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Sumeet Mhaskar
Biography
Sumeet Mhaskar is a Professor of Labour Sociology at the Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, O. P. Jindal Global University. Previously, he has held positions at the Center for South Asia (Stanford University, USA), Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity (Göttingen), Centre for Modern Indian Studies (University of Göttingen), International Centre for Development and Decent Work (Kassel University). He has received a prestigious research award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Sumeet obtained his doctorate in Sociology from the University of Oxford, and his MA and MPhil degrees in Political Science from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
Research Interests
I am interested in the multi-faced vulnerabilities workers experience at the lower end of India’s ‘rising’ economy. To explore the varied dimensions of labouring lives, I deploy qualitative methods, conduct large-scale surveys and engage with archival material. My initial curiosity in labour emerged from the absence of discussions on the caste question within the labour movement in India. South Asian labour studies entirely ignored the labour mobilisations carried out by anti-caste movements. These silences had to do with privileging the category of labour over caste, gender, religion and ethnicity. The latter categories were supposed to become irrelevant due to the force of urbanisation and industrialisation. Interestingly, scholars rarely tested the irrelevance of caste with large-scale empirical evidence. As a result, South Asian scholarship on labour dominated by the privileged castes invisibilised the specific challenges faced by working classes belonging to socially marginalised groups such as the Dalits (untouchables) and Adivasis (indigenous). I pay attention to the intersections of labour with caste, gender, religion and ethnicity while researching migration, the ghettoisation of the labour market, occupational (im)mobility, the impact of joblessness, and social and political movements. I am finalising my book manuscript on Mumbai’s mill workers’ responses to joblessness due to large-scale industrial closures and the spatial-economic transformation of the working-class district.
Selected Publications
Mhaskar, Sumeet (2021). Crisis of Dominance: Understanding the Rural-Urban Roots of Maratha Caste Mobilisation for Reservation. Urbanisation (Indian Institute for Human Settlement) 6(1): 64-81
Mhaskar, Sumeet. (2019). The State of Stigmatised Employment in India: Historical Injustices of Labouring. In D. Dutta (Ed.), Mind The Gap: The State of Employment in India, Oxfam India Inequality Report 2019. New Delhi: Oxfam India, pp. 180 – 199.
Mhaskar, Sumeet. (2019). Preface In H. Van Wersch, The 1982-83 Bombay Textile Strike and the Unmaking of a Labourers City. New Delhi: Speaking Tiger, pp. xv – xxxvi.
Mhaskar, Sumeet. (2018). “Ghettoisation of Economic Choices in a Global City: A Case Study of Mumbai.” Economic and Political Weekly (Special Article) 53(29): 29-37.
Mhaskar, Sumeet. (2014). Claiming Entitlements in ‘Neo-Liberal’ India: Mumbai’s Ex-millworkers’ Political Mobilisation on the Rehabilitation Question. QEH Working Paper Series, QEHWPS200: Oxford Department of International Development, University of Oxford, pp.1-24.
Mhaskar, Sumeet. (2014). Locating Caste in a Globalising Indian City: A Study of Dalit Ex-millworkers’ Occupational Choices in Post-Industrial Mumbai. In Mobility or Marginalisation? Dalits in Neo-Liberal India ed. Clarinda Still. New Delhi and Abingdon: Routledge, pp.107-132.
Mhaskar, Sumeet. (2013). Indian Muslims in a Global City: Socio-Political Effects on Economic Preferences in Contemporary Mumbai. MMG Working Paper 13-04: Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen, ISSN 2192-2357, pp.1-31