transgender performers) who are already living on the edges of society have been targeted worst by this pandemic as their livelihood is solely dependent upon their performances on various social gatherings that decreased significantly during the period. These people amidst poor finances are confronting more discrimination by the heteronormative set-up which results in their low physical, mental, and social well-being. The objective of the present paper is to study the economic and psychosocial impact of COVID-19 pandemic on hijras in general and badhai hijras in particular. The arguments are supported by various vis-a-vis interactions with hijras and an NGO working for their well-being in the district Jalandhar, Punjab (India). While using the interview technique, a structural questionnaire for a sample population of badhai hijras was used to collect data for the study. The findings of the research work highlighted the urgent need of providing financial assistance to the badhai hijras. The research work would assist the decision making agencies of government to frame policies for these marginalized individuals which will directly support them in the pandemic.

 [Keywords– LGBTQ, hijras, badhai hijras, pandemic, COVID-19, Transphobia, Heteronormative]

Live (Life) Streaming: Virtual Interaction, Virtual Proximity, and Streaming Everyday Life during the COVID- 19 Pandemic

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420 views

Ujjwal Khobra1 & Rashmi Gaur2

1Doctoral Student, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee, Uttarakhand- 247667. singh.ujjwal1994@gmail.com, ukhobra@hs.iitr.ac.in, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5271-3518.

2Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee, Uttarakhand- 247667, rashmigaur@hs.iitr.ac.in

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s26n2

 Abstract

This paper proposes to examine the digital event of live streaming as an entanglement of digital engagement, virtual proximity, and virtual embodiment as a possible posthuman concern, foregrounded by the ongoing COVID- 19 pandemic. The transition witnessed in the medium of communication between humans has significantly deconstructed our understanding of the ‘normal’, consequently introducing a new phase of lost corporeality, digitally. Unforeseen excessive employment of the virtual engagement system of live (life) streaming is a testament to the current human extremity. In the light of this transition, the paper attempts to explore the possibility of witnessing some semblance of reality by altering the praxis of normalcy in the practice of the COVID appropriate ‘new normal’ through the virtual medium of a live stream. Since the ontology of human exceptionalism has come under direct attack due to the current pandemic, a reassessment of the human/ technology interphase and its consequent posthuman predicament is urgent. Drawing on Rosi Braidotti’s concept of life beyond the self and N. Katherine Hayles’s concept of embodied virtuality, this paper analyses the technical feature of live streaming as the ‘digital’ becoming of human beings in the contemporary COVID- 19 world, further complicating the modes of construction of embodiment through live (life) streaming.

 KEYWORDS: COVID- 19, pandemic, live streaming, virtual proximity, virtual interaction, new normal, virtual embodiment, posthuman.

Imagining Extinction inside Viral Body without Organs

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232 views

Asijit Datta

Assistant Professor and Head, Department of English, The Heritage College (Kolkata)

ORCID: 0000-0002-9340-3727. Email: asijitdatta@gmail.com

 Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s25n5

Abstract:

Virus, in the form of a preassigned body without organs, predates the arrival of human species, and evolved on earth approximately three billion years ago, currently having an estimated variation of hundred million types. Humans form an insignificant subsection of the ‘virosphere’ (Crawford). Equipped with the knowledge of all organisms, the SARS-CoV-2 (my focus in this paper) virus combines with angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) which in turn identifies the tissues vulnerable to the infection. Once in the cell, it expropriates the cell’s mechanism, makes numerous copies of itself and invades other cells. Immune cells in the battle against the virus disrupt the flow of oxygen to all other parts of the body. In most cases, there is inflammation of the alveolus, its broken walls lessen oxygen intake, and the patient ends up in the ventilator. Eventually, the virus strikes all the organs with differing intensities– the lungs, the heart, the brain, the kidneys, the gut, the eyes. The animal virus merging with its human counterpart mirrors “interkingdoms, unnatural participations” where “Nature operates– against itself” (Deleuze and Guattari). Virus is anti-genealogy. Viruses bring the human and the non-human others together in a rhizomatic relation where genetic information and DNA are exchanged. Viruses, as BwO, de-structure the essential frame and subjectivity of humans. Both the human individual and viruses share a common plane where none possesses any essential reality and unfolds as an interactive space for multiple organic and inorganic exchanges. The only “enemy” of the virus is the organism, and as indeterminate, pure lawlessness it attacks the fundamental organization– the cellular and the molecular. Like the body without organs, viruses are anonymous/acephalous with its undying insistence to repeat/multiply and maximize connections. Virus is pure desire oriented towards reducing the infected body to its elemental form (compost/ash and others). Each organ transmutes into a body reacting against other bodies and against the whole body containing all organs. Claire Colebrook observes that a virus is so alive, “so lacking in boundaries and limits” that it does not qualify as a living being. My paper seeks to investigate the role of the virus in reducing/expanding the human to such an extent that it becomes one with the ground, and returns to its originary existence. I further propose that pandemics throughout history have initiated a re-imagination of human continuance; pandemics activate the human-toward-extinction by inducing the immortal virus through (consumed/to be consumed/ living) animals within the human.

 Keywords: virus, extinction, body without organs, organism, animal.

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